Swamped by emails

As an MSP, I have come to realise that Bob (Doris, the last MSP I worked for) was not exaggerating when he talked about getting hundreds of emails - so many of them that it's just not possible to answer them all personally so you have to get your staff to help. Many of them are the same email. For example, recently the World Wildlife Fund had a link on its website for people to email MSPs asking for their views on climate change. I think I had about 50 of them and although I’d love to answer each one with a differently composed email, there just isn’t the time so I wrote one reply and asked Angus who works for me to send it to each person which he did. I was glancing through them some time later when I spotted that I’d written to Margaret Greene, wife of our Glasgow SNP councillor Phil Greene and someone I’ve known for over 20 years. And I’d sent her a friendly but formal “Dear Mrs Greene” and “Yours sincerely” email. Oops. So I called her and explained just so she didn’t think I’d become very aloof all of a sudden. She just laughed of course but I think I’ll do the glancing through in advance in future :-)