Saturday, May 31, 2008

Reasons to be Cheerful #2: Off to Henley!

Now that I am free of exams, I will be heading off to Henley tomorrow to lend Stephen Kearney and his team a hand. I have booked myself train tickets and a hotel room, and I will be there until Tuesday. So I will see any of you who are there between Sunday and Tuesday in a pub, I guess! ;-p

5 comments:

Paul Walter said...

I trust that, unlike one prominent blogger I could mention (who bought a return ticket to Henley-on-Thames itself), you realise that Henley itself is 35 miles from the campaign HQ!

Andy said...

Indeed, my tickets are for Haddenham and Thame Parkway, as per the advice of the HQ. I was cautious!

Unknown said...

I guess you're not supporting the local candidate then. How is it that the Lib Dem's normally much such a fuss how it has to be a local person that's elected in by election campaigns?

Of course this time the local candidate is Tory and the local Lib Dem candidate was dumped in favour of Kearney who until a few weeks back was living in Plymouth as per article on www.toryunderground.co.uk

Unknown said...
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Andy said...

Dear Tory Sockpuppet (whose profile is mysteriously unviewable),

All parties carp about localness when it suits them, because, to a certain extent, it is a line which works. In this case, however, I would say there are more important issues (there usually are). If I lived in the Henley constituency, I would rather have Steven Kearney, a man who has been living on a houseboat but who knows my area well, and has already moved into a house in the constituency as a sign of his commitment, and who has the right answers on the issues I was concerned about.

For instance, the Lib Dem campaign team has been getting a lot of feedback from their canvassing (and Nick Clegg's survey before the campaign proper started) that preserving the green-belt is important to local people, and the Tory candidate, John Howell, has been working "as a lobbyist for a planning company that advises housebuilders on contentious land and property deals."