Two weeks tomorrow and we’ll be marching up to the ballot box with intent, reluctance, or because it’s en route to the pub.
Letter boxes are taking a severe hammering right now. I’m sure you too have seen an indentation in your hallway’s thick pile shag as missives fro mall parties come vomiting through the front door. Today we take a look at some…
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A weird one that intrigued, and recently made the national media,arrived a fortnight ago and I’ve been meaning to mention it
since then (left). Apparently, it tells us on the reverse that ‘MARRIAGE IS A BIG ISSUE’, which passed me by. Sort of thought the NHS, tax avoidance, Trident and, well, everything else trumped questions about bridesmaid’s dresses, Best Man speeches and getting the DJ not to play any Black Lace. But no. It’s marriage, and the fact that letting all people express love and commitment to each other regardless of their orientation is a mortal sin and will bring down the country.
The Coalition for Marriage is a Christian group, and counts Soubry’s colleague Fiona Bruce MP as one of it’s supporters, which must make tea-room conversation awkward.
Perhaps if the ‘Christians” involved spent more time and energy on stuff that really does threaten the fabric of the UK: the swelling gulf between rich and poor; the use of Nazi rhetoric in the tabloid press; rather than preach hate, division and bigotry, y’know, that stuff Jesus didn’t much like, we’d be getting somewhere.
On this issue, I fully supported Anna’s stance, as I do a lot of her views on social issues. In many ways, I wish she was part of the Conservative Party that wallows and revels in it’s bigotry: then I could be consistent in my general view of her. But Soubz, with her strident anger and refusal be pulled rightwards by UKIP; and her vote to make marriage equal, deserve nothing less than a salute from me. I hope you do as I do if you have received the leaflet, and shred it into confetti to throw at your next gay wedding.
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They sent one round Caroline Lucas’s Brighton Pavilion constituency as well, incredibly. Not really doing their research on that one…
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Justice for Men and Boys, the anti-feminist oddities that are standing round here (well, it’s £500 to the council in free deposit money, I suppose) have a quite nicely printed one, that seems to show Alistair Campbell menacing a child, and is 
full of some rather bogus stats. There manifesto is even weirder, and quite vile and misogynistic: women who have children with anyone else but their husband will be jailed, abortions banned, etc. They’re not really worth getting into a huff about, I suppose, as they’ll just fade away after the election.
Weirdly, at the last hustings I ended up chatting to the candidate, Ray Barry. I didn’t twig who he was for ages, assuming him to be a mainstream party candidate for the Borough elections. When he revealed who he was, I made my excuses.
Frustratingly, he came across as a nice guy. If I’d known his views beforehand, I would have not even given him the chance to show this. Again, that moral oddness: rather like the urbane, amusing, erudite white South African I once met over a drink, who charmed me into rich conversation and the promise of maybe a little more, until she suddenly killed any libidinous thoughts – and desire to talk further -with her sudden assertion ‘Blicks, y’see, not like us. Build different’.
I imagine that underneath all the women-hating bile he totes around, Ray Barry is a nice guy, who, through a combination of some rather crap events in his life, and a certain gullibility, has ended up in a very bad place. Similarly, there probably is a need for reform in access for fathers, but in comparison to the horrendous abuse, daily sexism, and utter inequality that bizarrely still stops over 50% of our population living an equal life….
As for the head of the party, Mike Buchanan, he does come across as a nasty shit. He has made attempts to befriend me on Facebook -I have no idea why – and been obviously rebuked.
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No love is being lost in the big-beast ground war. On Saturday, the Tories got up early and took the pitch Labour usually occupy on the High Road. Labour moved a few metres down, and erected their gazebo as per usual. A few hours later, however, a police officer came and demanded to talk to the organisers. Apparently, a complaint had been received from the Tories that Labour had illegally driven a car down the road to help put up the gazebo (rather than have it carried from their local office, just off the road). After Labour had explained the situation, the police officer was satisfied and apologised.
How weird. Why did the local Tories do this? Not only wasting police time, but outright lying to a police officer?
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More bizarre goings on in Attenborough village, a sentence I thought I’d never get to write. I was on an evening walk round 
there, ostensibly to collect tadpoles for my new pond (I failed: anyone got any spare?) and passed by the Strand, possibly the most Tory area imaginable. It was no surprise to see a blue sign staked into a garden therefore, but on closer approach it became clear that this was not the usual sign: rather a quite nasty, weird parody, seemingly professionally done. I have no idea if the resident had done this, or it had been done without them knowing, but it’s by far the oddest thing I’ve seen this election (and as I mentioned previously, I read the Justice for Men and Boys manifesto).
It seems it might not be the only one. Tory borough candidate Richard Jackson 
and Soubry seemed to suggest several posters had been ‘defaced’ in a Twitter exchange, with them both accusing Labour of being behind it.
A pretty severe allegation, but I’m sure the police will be informed. The Tories and the police are getting to know each other fairly well of late: not just the aforementioned allegation of using a car illegally, but one of their borough councillor candidates has apparently been reported to the police by Broxtowe’s Chief Executive for threatening to shoot a Labour opponent. Nice!
Keep it clean, folks. Two weeks left….
Beestonia 