A few days ago a news article was published on this site about the selection of a candidate to stand at the next general election in the hope of becoming the MP for Wycombe.

According to the report it took five rounds of voting before one of the six candidates was finally chosen. The winning candidate had lived in our area some years ago but apart from that they had no other connections with our town.

This blog is not intended to be about to the specifics of the selection process that took place recently neither is it intended to discuss the merits of or pass comment in any way on the person chosen however the whole process intrigued me.

Ever since reading the news article I have been asking myself “What does it take to become an MP?”

Is there not a great honour in being the MP for a town? I think there is.

Not only is there honour but the salary of £64,766 plus allowances (don't mention the allowances!) and 80 days summer holiday are most attractive. Most of us can only dream of such a highly paid job.

What amazes me most is that despite having a population of over 100,000 people recent history suggest the chances of a local person becoming our MP is practically nil.

In such a densely populated area there must be someone with the talents to represent our town in parliament.

I wonder how many more of the MPs who go to make up the entire parliament don't actually have very strong connections with the town they represent?

Does a parliament made up of too many MPs from outside the area which they represent not make a mockery of the whole idea of a local representative? Why not ditch the first past the post system and introduce proportional representation instead?

Anyone can stand as an independent but unless you have the backing of one of the big parties you have very little hope of being elected.

It's almost that rather than voting for a person we are being asked to vote for a party and the candidate is just a name on the ballot paper.

It helps if you are a prominent local business man or local celebrity as your popularity would help carry you through but mere mortals like myself have no hope.

I for one would like to see rules brought in to ensure that our elected representative was more of a local person.

Sadly the position of MP has become diluted similar to that of the players in a top-flight football team. Rather the using local talent players (or MPs) are simply brought in and the supporters (or electors) have no say in the matter.

What do you think?