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.