Each week a different PPC provides us with an insight into life as a candidate and gives us a flavour of their own campaign and interests. If you are a candidate and are keen to be featured, please email Jonathan Isaby.
This week’s diary is written by Susan Wade Weeks,
who was selected in March 2008 as PPC for York Central, a slightly redrawn seat
based on the existing City of York constituency. Labour MP Hugh Bayley gained the seat from the Conservatives in 1992 and Susan requires a swing of 13% to overturn the notional Labour majority of 10,344. Since the Conservative conference was taking place last week, Susan has written her diary about a week in mid-September...
Tuesday
I leave my rented cottage in the wilds of West Sussex at 7am on Tuesday morning and hit the snarled-up, caterpillar traffic on the M25 and the M1 aiming for a 12.30pm meeting at York St John University with Vice-Chancellor Professor Diane Willcocks, CBE.
Arriving with 10 minutes to spare, I do a quick change and make-up in the Mini – tinted windows good for this - before meeting for a sandwich lunch and an in-depth tour of the impressive premises. A small, vibrant University with around 3,500 - mainly local - students on a diverse range of courses, entering at many different levels, York St John lies within my potential constituency, just outside the City walls. It is important to me to get to know the place, meet the students, understand how it is run and find out what York St John might expect from an incoming Conservative Government.
I am struck by the Peace Garden and its tree: a direct descendant of the one found still standing among the ruin of Hiroshima.
Back at the Ash Street Conservative office, I spend the afternoon telephone canvassing strong Labour ward Heworth, with mixed results, but no actual insults. Encouraging. Many are still undecided about how they will vote at the general election, even though they voted Labour in Heworth. I do find some very keen supporters in every street I try, just not all that many of them. 591 in total. In the evening, I pick up stuff left behind from my flat move in May from ex-landlords Guy and Jacqui Ward, who promise to introduce me to York Chamber of Commerce. Transfer luggage to lodgings in Carl Street down by the caravan park in Clementhorpe and fall asleep reading Boris Johnson…
Wednesday
Early start again to move the car – parking in York is a nightmare: a lot of unnecessary driving and congestion is caused - in my view - by people having to move their cars all the time, by the one-way system and by traffic lights. I can bore for Britain on this subject and I do.
Back to Ash Street in Holgate Ward for some Acomb telephone canvassing, where I find no fewer than four residents in one morning who are recently bereaved and very distressed. Feel awful for disturbing them. Make notes for Merlin. Then to a meeting in Micklegate with my York Central Branch Chairman John Brewin and his wife Joan – our CWO chief - at their penthouse overlooking the Ouse where I get an exceptionally enthusiastic welcome from Nigel their spaniel. We discuss future events planned and fundraising.
By 12.30pm I am paying for yet more parking at York Hospital and trying to find a meeting that no-one has heard of. After miles of corridors full of people vaguely ambling about, I get back to square one and find the lecture room where Maternity Services are setting out their stall. The story is that there are too few midwives and that patient choice is a bit of a myth. Often the option of a home birth, for example, is simply not deliverable. Privacy on the wards is not likely. But efforts to cut the rate of infections are under way: carpets are being replaced by easier-to-clean lino. There has been an unexpected baby boom in York – 1,500 more than were budgeted for, the majority of which are born to recent arrivals, and the service is under pressure.
At 6pm I meet up with Kate Wescombe, team member and volunteer researcher who is my PR person and full of ideas for a campaigning database.
We move on at 7pm to the Priory Street Centre organised by Friends of the Earth and hosted by our incumbent MP, Hugh Bayley. I meet up with Mark Dawson, who is responsible for promoting Fair Trade in York. Hugh Bayley studiously avoids my gaze whenever we meet, so Kate and I sit in the front row. FOE members – divers, fisherman, conservationists - pull no punches and question the Minister, another Huw, smooth Welshman with a fine goatee, pretty acutely. One gets the impression they may know rather more about the subject than he does. What about the special sites? Exactly how much area will it protect? How does this mesh with plans for offshore wind farms? Is this Bill strong enough and what about the damage done by trawlers?
We go on to a late fish pie supper at Brigantes pub on Micklegate, then I try to find an overnight home for the car. My ex-housesitter texts me to complain that I have failed to deliver his left-behind coats to his mother in Devon. I keep my temper. Sigh.
Thursday The next morning is spent trawling through hundreds of emails, media summaries and assorted briefings, before a walk into town down Skeldergate, over Ouse Bridge, up Coppergate, through the Shambles and Kings Square to High Petergate for a quick lunch in Café Rouge before visiting my friend and ex-neighbour in St Andrewgate for an hour. She is recently widowed, in and out of a wheelchair, suffers greatly from excruciatingly painful rheumatoid arthritis and is awaiting a cataract operation, but she is always cheerful, gracious and fun. I feel like a heel for whingeing about traffic and parking.
At 4pm I am back in the hospital car park fishing for yet more cash to feed the machine: I really do not think that hospital car parks should charge people. Especially not patients. It’s what I call adding insult to injury. I have a meeting with the formidable economist Professor Alan Maynard, Chairman of York NHS Foundation Trust. I hope he will share some of his insights gleaned from a lifetime of working inside and alongside the NHS. He does.
From 6pm-8pm I am back at Ash Street telephone canvassing and picking up a route to deliver leaflets for York Outer candidate, Julian Sturdy, before getting back to Clementhorpe and collapsing in a heap. (AFTER finding an overnight spot for the Mini.) My landlady thinks my hours are weird. They are. Have done no work at all this week. Paid work, that is. I am in theory a freelance copywriter for a bijou agency in Chelsea with fabulous clients in the luxury travel business. Not quite Burger King on the M1, my regular hangout these days.
Friday
A PR meeting in the morning with Kate turns into a ‘re-arranging the office’ session. I decide to move all my paperwork into Ash Street instead of having it spread around the country, and feel a little more under control: resolve to work out the intricacies of my horrible touchscreen phone which has taken to ringing people up of its own accord when I am out of earshot. Ask my Association Chairman Andrew Brooks for my own landline; do a mind map of all contacts in York; work out the diary for next week which includes:
York St John Freshers Fair with Philip Smith and Chris Southeran of Yorkshire and Humber CF; meeting with Lesley Debenham, team member in charge of my diary; party for Jo’s Trust, the cervical cancer charity; launch of “Muse”, slim volume by conceptual artist Alexander de Cadenet; York Ebor Soroptimists' stall for Water Aid in Coppergate (featuring a huge inflatable hand and a polystyrene lavatory); and my own open-air surgery stall at Newgate Market in the afternoon (featuring balloons and a Union Jack as in the picture).
Friday afternoon and I am back in the Mini, feeding at service stations, to catch up with my children Honeysuckle (30), Perdita (23) and Rollo (22) in London, followed by a day’s weeding and watering, hoovering, friend-maintaining, pony-wrangling and blue-sky-gazing before hitting the M1 again on Tuesday.
Last week's Diary was written by Simon Kirby (Brighton Kemptown)