Contacting your local MP and the Hunting Act amendment

As I stated in my latest blog and you may have heard in the media, the free vote for MPs on the repeal of the Hunting Act is next Wednesday. This has all come very suddenly and is no doubt going to cause a lot of chaos in the next few days. Even though 80% of the public want the ban to stay in place there is that few that want to repeal it. However it’s not the public that will be voting, it’s the MPs therefore as constituents we need to make our voice heard to our MPs and make sure they vote no!

So, contacting your local MP is very important. They may be a tough nut pro-hunter and you may think it won’t work but it’s worth it and you’ve got nothing to loose. Along with this it takes no time at all to simply send an email, letter or maybe even a tweet just to see if they will be voting for or against the repeal. A few weeks back I put together a template letter which is free to use and edit if you wish, find it by clicking here.

Meeting with my local MP

A few weeks back, running up to the general election, I got in touch with all my local candidates about the issues around young people not engaging with the natural world with the blog I did for A Focus on Nature. The Conservative candidate, Michael Fabricant, got back to me and said if he was to be re-elected he would be willing to meet me. He was re-elected and I met with him this morning for an informal meeting in my local city centre. Coincidently the vote to repeal the Hunting Act is in just a few days so I couldn’t miss the opportunity to ask him about his views. I already knew that he wouldn’t vote to repeal it as he’d stated it on Twitter but I asked him a few questions about his points of view on this matter. What he said was quite positive and great to hear.

The planned topic was actually about the education of nature in primary schools which he was in favour of and I plan to take this further. This issue is very important to me as less children are becoming connected with nature, in fact it’s believed just 1 in 5 are. You can read more about what I’ve said in the past here – https://georgiaswildlifewatch.wordpress.com/2015/04/11/my-visionfornature/