Friday, November 28, 2014

Selected to fight Blaydon

I now have the ideal excuse for not tidying the house for the next six months. Tonight I was selected as prospective Parliamentary candidate for Blaydon. And with the election clock ticking, the battle will be getting underway immediately.

Blaydon has no Conservative presence at all. They lost their last council seat here (to us) in 1988. UKIP have no active campaigning presence other than in one ward. The Greens have no active presence but field some local election candidates. Labour have held the constituency since 1935 and since 1997, the Lib Dems have been in second place. The current Labour MP is Dave Anderson, first elected in 2005. I quite like him as a person though his politics don't quite coincide with mine. He is on the left of the Labour Party but in the last Parliament, he never rebelled against his government, despite protestations of opposition made by him to some of the policies of Blair and Brown.

My council ward of Whickham South and Sunniside is in the constituency. I've held my ward for nearly 28 years. I was first elected in 1987 when the Conservatives were on a high, but not high enough to stop me winning my seat from them. I've held the seat ever since, each time with over half the votes cast.

So, with my background in self-sufficiency and webcasting, are the voters ready to adopt me as the food growing, goat keeping, bee buzzing, video making MP for Blaydon who will fight their corner? They will decide whether I'm heading to Westminster or heading home to do the tidying up!

No comments: