New: read our detailed rebuttal of Mr Liddell-Grainger’s claims. We have also added our original email to him querying his activities to this page.
mySociety is not awarding a ranking to Ian Liddell-Grainger MP because he tried to improve his responsiveness statistics by sending himself messages.
We could go into lots of detail about the automated detection mechanisms we put in place once we spotted what was going on, but it is easier simply to print his own admission.
We sent Mr Liddell-Grainger the following email:
From: Tom Steinberg To: Ian Lidell-Grainger Date: 16-Dec-2004 14:12 Subject: Can we help? Dear Ian, I'm from the team which is building WriteToThem.com, the successor to FaxYourMP.com. We've just noticed that you've been trying to send a message to yourself, using our service. Is there anything about the service we could help explain, or any questions you’d like answering? all the best, Tom Steinberg ----------------- www.mysociety.org
and he replied as follows; note the bit we’ve highlighted:
From: LIDDELL-GRAINGER, Ian To: Tom Steinberg Date: 16-Dec-2004 14:36 Subject: RE: Can we help? Tom We have over the past years replied to every Fax we have had. Yet my figures are very low. It is being used by an opponent to damage my standing. I have had not other complaints in the Constituency. It would be fine if I had not been replying. If it takes me to help myself I am sure you understand why. Ian
For context: 62 survey responses had said that they had not heard back from him in the 2002-2004 period, against 57 positives.