Dear Mr Clegg,
Firstly, thank you for taking the time to read this email. I appreciate that you must be an extremely busy man at the best of times...and also that the past few weeks have not exactly been the best of times, in many ways. I congratulate you on your achievements in gaining a place at the "top table". I would also like to add that I voted for your party in the General Election - as I have done since I was of voting age, indeed.
However, I do have my concerns over the direction that you have taken since the election. It appears to me, as I imagine it does to others, that your Conservative partners within the Coalition have steered a more-or-less predictable course, whereas the impression one has is that the Liberal Democrats have caved in, to a greater or lesser extent.
I am not, however, going to harangue you any more than this concerning the u-turns made since the Election. There IS a huge deficit to fill, and the political landscape has, of course, changed enormously in the last few weeks; and as you said on your "Desert Island Discs" programme, to a certain extent we all need to be patient and wait for everything to "settle down". But this is not an easy message to sell to students facing a hike in tuition fees, parents with a cut in child benefit to deal with, people suffering housing benefit reductions, and so on... Good luck with all that!
Anyway - my focus is actually on something entirely different. In the recent GCSE results, French dropped out of the top 10 subjects by entry for the first time since the introduction of the National Curriculum. My MFL colleagues across the country and I were dismayed by the response in the media and on the BBC. Many of us were listening to Radio 4's "You and Yours" Languages Phone-in that week (mystifyingly without a single teacher on the panel of experts), and were so concerned by what we heard that we organised a special FlashMeeting (a kind of web-conference, which a group of us conduct on a regular basis). We dubbed it "myth-busters", and sent a copy of the FlashMeeting minutes and recording to the BBC, via our "leader", Joe Dale - an internationally-reputed consultant in MFL and ICT. As far as I am aware, no response has been forthcoming thus far.
During the FlashMeeting, someone remarked rather glibly that you, as a multilingual MP, might be a good ally to try and enlist in our campaign. I thought: "Why not, actually?", and have sent you at least three messages every day since then - one in French, one in German and one in English. That makes 27 days so far, I believe. Others have joined in and sent Spanish and (at least one!) Dutch message. I have used your Facebook page and your Twitter account as my access points so far - but until today had not had any response. Today, the member of your staff who oversees your Facebook wall replied to me, suggesting I contact you via this address.
I am not going to harp on endlessly about how long it has taken to get a response. (Incidentally, may I say that the content of some of the messages left for you on your Wall is revolting, and I hope you will not lose too much sleep over the less savoury material you receive!)
Rather I would like to get straight to our reason for wanting to contact you in the first place: our concern over the perceived lack of support within the Government and the "Establishment-At-Large" (whatever that is) for language learning and teaching.
Our very real concern is that the generation now under our tutelage will be the one that loses the ability to converse with our fellow Europeans (and indeed other nations further afield) on the level playing field one strides onto by being able to use their language(s), rather than blithely and mistakenly assuming that English will be spoken universally.
As a speaker of 5 languages (I admit to feeling slightly inadequate with my fluency in just 3!), you must surely share our concerns. Please respond to indicate how we might work with you to move forward in this area, before it is too late. Already university departments are closing, placing the future of such crucial subjects as German in real jeopardy.
I can be contacted at the above email addresses. On Twitter I am @bellaale, and a "member" of a nebulous group of similarly-minded MFL teachers and consultants who have started calling ourselves the #mfltwitterati. I am utterly sincere in my wish to work WITH you and the Coalition in achieving what I hope to be common goals, and look forward to receiving your response.
Best regards,
Alex Bellars
French and German teacher
(Ballard School, New Milton)