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This week’s diary is written by Richard Cook, candidate for East Renfrewshire, the Scottish constituency formerly known as Eastwood. Having fought Glasgow South in 2001, Richard contested East Renfrewshire in 2005, when he reduced Labour MP Jim Murphy's majority to 6,657. The seat is unchanged for the next election, meaning that Richard requires a swing of 7% to oust the Secretary of State for Scotland (in the equivalent seat at the 2007 Scottish Parliament election, the Conservatives were only 891 votes behind Labour). He served as Vice Chairman of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party from March 2006 until May 2008, represents Conservative Friends of Israel in Scotland and is Director in Scotland of the Campaign Against Political Correctness. He also writes a regular blog.
Saturday 28th March
Get up to a host of text messages and voicemails about a Telegraph (Scottish Edition) story I had helped with the previous day. Basically Glasgow City Council owes East Renfrewshire Council more than £600,000 and our Labour MP, Labour MSP and Labour Council have done nothing to get us this money from their Labour colleagues in Glasgow, despite a Court of Session judgment in early December 2008. My call for Secretary of State for Scotland, Jim Murphy, to spend less time manufacturing political spats with the SNP, by going on overseas junkets, and more time fighting for the people of East Renfrewshire seems, somehow, to have been cut from the story.
It’s a bright sunny morning - ideal canvassing weather, given the thousands of households I visited over the winter in pouring rain and the freezing cold. Unfortunately I have to attend a West of Scotland Conservatives Training Day. Four breakout sessions covering Get Out The Vote, Fundraising, Media Communications and Delivery Networks – followed by a rally speech by Jackson Carlaw MSP – take us through to lunch. I am then joined by my new Association Chairman to meet with the formidable Marion Little to review progress in East Renfrewshire on a number of fronts. From Marion’s feedback it appears we are making some positive progress on canvass activity and delivery network and she provides me with some very useful support in telling my Chairman what’s expected of him and his new team.
Fighting any marginal seat is difficult but Jim’s elevation to the Cabinet provides a new set of challenges, not least of which is the amount of money the Labour Party are pumping into his campaign for re-election. Direct mail and telephone blasting seem to be their weapons of choice and from what I hear it seems Labour are up to similar tricks in other Cabinet members’ seats. As we cannot compete financially, we need to be cleverer in the way we approach campaigning on a local level.
Come home to find my now heavily pregnant wife watching yet more rubbish on TV, giving me the ideal excuse to get back out to watch Scotland v Holland at my local tennis club. Until February of this year, I was President of Giffnock Tennis, Squash & Hockey Club and steered it through a massive development programme. There’s a lot to be proud of at the Club including the 48 inch widescreen TV on which the sixty or so of us are able to enjoy watching Scotland being humbled by a bunch of Orangemen.
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