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 Caroline Righton, who has been candidate since Decmber 2006 for the newly created Cornish marginal of St Austell and Newquay, which comprised parts of three existing seats - Truro and St Austell, North Cornwall and South East Cornwall. She is not up against an incumbent MP and at the elections in June this year, the Conservatives were marginally ahead of the Liberal Democrats. You can find out more about her campaign on her website.
Saturday August 1st
The weather sets the agenda and torrential rain has made everyone involved in tourism fretful. Mark and I get up early and help serve breakfast to sodden cliff-top campers. Later, our day will end with an incognito walkabout in Newquay to see the problem of late-night revellers.
In between we canvass with regular teams in St Austell in the morning and Newquay in the afternoon. I love canvassing. It’s the most affirming “what it is all about” bit of the job. We do a couple of hours every day. You can’t come away from canvassing in any doubt about whether you are doing well or not, especially in Cornwall, where people are very political and very un-apathetic.
Canvassing sessions take a theme. This morning it is ‘faith” and I’m asked several times if I am a Christian? I am. Where do I worship? All over, but especially on the beach in the early morning, walking the dog. In the afternoon, in Newquay – it’s Europe and whether Mandelson wants Blair to be EU president.
At lunchtime we drive across from the south to the north coast dipping into St Dennis village Garden Show. St Dennis is in the heart of Clay Country and has a strong community. We’ve recently fought off the imposition of a huge mass burn incinerator on the edge of the village. Today though that threat is not present and young and old provide produce, bakes and makes.
Later we witness Newquay at night. Local residents feel under siege as the town’s population grows from 21,000 to more than 120,000 and local services such as police and fire struggle to cope. The town is at the frontline of a national epidemic of binge-drinking and we see youngsters trying to buy booze when they are clearly under-age. I feel for the staff in shops and bars dealing with abuse and as a mother I worry about the safety and health of the lads and lasses heading out on the town, clearly with their drinking heads on. I worry too about Newquay’s reputation taking another kicking from the national media as it seeks a solution.
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