Nicholas J Rogers is a Conservative candidate for Lambeth Borough Council.
I recently became involved in a spat on Facebook. Someone had posted an article from the Bristol Evening Post reporting on the allocation of Lottery funding to projects in the city of Bristol. Of £700,000 available, a community theatre group received £170,000 and the local scouts £130,000. The remaining £400,000 – almost 60% – went to a charity called Educational Action Challenging Homophobia, which promised to use the cash to help LGBT people "become the best person they can be".
Leaving aside the laughably patronising nature of the group’s mission (I have never needed a penny of taxpayer cash to help me become "the best person I can be" nor has any other gay person I know), I was amazed that there could not have been more worthy projects in Bristol, a city of half a million people, which could benefit more than a tiny handful of the community. Bristol, for example, is the guardian of several of the greatest engineering achievements of my hero, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, such as the Clifton Suspension Bridge and SS Great Britain. Surely money spent on safeguarding our national heritage would have been a wiser use for the £400,000? Richard Eddy, leader of the Conservative Group on the Council, called it a "mistaken and misguided, outrageous waste of money". I rather think he is correct, given what the money could have gone towards.
The lady who had posted this on her Facebook profile posited that the Conservatives’ opposition to the grant was proof of the party’s rampant homophobia and yet another reason why she would not be voting "Tory" – have you noticed how leftists love to spit out the word "Tory"? – at the next election. In chimed the usual voices of support for such a view.
I piped up, saying that the Conservative Party I knew was tolerant and friendly, and run by open-minded and pleasant people like David Cameron and Michael Gove, and also quite disproportionately gay in its activist base. I finished by saying that the country needed a change of government and that all people, gay or otherwise, would benefit from such a change.
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