Rising In The West

Just for once, Beyond Westminster did what it says on the tin. Elinor Goodman reported on the European Election in the West Country. A No2EU candidate was interviewed (I know, it's like the buses), and didn't mention refusing to take seats, only staying off the gravy train and concentrating on campaigning. Both better done by taking the seats. Though giving away much of the salary.

Which brings us to the Pensioners' Party candidate, who wanted MEPs to give much of their salaries to Help The Aged, Age Concern and the Alzheimer's Society. Right principle, at least.

The Fair Pay Fair Trade candidate wanted all imports to be thus certified, as much as anything else to reinvigorate domestic manufacturing. He also wanted free rail transport. Excellent. But his big mistake was to want these things at impossible EU level, rather than at perfectly possible national level.

The Cornish Nationalist wasn't really a Nationalist at all, just as Plaid Cymru, much of the SDLP, Alex Salmond, and I keep being told the rising generation of the SNP at large are not really Nationalists at all. Like them, he just wanted a better deal, as he saw it, for his patch. Certainly, Cornwall is at the very sharp end of the completely ignored problems of rural poverty and lack of amenities. And the fact that no major party candidate lives in Cornwall, while it is possible not be elected despite having picked up every vote there, certainly struck a chord with all of us who believe in the national and the local, but certainly not the "regional" if it can be at all avoided. People in places like County Durham, in fact.

And Katie Hopkins, an Independent, should thank her lucky stars that she got out of The Apprentice. Now she can campaign for the glorious causes of farmers, fishermen, small business, the Armed Forces and their families. Proper conservative causes. And thus as far as is imaginable from the agenda of global capital.

A bit of proper coverage and who knows what might have happened?

Still, the times are changing.