I'm voting YES!
David Cameron today launched his Tory beliefs document, Built to Last, and with it a series of websites asking people to comment on various policy areas. This is what I have just posted on the public services site:
I am a state school teacher and a former Conservative PPC. We need to recognise that working conditions for teachers is as (or more) important than pay & conditions. School buildings, stress of inspections, behaviour management, classroom resources and time allowances all need to be addressed. Give us the tools and we'll do the job. Accept that the government was right on the Workload agreement but wrong on TLR - and work on ways to bring teaching & learning to the fore without shunning the pastoral duties of the teacher. The Conservatives are a growing force in educational thinking, let's be bold in our policies next time!
I think Dave is somewhere on the right ball park here, the document is well thought out and broad in tone. BBC's Nick Robinson doesn't miss out on the significance of some of what is said (MPH in a Tory document?!?) though I am sure that the cynical press will have a field day.<
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Worse than being canvassed in not being canvassed at all...
With great apologies to one blog reader from Sheffield who e-mail to protest that the only thing worse than being canvassed is not being canvassed...
Hi there. Read your article via Iain Dale's blog. Forgive my sarcasm; I
have a very good friend who stood as the Lib Dem candidate in East
Oxford and I've already harangued him at length with much the same
points*...
> Canvassing is one of Britain’s great political traditions. We live in
a country where a near stranger comes onto your land and asks you about
your civic right to vote in a secret ballot and then leaves to record
that information on a database. *
Or they don't, as the case may be.
*> In many countries, such as France and the USA, canvassing simply
isn’t done.*
In many parts of the UK it doesn't appear to be done either. Sheffield
Hillsborough, for example.
*> However, these days there seems to have been a culture shift. During
much of the previous 50 years not voting was frowned upon and even if
you didn’t vote you didn’t admit to it. Nowadays people wear the “non
voter” label like some kind of badge of honour. It’s almost as if some
of them say, “you can’t hold me responsible for the state of the nation
because I don’t vote.” *
I vote. I'd quite like the chance to discuss candidates' policies on the
doorstep. They just don't seem particularly bothered about bringing
themselves to me.
*> Rather like the curious argument that “I’m too old to vote” (no word
of a lie, people do say that) this is a bit of a cop-out. If people like
that gentleman had voted (plus 13 more), I’d have been their Councillor
for two years and I think things would have been different.
*
Rather like the curious argument that 'this constituency's going to be
won by Labour, so we won't bother even trying to win any votes there.'*
> Also there are the people who say they don’t vote but just lie. After
elections the parties are given what is called a “marked register” which
lists who did and didn’t vote. It doesn’t tell us how you voted, just if
you did or not. During the day 23 people told us that they never vote
but had done so only last May. We know that they almost certainly wanted
to hide the fact that they weren’t voting Conservatives (in fact the
common view is that people like that vote LibDem but are utterly ashamed
to admit it) but why feel the need to lie? Canvassers don’t attack and
if you tell the truth then we don’t come back.*
If, indeed, anyone ever came round in the first place.
*> If you say, “I might vote for you” when you don’t mean it, then we
will come back! *
Promise?... :)
*> In total, we met (no word of a lie) 136 people who said they weren’t
going to vote. That is more than the total number of pledges for Labour,
LibDems and Greens added together. It seems all politicians have more
work to do.
*
Yup. So knock on more doors!
*> During our Friday and Saturday canvassing sessions we came across a
variety of issues. Youth provision needs improvement and people want
real street policing to be re-introduced. Council tax is too high but,
sorry LibDems, there was no appetite to replace it with the
higher-charging Local Income Tax. Roads and speeding came up and also
the development at Three Score was a big concern.
*
Good stuff. At least people are telling you what they think.*
*
*> We got 2 new members, one new poster site and a collection of very
angry dogs.
*
:) I hated delivering to houses with dogs when I was helping to
distribute our Village Appraisal.
*> We saw one naked woman, one naked male UEA student, two babysitters,
three builders, three people unable to speak English, one person who
didn’t know what the Conservative Party is...*
..possibly because he'd never met anybody from it....
*
> two people clearly still drunk from the night before, two of my
ex-students, one Chairman of the Bowthorpe Labour Party, one Labour
Councillor, two domestic incidents, one police van, two cleaners from
the UEA and (amazingly) three people who claimed to work for the British
Nuclear Authority – all in different houses. All we need to do now is to
get them to vote.
*
Good luck!
With great apologies to one blog reader from Sheffield who e-mail to protest that the only thing worse than being canvassed is not being canvassed...
Hi there. Read your article via Iain Dale's blog. Forgive my sarcasm; I
have a very good friend who stood as the Lib Dem candidate in East
Oxford and I've already harangued him at length with much the same
points*...
> Canvassing is one of Britain’s great political traditions. We live in
a country where a near stranger comes onto your land and asks you about
your civic right to vote in a secret ballot and then leaves to record
that information on a database. *
Or they don't, as the case may be.
*> In many countries, such as France and the USA, canvassing simply
isn’t done.*
In many parts of the UK it doesn't appear to be done either. Sheffield
Hillsborough, for example.
*> However, these days there seems to have been a culture shift. During
much of the previous 50 years not voting was frowned upon and even if
you didn’t vote you didn’t admit to it. Nowadays people wear the “non
voter” label like some kind of badge of honour. It’s almost as if some
of them say, “you can’t hold me responsible for the state of the nation
because I don’t vote.” *
I vote. I'd quite like the chance to discuss candidates' policies on the
doorstep. They just don't seem particularly bothered about bringing
themselves to me.
*> Rather like the curious argument that “I’m too old to vote” (no word
of a lie, people do say that) this is a bit of a cop-out. If people like
that gentleman had voted (plus 13 more), I’d have been their Councillor
for two years and I think things would have been different.
*
Rather like the curious argument that 'this constituency's going to be
won by Labour, so we won't bother even trying to win any votes there.'*
> Also there are the people who say they don’t vote but just lie. After
elections the parties are given what is called a “marked register” which
lists who did and didn’t vote. It doesn’t tell us how you voted, just if
you did or not. During the day 23 people told us that they never vote
but had done so only last May. We know that they almost certainly wanted
to hide the fact that they weren’t voting Conservatives (in fact the
common view is that people like that vote LibDem but are utterly ashamed
to admit it) but why feel the need to lie? Canvassers don’t attack and
if you tell the truth then we don’t come back.*
If, indeed, anyone ever came round in the first place.
*> If you say, “I might vote for you” when you don’t mean it, then we
will come back! *
Promise?... :)
*> In total, we met (no word of a lie) 136 people who said they weren’t
going to vote. That is more than the total number of pledges for Labour,
LibDems and Greens added together. It seems all politicians have more
work to do.
*
Yup. So knock on more doors!
*> During our Friday and Saturday canvassing sessions we came across a
variety of issues. Youth provision needs improvement and people want
real street policing to be re-introduced. Council tax is too high but,
sorry LibDems, there was no appetite to replace it with the
higher-charging Local Income Tax. Roads and speeding came up and also
the development at Three Score was a big concern.
*
Good stuff. At least people are telling you what they think.*
*
*> We got 2 new members, one new poster site and a collection of very
angry dogs.
*
:) I hated delivering to houses with dogs when I was helping to
distribute our Village Appraisal.
*> We saw one naked woman, one naked male UEA student, two babysitters,
three builders, three people unable to speak English, one person who
didn’t know what the Conservative Party is...*
..possibly because he'd never met anybody from it....
*
> two people clearly still drunk from the night before, two of my
ex-students, one Chairman of the Bowthorpe Labour Party, one Labour
Councillor, two domestic incidents, one police van, two cleaners from
the UEA and (amazingly) three people who claimed to work for the British
Nuclear Authority – all in different houses. All we need to do now is to
get them to vote.
*
Good luck!
