Thursday 25 March 2010

Glass Half Empty

There is to be a hustings in Lanchester without the Lanchester Parish Councillor and New Labour PPC, Pat Glass, who refuses to attend. She will be "too busy", apparently. More like she is the sort of person who always votes, and who unlike Tony Blair at least reads the papers and watches the news, but who is not otherwise interested in politics.

Remember when they used to pop up on here and elsewhere mocking my parliamentary hopes on the grounds that I was only a Parish Councillor, something that I rather enjoy but the level at which they felt that they were keeping me out of sheer spite? Well, they don't pop up any more. They are now advocating support for someone whose only ever public office is to have served on the same Parish Council (from which she is frequently absent) for one quarter of the time that I have, having been elected with fewer votes than I was after standing to make up the numbers on the same day as her husband, with the full backing of the Labour machine, failed to win a seat on a District Council which has since been abolished. This represents the sum total of her political activity, first entered into in her fifties. She has never held any specifically party office and I am not aware that she has ever been a school governor. She professes to be opposed to all-women shortlists, but she has used one to her own advantage.

I like Pat, and her husband. But welcome to politics. I have wanted into the parliamentary process this time round, and specifically I have wanted this seat this time round, for half my lifetime. I have earned it, and I could have done so much more besides. So I am going to have it. Not least because I do not hold the electorate in such contempt that I refuse to attend hustings in the country town where I live and where I am a Parish Councillor. Readers may indicate what they think of that behaviour by visiting the PayPal button on this blog.

6 comments:

  1. What guarantee do we have that you'll stand instead of running away, like you did with the BPA?

    ReplyDelete
  2. So are you definitely, definitely standing? Hurrah!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous, I was born for this. And the BPA still exists. Check out its website. Right after you have visited my PayPal button.

    That goes for you, too, Sab. You can make it definitely, definitely, definitely.

    ReplyDelete
  4. There's no denying that you want it more. Her pitch in her leaflet is that she doesn't really want to be an MP.

    Look at who her agent is. They have made him. He is going to vote for you. For one thing he has known you much longer.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "I have wanted into the parliamentary process this time round, and specifically I have wanted this seat this time round, for half my lifetime. I have earned it, and I could have done so much more besides."

    Yeah, Dave, listen, that's not how it works.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I remember better days, and it's not as if I'm all that old. Seats were not given to people precisely because they had no record, nor were leaflets put out in which the selling point was that the candidate didn't want to be an MP and couldn't quite believe having been nominated.

    ReplyDelete