![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jun. 1st, 2001 09:29 amThe politicians last night provided a good evening's entertainment, if nothing else.
Background: A local church (not the one we go to) had organised a meeting for local Christains to come and put questions to the potential MPs in the area. (It was actually a proper questions-from-the-floor session, our church leader had got it wrong.)
The enteretainers, from the right:
The UKIP candidate, a very scary Scottish secondary school teacher, who had to make every question somehow Europe's fault (don't we just love one-policy parties?), believes in abolishing the national curriculum and centrally-set examinations, and didn't know an awful lot about anything else. Oh, and he thought that contraception ought not to be made available to teenagers.
The Conservative candidate, who was just plain *slimy*. One of those 'career politicians'. He was 'assigned' this seat and moved into the area to contest it (uprooting his family - 5 children), and spoke that dialect known as 'politics', made up of strung-together soundbites which mean 'of course we'll solve the problem, we'll throw buzzwords at it until it gives up and goes away'. He was the most well-groomed and obviously a veteren of much tougher press conferences than this.
The Labour candidate - although I have some reservations about New Labour as a whole, our candidate actually seems quite good. He answered most of the questions with sense - more of them than anyone but the Green party candidate. Someone in the audience who really seemed to have daggers for him questioned him when he said that he personally was opposed to going into Europe saying 'are you saying you disagree with your party leader?' to which he calmly said 'Yes. I try to agree with my party leaders as much as possible, but on some things you just have to take a stand.' And he's the current MP so he stands a pretty good chance of getting back in. I think if I had a vote, he'd get it.
The Lib Dem mess - a *complete* shambles. The Lib Dems obviously aren't seriously contesting this seat. The candidate was on *holiday*. He'd planned it for after the initial election date, but any serious politician would have cancelled it when the election moved. Instead we had this poor ancient local-councillor person who was completely hamstrung because he had to answer all the questions from the literature he'd been given, which was full of vague sweeping statements of course and not targetted at the individual questions. He was also painfully nervous, and I really feel sorry for him.
The Green party candidate - now he appeared to be very well-informed indeed, and most importantly talked an awful lot of sense. He had a good, practical reply to every question, and generally was the one I felt had the most sane policies. It's rather a shame he'll never get in.
And finally, the evening's main entertainment (although the Lib Dem mess was competing fairly well with him as it turns out), Buster Nolan, standing this time for the Legalise Cannabis party. Every election my parents have been able to vote in, I think, Buster Nolan has faithfully stood and lost his deposit. The term '(aging) tree-hugging hippie' was *invented* for him. (to give some context, he was wandering around carrying a big wooden stick with a knarled knot of wood on the top of it.) Probably his best answer was the one to the problem of stress in schools - 'We should buy back the playing fields, get them all out in the open air, and let them calm down with a smoke'.
The secondary entertainers - the interesting questions
The proceedings were fairly orderly, if rather slow due to the sheer number of candidates, until about 9:45pm, when in the middle of the candidates answering someone else's question this old guy with white hair stood shakily up and started rambling a question to them (I *think* it was about abortion, but the candidates weren't quite sure what he was going on about either). The chairperson attempted to get him to wait until the last question had been answered fully to ask his question, but didn't have a chance. So then the UKIP candidate started going on about how the availabiliyt of contraception was causing the degradation of society's morals, the Conservative candidate had a field day with his favourite soundbite 'I believe in the sanctity of life', Buster Nolan started off about the erosion of the woman's role as mother by technology (talking about IVF etc, not abortion, which he said ought to be the woman's choice)... the rest actually made some vague kind of sense (there was an argument between the Green party candidate and the Labour party candidate over what would be a sensible cut-off point, the Green one was saying that 20 weeks was too old and the Labour party one was contesting the Green one's suggestion that 8 weeks would be any better).
Then we had the person who quoted almost a chapter out of the Bible about all the types of people that would go to Hell and basically asked them to make homosexuality illegal. The Conservative candidiate had a field day again (they're planning to re-introduce Section 28. I do actually think this is a good thing - schools shouldn't be encouraging children in or promoting *any* lifestyle choice like this, either way!), the others mainly looked embarrased and started muttering about tolerance and compassion. (Buster Nolan started muttering about Druids).
I had to leave before the end tho, cos it just went on far too long and I was getting tired and my dad was getting impatient. I didn't get to ask any of the parts of my question although I did catch the Conservative candidate contradicting himself once and threw a question back at him (something like 'How can you tie up privitisation of the health service and reducing postcode rationing when private companies are going to supply more to the more lucrative areas because they're *there* to make money'). I'm a bit annoyed they didn't get to the bit on Asylum Seekers which is what I really wanted to grill them about (quoting 'whever you welcomed a stranger into your house, you welcomed me'), especially as they did it by putting Europe higher on the list than it was at the start.