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Tales from the Canvass Trail
Canvassing is one of Britain’s great political traditions. We live in a country where a near stranger comes onto your land and asks you about your civic right to vote in a secret ballot and then leaves to record that information on a database. In many countries, such as France and the USA, canvassing simply isn’t done. I think it is a great way of bringing the feet of politicians back down to earth. This month we’ve delivered a leaflet across the whole of Bowthorpe and Earlham and sent out roughly 5000 questionnaires. But nothing prepares you for the direct views of the population.
There are three groups of people who are, though, making life tough. The first are those people who simply won’t open their doors. I think that’s running at about 5% at the moment. They are in, the windows are open, the TV is blaring out and they ignore you.
Then there’s the next group, I think touching 10% who don’t care why you are there but want to be rid of you. One look at somebody they don’t recognise and it’s “no thank you,” then slam! Is that a “no thank you” to politics, the Conservative Party, me personally or simply anybody in the world you don’t yet know?
Lastly there are the group who tell you they simply won’t vote. Now I’ve never accepted the argument about not voting. The parties aren’t the same and yes your vote will make a difference (Labour majority in Bowthorpe and Earlham is 14 votes). However, these days there seems to have been a culture shift. During much of the previous 50 years not voting was frowned upon and even if you didn’t vote you didn’t admit to it. Nowadays people wear the “non voter” label like some kind of badge of honour. It’s almost as if some of them say, “you can’t hold me responsible for the state of the nation because I don’t vote.” Actually, it is those people I DO hold responsible for the state of the nation. As we went down the streets in West Earlham, two gents were washing a car. They enquired what we were doing (well, half a dozen people clutching clipboards and discussing what Thatcher would say about the state of the pavements in Earlham). When I explained who we were, they both said they never vote. Then one ventured the idea that no time or money was ever spent in Earlham whilst places such as Lakenham, Mile Cross and Marlpit get all the investment (never mind if this is true, it is what he thought). When I explained that if he felt like that he needed to change the people in charge – Labour have won the area since the 1960s – he said, “oh, no, voting’s not for me”. Rather like the curious argument that “I’m too old to vote” (no word of a lie, people do say that) this is a bit of a cop-out. If people like that gentleman had voted (plus 13 more), I’d have been their Councillor for two years and I think things would have been different. Also there are the people who say they don’t vote but just lie. After elections the parties are given what is called a “marked register” which lists who did and didn’t vote. It doesn’t tell us how you voted, just if you did or not. During the day 23 people told us that they never vote but had done so only last May. We know that they almost certainly wanted to hide the fact that they weren’t voting Conservatives (in fact the common view is that people like that vote LibDem but are utterly ashamed to admit it) but why feel the need to lie? Canvassers don’t attack and if you tell the truth then we don’t come back. If you say, “I might vote for you” when you don’t mean it, then we will come back! In total, we met (no word of a lie) 136 people who said they weren’t going to vote. That is more than the total number of pledges for Labour, LibDems and Greens added together. It seems all politicians have more work to do.
During our Friday and Saturday canvassing sessions we came across a variety of issues. Youth provision needs improvement and people want real street policing to be re-introduced. Council tax is too high but, sorry LibDems, there was no appetite to replace it with the higher-charging Local Income Tax. Roads and speeding came up and also the development at Three Score was a big concern.
We got 2 new members, one new poster site and a collection of very angry dogs.
We saw one naked woman, one naked male UEA student, two babysitters, three builders, three people unable to speak English, one person who didn’t know what the Conservative Party is, two people clearly still drunk from the night before, two of my ex-students, one Chairman of the Bowthorpe Labour Party, one Labour Councillor, two domestic incidents, one police van, two cleaners from the UEA and (amazingly) three people who claimed to work for the British Nuclear Authority – all in different houses.
All we need to do now is to get them to vote.
Canvassing is one of Britain’s great political traditions. We live in a country where a near stranger comes onto your land and asks you about your civic right to vote in a secret ballot and then leaves to record that information on a database. In many countries, such as France and the USA, canvassing simply isn’t done. I think it is a great way of bringing the feet of politicians back down to earth. This month we’ve delivered a leaflet across the whole of Bowthorpe and Earlham and sent out roughly 5000 questionnaires. But nothing prepares you for the direct views of the population.
