[pmyteh]

I interned briefly for an MP when I was a student. She got Sunday morning off, and spent the rest of the week in Parliament, in committee, in meetings, on the train (reading papers), in the constituency office, or attending political events. She worked extraordinary hours, which isn't unusual.

If you want to ignore your constituents and not bother (and are in a safe seat) you might do less than half of that. But MPs, as a group, are very hard working. I also think that the way we select MPs, incentivise them, and manage them is awful and that's one of the many reasons why the institution of parliament is fairly crap. Unjustified cynicism about individuals is unlikely to fix that.

I do apologise for the form letters, though. That's almost always staff work, with the MP signing the result after a brief skim. We got a lot of mail and much of it was repetitive or crankish so the replies weren't always artisanal...