Great time at Newcastle hustings
I might be slightly biased as I grew up in the North East (until I was 14 and my parents moved back to West Cumbria), but I think yesterday's Newcastle hustings was the best so far. It was a really friendly, lively audience that asked some really good political questions.
All of the deputy candidates gave some good answers and I received some great feedback from people about Alan's performance. I talked to several people who had already decided their first preference for another candidate, but weren't sure about their second preference - until they heard or met Alan.
What's really good is Alan appears to be picking up second preferences from supporters of all five candidates. The two common themes appear to be that nearly everyone is impressed by Alan's honesty and the second is that he genuinely is the unity candidate.
He refuses to tack left, right, up, down, simply to win votes. He sticks to telling it like it is. That's why he's got support from MPs like John Grogan who fought him over tuition fees, and Gerry Sutcliffe who opposes Alan on PR, but is impressed enough to run his campaign (I'm also in that camp, as I'm definitely not a big fan of PR).
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One thing that gets me about
One thing that gets me about the campaign for deputy is that none of you mention the scandalous amount of money that we pay through direct and indirect taxation both nationally and locally and what for? Fines for everything that council can fine, funding illegal wars, Trident, consultants, IT software disasters, ill thought out public projects, Stamp Duty, petrol, house prices, interest rates. Most of my pay goes to the government and local authority while I shop at Primark, share a house in a poor area of SE London with 4 other people, can't afford a home, walk through the streets full of rubbish, gun crime, junkies and drunks! OK you can't change social issues too much but you can give me some of my pay back so I can get out. I work hard and when I need a doctor what happens they have one eye on you and one eye on their budget constraints so seldom goes beyond prescription medicine. Discouraged from preventative medicine and no specialist knowledge as it costs too much. This is 10 years of Labour the high tax party! We have so much money in this country but the government can't spend it wisely so give it back to the people who are working hard to earn it. Time to give the workers some of their pay back! William from the high council area of Camberwell.