CSA to be scrapped
25 Jul 2006 by Alex
The 'government' announced today that the CSA, or Constituents' Support Agency, is being scrapped after nearly a decade of utter abject failure in its attempts to ensure that absent MPs honour their obligations to the voters they leave behind.The story of Ms Douglas Ramsbottom of Sedgefield is a familiar one to those let down by the agency over the last 9 years. "When I first met Tony in 1997 he had such a genuine smile, he promised me he would take care of me and that he felt very passionately about me, you know, but once he'd had his way with me up the polling booth he completely changed."
Like many new ministers Tony panicked at the sudden responsibility of bringing up a country and quickly left for the bright lights of Westminster, leaving a distraught electorate behind him to fend for itself on a low income and with few prospects. "He just said it was over and that he'd met someone else over the internet in some horrid dirty chatroom, someone from America, and that he would be spending more and more time travelling abroad to see him and 'do his bidding'. If I'd known things were going to turn out like this I wouldn't have ticked his ballots in the first place. But now I'm stuck with his government and no way to get what I was promised."
The CSA has been plagued with problems since being established in 1994 as a response to the total disregard for constituents' wellbeing shown by the then Tory government. Persistent under-funding, a huge unpaid debt owed by the government to the electorate, and accusations of ignoring the real needs of the country have consistently dogged the agency. Thousands of single voters have been left disappointed with a backlog of 300,000 complaints concerning issues such as the war in Iraq, the critical condition of the NHS, ministerial sleaze, endemic corruption, and Margaret Beckett's scary teeth remaining unheard.
But it was the agency's inability to enforce ministerial rules, as demonstrated in the John Prescott 'Croquetgate' affair, which eventually lead to its demise, with ministers finding it all too easy to simply ignore its rulings and carry on shafting everybody and never have to pay for the consequences. The agency is to be replaced by a new slimmed down body for the electorate to complain to, to be known as 'The Hand'.
"The entire population can talk to The Hand," announced the Prime Minister, "Cos the government ain't listening."
