Hi there

I have decided to take a short career break as the company I was working for was ‘not for me’ and I needed to make a hard decision as to whether or not the job came first, or home life and job satisfaction was paramount. I obviously decided that the later, rather than the former, was the case and I finished there last Friday.

To all my former colleagues, I wish you well with your endeavors and hope that all goes to plan for you! For me, this is now time to take a short break, re-charge my batteries and consider the options available to me – of which there are a few thankfully!

Having spent the past 12+ years working in the public transport sector, I am interested in seeing what opportunities arise for me within this field, however, I am also looking into a few possibilities which will encompass my skills, knowledge and experience from within the voluntary sector too.

However, one of the first things we will be doing is booking a holiday to Thailand for next month, so we can go and sort out some things back there, catch up with family and friends, and generally have a relaxing time too!

Will let you know how things are progressing in due course.

Chris

Missing in action?

Where is Chris Grayling? Conservative Central Office have no comment to make!

Grayling’s vile anti-gay comments make him an understandable casualty of the election effort and the ‘ohh my god he said what’ feeling that must have gone through Conservative central office staff minds, but surely as a senior front bench MP he should be featuring in the campaign, or has someone sent him off for a few weeks holiday in a B&B run by two socialist workers who happen to be gay? hahahaha now that would be amusing.

Labour has ‘lost Harperson’  last seen on a small prop plane heading westwards from Corwall

And on the other side of the House, Harriot Harperson has all but disappeared! Where are Harriot’s High Street meanderings (aka Harriot on the hunt for a vote by any method she can get).  Has Brown sent her off to campaign somewhere?  Harriot, he says, we need a high profile woperson to go and fight the cause for Labour. Lovely, Harriot replies, as she is handed her envelope with return tickets, thinking she’s off to a hard hitting marginal constituency to help some struggling MP, realising as she walks out the door of Number 10 and sinks into the plush leather seats of her car, that she’s been sent to the Scilly Isles. Tapping into her Backberry, Harriot realises that she’s been sent to the modern day Conventry. Labour 13.1% she reads, in the 2005 general election.

Ohh well – time to get a suntan Harriot muses to herself, as Gordon is watching her car disappear into Whitehall, with an inane lopsided grin on his face.

Disclaimer – none of this to my knowledge is true and is purely the effect of too many cups of coffee today! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was true.

Interestingly, I had several emails from both Labour and Tory political hacks, asking why I was wasting my time standing as a ‘paper candidate’. After a thoughtful pause, I looked up the statistics of the polling figures for the past 5 elections, in which the LibDem’s consistently received between 9.5 – 11.5 (on average) of the cast vote, so I replied back to the two individuals, asking them that based on their comments, where they therefore in favour of denying this percentage the chance to vote for the candidates of their choice, and therefore, excluding them from the electoral process?

Needless to say, there has been no reply.

Paper candidate I may be, but determined to ensure that the Church Street Ward residents have the chance to vote LibDem on May 6th in the council elections.

We are now only hours (well perhaps 48 hrs) away from the election being called.

Once Brown has decided on a date, we can get really stuck into this election and make a difference!

LD2010 is the way!!

I was listening to LBC at work today on the radio and I had to phone in – they had someone from a typical bible bashing publication on air defending not only Chris Grayling, but the rights of anyone to discriminate against homosexuals for their ‘abhorrent and abnormal’ activities.

Full credit to the presenter, he gave the guy (I will podcast the show later and find out which loony press fundamental Christian rag it is he works for) a hard time, challenged him throughout his tirade and showed him up as the racist, bigoted homophobe he was (although of course, the guy is a lovely Christian full of the message of god, so long as that message does not include the words gay’ homosexual, lesbian or tolerance in it).

With my blood pressure shooting through the roof, I called in and (as a regular caller) managed to get on air right after this guy and managed to pull not only his argument to bits in a calm and rational manner, but called the integrity of not only Chris Grayling into count, pointing out that his tenure as shadow home secretary surely was now almost all but over (that was, as I suggested, if Cameron and the Tories where really interested in gay rights and this was not a crafty ploy to win the pink vote), made it quite clear that ANY politician who made such crass comments should walk the plank and be prepared to suffer at not only the hands of his own party, but the hands of the electorate too.

Anyone in the political world must realise that anything they say in private, to colleagues, in the pub. in their blog, in a hand written note, behind closed doors of a pressure group (and so the list goes on) is almost without doubt bound to end up in the media (depending on how salacious it is will determine whether it is in the red tops or the broadsheets of course). Now that the election is looking (rather like Cameron’s order for sheep’s clothing….), surely if you had any ‘off-list’ views, you would do no better than to keep them to yourself… or is the Tory front bench so hell bent on destruction that they don’t realise that comments like this is classic foot in mouth syndrome?

Cameron has but only one path to follow if he is seriously committed to gay rights – sack Grayling from his shadow position. Anything less is tantamount to tacit support and affirms that the Tories have no more interest in gay rights than the Daily Mail does in supporting political refugees and asylum seekers.

Quite conveniently I ensured that I managed to get the words Liberal Democrat and DELGA into the conversation more than once (methinks the presenter, although he is a posh boy lol is a closet lib dem supporter), and all in all had a good 10 minutes on air defending not only the rights of gay people, but managed to demolish Grayling and Cameron, and got across that homophobia and the bigots who practice and support it, are doing so because gay people are seen as a ‘soft target’ and easy to pick on.

The station called me back and I am on the list now for people to be contacted for a sound bite should such a debate come up again on the radio (which it will).