There are three groups of people who are, though, making life tough. The first are those people who simply won’t open their doors. I think that’s running at about 5% at the moment. They are in, the windows are open, the TV is blaring out and they ignore you.
Then there’s the next group, I think touching 10% who don’t care why you are there but want to be rid of you. One look at somebody they don’t recognise and it’s “no thank you,” then slam! Is that a “no thank you” to politics, the Conservative Party, me personally or simply anybody in the world you don’t yet know?
Lastly there are the group who tell you they simply won’t vote. Now I’ve never accepted the argument about not voting. The parties aren’t the same and yes your vote will make a difference (Labour majority in Bowthorpe and Earlham is 14 votes). However, these days there seems to have been a culture shift. During much of the previous 50 years not voting was frowned upon and even if you didn’t vote you didn’t admit to it. Nowadays people wear the “non voter” label like some kind of badge of honour. It’s almost as if some of them say, “you can’t hold me responsible for the state of the nation because I don’t vote.” Actually, it is those people I DO hold responsible for the state of the nation. As we went down the streets in West Earlham, two gents were washing a car. They enquired what we were doing (well, half a dozen people clutching clipboards and discussing what Thatcher would say about the state of the pavements in Earlham). When I explained who we were, they both said they never vote. Then one ventured the idea that no time or money was ever spent in Earlham whilst places such as Lakenham, Mile Cross and Marlpit get all the investment (never mind if this is true, it is what he thought). When I explained that if he felt like that he needed to change the people in charge – Labour have won the area since the 1960s – he said, “oh, no, voting’s not for me”. Rather like the curious argument that “I’m too old to vote” (no word of a lie, people do say that) this is a bit of a cop-out. If people like that gentleman had voted (plus 13 more), I’d have been their Councillor for two years and I think things would have been different. Also there are the people who say they don’t vote but just lie. After elections the parties are given what is called a “marked register” which lists who did and didn’t vote. It doesn’t tell us how you voted, just if you did or not. During the day 23 people told us that they never vote but had done so only last May. We know that they almost certainly wanted to hide the fact that they weren’t voting Conservatives (in fact the common view is that people like that vote LibDem but are utterly ashamed to admit it) but why feel the need to lie? Canvassers don’t attack and if you tell the truth then we don’t come back. If you say, “I might vote for you” when you don’t mean it, then we will come back! In total, we met (no word of a lie) 136 people who said they weren’t going to vote. That is more than the total number of pledges for Labour, LibDems and Greens added together. It seems all politicians have more work to do.
During our Friday and Saturday canvassing sessions we came across a variety of issues. Youth provision needs improvement and people want real street policing to be re-introduced. Council tax is too high but, sorry LibDems, there was no appetite to replace it with the higher-charging Local Income Tax. Roads and speeding came up and also the development at Three Score was a big concern.
We got 2 new members, one new poster site and a collection of very angry dogs.
We saw one naked woman, one naked male UEA student, two babysitters, three builders, three people unable to speak English, one person who didn’t know what the Conservative Party is, two people clearly still drunk from the night before, two of my ex-students, one Chairman of the Bowthorpe Labour Party, one Labour Councillor, two domestic incidents, one police van, two cleaners from the UEA and (amazingly) three people who claimed to work for the British Nuclear Authority – all in different houses.
All we need to do now is to get them to vote.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
A LibDem mystery
Apparently the ballot paper for the LibDem Leadership lists the candidates names (as would, I suppose, any ballot paper) with one curious exception.
There is a surprise last minute candidature from CAMPBELL, Menzies.
Is he by some chance related to "elderly toff" (Labour MPs words, not mine) Sir Ming Campbell? Or is Sir Ming embarrassed by his knighthood fearing it might put off a large section of the left-wing of his own party?
Apparently the ballot paper for the LibDem Leadership lists the candidates names (as would, I suppose, any ballot paper) with one curious exception.
There is a surprise last minute candidature from CAMPBELL, Menzies.
Is he by some chance related to "elderly toff" (Labour MPs words, not mine) Sir Ming Campbell? Or is Sir Ming embarrassed by his knighthood fearing it might put off a large section of the left-wing of his own party?
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Following on from a LibDem defection in Suffolk to Cameron's Conservatives, news from Iain Dale's Diary is that Loughborough's LibDem candidate has switched to Labour now.
Why is it that LibDems struggle to keep hold of their defeated candidates? Or is it that those candidates, once defeated, choose to make a new political home where they can win?
Why is it that LibDems struggle to keep hold of their defeated candidates? Or is it that those candidates, once defeated, choose to make a new political home where they can win?
So the government did in fact get its ID card proposals through the Commons and with a half-decent majority too. This size victory was quite well known - if the government were really in trouble I think they'd have had good ol' Tone back from SA by hook or by crook (probably, given this government, the latter). He wouldn't want to see another piece of cornerstone legislation lost by a vote and miss voting himself! The BBC Reports 20 Labour rebels, and I fear the normal mix of lefty Bob Marshall-Andrews, former Cabinet supremo turned looney Clare Short and Hayes & Harlington's very own John McDonnell.
Today the big vote is on the smoking ban.
Today the big vote is on the smoking ban.
Monday, February 13, 2006
It’s been quite a week for poor ol’ Tony, currently stranded in South Africa. Tonight the government won a key vote on ID Cards, maybe because of the last minute appeal by co-Prime Minister and Chancellor Gordon Brown for rebels to shut up and get in line. One rather irate Westminster insider has been going around spouting off to anybody who’ll listen that Brown is about to accept a job switch to DPM, but I’m not sure I believe that. You might have though that following the slaughtering at Dunfermline that Brown would keep his head down, but apparently not! I suppose I’d better add congratulations to LibDems for that one, a good result for everybody who is anti-government. Can the Tories win any by-election? Probably, but the LibDems are now so good at it that they could started a distant eighth place with few votes than you need signatures on a nomination paper and still find a bar chart that proves that only they can win here! And they’d probably go on to do it! Over on pb.com one LibDem candidate in a by-election where the Tories score 70% to Labour’s 30% and no LibDem candidate asks how he can create a bar chart to spin that one! Answers in the comments section.
The LibDem leadership contest rumbles on, livened up only by random attacks on each other. Chris says it’s between Sir Ming and himself, Simon says it’s between Sir Ming and himself. Both Huhne and Hughes magic up YouGov polls to prove their point. One ex-colleague from Hillingdon Borough in West London tells me that Hughes “two horse race” predictions are worthless in the capital after he predicted that the last Mayoral election was between Red Ken and himself – before slumping to a pathetic third behind Tory “Shagger” Norris.
Locally we had our first major campaigning session out in West Earlham last Saturday. This has always been tough Tory-territory but the good result last time (we lost out by only 14 votes) is encouraging more and more Tories to get postal votes and pledge to vote this year. What is interesting is the number of people willing to listen to Cameron’s message – far more than last year. Labour are still ahead in the polling district but well down on where they were last year. We then spent the weekend in London seeing my new Nephew! Hurrah!
The LibDem leadership contest rumbles on, livened up only by random attacks on each other. Chris says it’s between Sir Ming and himself, Simon says it’s between Sir Ming and himself. Both Huhne and Hughes magic up YouGov polls to prove their point. One ex-colleague from Hillingdon Borough in West London tells me that Hughes “two horse race” predictions are worthless in the capital after he predicted that the last Mayoral election was between Red Ken and himself – before slumping to a pathetic third behind Tory “Shagger” Norris.
Locally we had our first major campaigning session out in West Earlham last Saturday. This has always been tough Tory-territory but the good result last time (we lost out by only 14 votes) is encouraging more and more Tories to get postal votes and pledge to vote this year. What is interesting is the number of people willing to listen to Cameron’s message – far more than last year. Labour are still ahead in the polling district but well down on where they were last year. We then spent the weekend in London seeing my new Nephew! Hurrah!
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