Eep, I've got to get ready to go out now, I've been typing for three quarters of an hour and I'm going to miss my train!
Background: A local church (not the one we go to) had organised a meeting for local Christains to come and put questions to the potential MPs in the area. (It was actually a proper questions-from-the-floor session, our church leader had got it wrong.)
The enteretainers, from the right:
The UKIP candidate, a very scary Scottish secondary school teacher, who had to make every question somehow Europe's fault (don't we just love one-policy parties?), believes in abolishing the national curriculum and centrally-set examinations, and didn't know an awful lot about anything else. Oh, and he thought that contraception ought not to be made available to teenagers.
The Conservative candidate, who was just plain *slimy*. One of those 'career politicians'. He was 'assigned' this seat and moved into the area to contest it (uprooting his family - 5 children), and spoke that dialect known as 'politics', made up of strung-together soundbites which mean 'of course we'll solve the problem, we'll throw buzzwords at it until it gives up and goes away'. He was the most well-groomed and obviously a veteren of much tougher press conferences than this.
The Labour candidate - although I have some reservations about New Labour as a whole, our candidate actually seems quite good. He answered most of the questions with sense - more of them than anyone but the Green party candidate. Someone in the audience who really seemed to have daggers for him questioned him when he said that he personally was opposed to going into Europe saying 'are you saying you disagree with your party leader?' to which he calmly said 'Yes. I try to agree with my party leaders as much as possible, but on some things you just have to take a stand.' And he's the current MP so he stands a pretty good chance of getting back in. I think if I had a vote, he'd get it.
The Lib Dem mess - a *complete* shambles. The Lib Dems obviously aren't seriously contesting this seat. The candidate was on *holiday*. He'd planned it for after the initial election date, but any serious politician would have cancelled it when the election moved. Instead we had this poor ancient local-councillor person who was completely hamstrung because he had to answer all the questions from the literature he'd been given, which was full of vague sweeping statements of course and not targetted at the individual questions. He was also painfully nervous, and I really feel sorry for him.
The Green party candidate - now he appeared to be very well-informed indeed, and most importantly talked an awful lot of sense. He had a good, practical reply to every question, and generally was the one I felt had the most sane policies. It's rather a shame he'll never get in.
And finally, the evening's main entertainment (although the Lib Dem mess was competing fairly well with him as it turns out), Buster Nolan, standing this time for the Legalise Cannabis party. Every election my parents have been able to vote in, I think, Buster Nolan has faithfully stood and lost his deposit. The term '(aging) tree-hugging hippie' was *invented* for him. (to give some context, he was wandering around carrying a big wooden stick with a knarled knot of wood on the top of it.) Probably his best answer was the one to the problem of stress in schools - 'We should buy back the playing fields, get them all out in the open air, and let them calm down with a smoke'.
The secondary entertainers - the interesting questions
The proceedings were fairly orderly, if rather slow due to the sheer number of candidates, until about 9:45pm, when in the middle of the candidates answering someone else's question this old guy with white hair stood shakily up and started rambling a question to them (I *think* it was about abortion, but the candidates weren't quite sure what he was going on about either). The chairperson attempted to get him to wait until the last question had been answered fully to ask his question, but didn't have a chance. So then the UKIP candidate started going on about how the availabiliyt of contraception was causing the degradation of society's morals, the Conservative candidate had a field day with his favourite soundbite 'I believe in the sanctity of life', Buster Nolan started off about the erosion of the woman's role as mother by technology (talking about IVF etc, not abortion, which he said ought to be the woman's choice)... the rest actually made some vague kind of sense (there was an argument between the Green party candidate and the Labour party candidate over what would be a sensible cut-off point, the Green one was saying that 20 weeks was too old and the Labour party one was contesting the Green one's suggestion that 8 weeks would be any better).
Then we had the person who quoted almost a chapter out of the Bible about all the types of people that would go to Hell and basically asked them to make homosexuality illegal. The Conservative candidiate had a field day again (they're planning to re-introduce Section 28. I do actually think this is a good thing - schools shouldn't be encouraging children in or promoting *any* lifestyle choice like this, either way!), the others mainly looked embarrased and started muttering about tolerance and compassion. (Buster Nolan started muttering about Druids).
I had to leave before the end tho, cos it just went on far too long and I was getting tired and my dad was getting impatient. I didn't get to ask any of the parts of my question although I did catch the Conservative candidate contradicting himself once and threw a question back at him (something like 'How can you tie up privitisation of the health service and reducing postcode rationing when private companies are going to supply more to the more lucrative areas because they're *there* to make money'). I'm a bit annoyed they didn't get to the bit on Asylum Seekers which is what I really wanted to grill them about (quoting 'whever you welcomed a stranger into your house, you welcomed me'), especially as they did it by putting Europe higher on the list than it was at the start.
Eep, I've got to get ready to go out now, I've been typing for three quarters of an hour and I'm going to miss my train!
