A Long Day in Clifton North

I have just spent a very long a tiring day helping Andrew Rule, the local Conservative candidate for the Clifton North by-election. It started early and finished late. Quite frankly I am surprised I am up now writing this at 10pm.

Off to talk to the residents of Clifton North.

We started by campaigning in Silverdale along some residential roads with a large team of activists. We got lots of good responses from the people there and they were very pleased to see that the Conservatives are putting a lot of effort in locally. I think Andrew really cares a lot about the people of Clifton North and what the council does there. It effects him as much as everyone else in the ward so he is very in touch.

We then heard that Lilian Greenwood MP was having a coffee morning/surgery for the people of Silverdale and we thought it would be nice to say hi to all those people who were coming out as well. We thus positioned ourselves at the gates with leaflets to give a balanced view of Nottingham politics. The people we spoke to were very receptive and some were pleased about how we had asked them about issues.

We also managed to speak to Lilian as she came out. She gave a friendly hello but said she would not sadly be voting for Andrew Rule specifically because she didn't live in the ward. Indeed Lilian then specifically said she lived in Southwell, almost 20 miles from Clifton North. Lilian Greenwood the 'local' MP for Nottingham South is thus fairly distant; she should really remove all her implied local connections in her literature for example her work with 'other local MPs'. Lilian therefore sadly cannot vote for Andrew but she did leave open the chance that she'd support him. It would be great to see a Labour MP achieve a cross party consensus in backing the Conservative Andrew Rule for Clifton North. Working together is best.

Out in a small sub team.

A strange thing happened at Lilian's coffee morning/surgery as well. One of us spotted Pat Ferguson, the Labour by-election candidate, come out of the coffee morning/ surgery. This is most strange because Pat doesn't live in the parliamentary constituency of Nottingham South let alone the ward Silverdale is in. As an Aspley resident her MP is Graham Alllen, Nottingham North. Why was Pat there at the surgery/coffee morning? Was she campaigning? I hope Lilian wasn't using tax payers money on that coffee morning/ surgery because that would then be illegal.

Just some of the Conservative team that helped today.

After this we campaigned in some more streets before a break for lunch around 1:30ish at the Wilford Harvester. We then hit the pavements again and knocked on over 500 houses with a big group of activists in the rest of Silverdale. We made good progress but it was made hard by the very bad wind and appalling rain. I was drenched and so were the canvass sheets I was holding, luckily they have been salvaged. Let's hope for better weather on the by-election day of 6th March.

It was really great campaigning in Clifton North again. I hope to get back out there soon to try convince more people to vote for the local Conservative candidate Andrew Rule.