Internships and MPs

Hello!

Finally I'm back in the blogging world after a ridiculously long break to direct 'Derelict' at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Working for free and freelancing on our own projects seems to be a staple task for us creative, recession hit youths. Consequently I am now substantially out of pocket post Edinburgh stress-spend-drink-everything-you've-earned month on madness. So I will be waving farewell to good old London Taan, not due to poor budgeting (well there was a bit of poor budgeting but I wasn't too laissez faire with my pennies!) but due to the fact that those pesky blighters at HMRC are refusing to give me my tax rebate (I am owed in the region of £500). Ironic really considering so many people have been overpaid!

I contacted them back in July and was assured they would pay me by mid-August. I called them on the first of September to be told 'they had no record of my calls'. It was pretty upsetting to discover that the money I was relying on for food and rent was not going to appear, the upshot of this will be a move back home away from my gorgeous young friends to live with my parents ~ who are very gorgeous in their own way but clearly not young. Not one to take such things lying down I dried my eyes and promptly emailed my local MP a horrid rant of an email to which I expected no response: 'I don't expect a response really, they don't really care about us normal little people they just eat caviar in their gilded palaces and laugh heartily at street urchins...etc etc'.

This is where I encounter a political crisis .... My MP responded overwhelmingly quickly, within 24 hours, and has since written to HMRC himself encouraging them to hurry up as well as sending me a copy of said letter by first class post. My MP is a Conservative. I am a staunch socialist lefty old-Labour type. This whole incident has left me very perplexed especially when I consider my mother's attempts to contact the Labour Party to ask very simple questions and their total lack of response... Well good one Mr Mike Freer MP, you have surpassed my expectations - however, I don't think I will jump from red to blue quite yet.