So the day the UK Parliamentary election was announced I wrote to the Labour, Conservative, Liberal and Green candidates in Camberwell and Peckham, the constituency where I get to vote, asking:

I am a UK elector living in France, and I will be voting in your constituency in the forthcoming general election by postal vote.I live and work in France and have paid taxes here since 2002. I no longer have any financial interests at all in the UK, although I amstill a UK citizen and passport holder. Because of my status, I am not able to vote in French parliamentary or presidential elections, even though these are the very people who impose and decide my taxation levels. I can vote in UK parliamentary elections, although if you were to become my MP you would have no say whatsoever in my taxation levels. No taxation without representation? No representation without taxation? What do you, as a potential future MP, plan to do about this situation which affects probably hundreds of thousands of UK citizens living in France and other countries?

So far none of them has replied. Clearly voters like me don’t matter. At the last election I sent a similar question to much the same bunch of candidates. Then only Jenny Jones, the Green candidate, replied, saying, “Really? I had no idea.” And that was all. This time she cannot claim to not be aware of the situation since I told her about it. So obviously this time round it doesn’t matter. Anyway, this morning I received my ballot paper, which I will be sending back tomorrow having done my best to inform myself about the potential candidates via their websites. Of the 11, about five appear to have some sort of online presence. There are three independents, none of whom live in Peckham or Camberwell – quite why some woman called ‘Decima Shamona Francis’ who lives in mid-Worcestershire thinks the honest toilers of Peckham will vote for her is beyond me. And anyway, isn’t ‘Decima’ a Roman coin? And Shamona was either that bird the Ramones sang about or some shampoo that will give me long, blond, silky hair.

So I wrote another e-mail to those who have heard of the internet this morning, saying:

I wrote to you and other candidates for your constituency the day the election was announced, asking some particular questions about your attitude towards the status of ex-patriot electors. Neither you nor any of the other candidates has bothered to reply, so I assume you simply don’t care about voters like me. I am enclosing a copy of my original e-mail should you wish to reply, but as I am voting by post from France I will be sending my ballot paper tomorrow, so reply quickly should you wish to influence my vote in any direction other than ‘I am ignoring you because you don’t matter’.

It will be interesting to see if any of them manage to master enough of a computer by tomorrow to send me a reply. I have my doubts based on past evidence.