Mail Weekly Column: 22 August 2022

All last week my team and I packed up the office in Cavendish Street and hit the road, visiting 21 venues over 5 days, covering almost every part of Barrow & Furness for our annual Summer Surgery Tour.

This is the third time we've done this, and it's proved to be a rewarding, exhausting, and very fruitful week.

Well over a hundred people came to see us to discuss a wide range of issues, from potholes to Ukraine, the cost of living to immigration, and renewable energy to anti-social behaviour. Now the hard work starts as my team and I take those cases and begin work on them.

I'm always struck by how different meeting people in person is to the contact you get from them on social media or by email. As with previous years, this surgery tour was an opportunity to put a face to a name on many occasions, and to move from a quick exchange of emails or letters to an actual conversation.

The one thing that is really confirmed to you in this fantastic job I have is that there is very rarely a black and white issue where one position is right, and the other is wrong. The world is tricky and nuanced, and so are people. But increasingly we are polarised. Repeatedly I find myself accused of voting for or against something when the truth is far more complicated than a single headline or the 280 characters of a tweet. It was very good to have the time to have a back and forth with people and get into some of that nuance.

I very much hope to be able to have more of these sort of conversations more often - we're going to be running another climate summit in the near future and also a skills fair, and I plan to get as many local people involved as possible.

But before I do, I would like to publicly thank every venue that hosted us, every one who displayed a poster and let their communities know when we would be there for the summer surgery tour, every councillor who supported us, and also everyone who made us a brew on arrival - it was very much appreciated!

And if you didn’t manage to stop by this week, I do hold weekly surgeries - just call my office (01229 314 220) or drop me an email (simon.fell.mp@parliament.uk) to make an appointment.

This week has also been a fantastic reminder of the amazing things there are to do on our back door, whether walking on Walney, visiting Flours Cafe and the Watermill in Gleaston, visiting some great independent shops in Ulverston, or popping to St Aidan's Community Cafe in Newbarns. We are very lucky to live in such an amazing place, with so many things to do. I've had my ten days away in Scotland already, but I look forward to doing a bit more local exploring before Parliament returns in a couple of weeks and so do my children to school.