Categories: uncategorized
Date: 07 February 2010 18:06:33
Third Party challenged me to go without Facebook, Wibsite, Ship, GCN and a to do list for a week....if I won £40 went to the Access for All Fund at church, if she won all my passwords would be changed by her. The result is the church fund is better off.
So what have we missed:
Well - amongst other things
A Ship meet - day out at the National Railway Museum in York. Had a great time catching up with some peeps and enjoying looking around the trains.
A birthday
A seminar on working with the public services. Interesting listening to a NHS administrator and a researcher within the Police Force about their work.
An encounter with Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne and the local Lib Dem candidate, Carol Woods, at a packed out Q&A session at the DSU. I have to say this rather disgruntled and disenchanted Lib Dem took the opportunity to let her feelings known....not necessarily the best course of action. Being one of "the left" of the party who has left feeling betrayed by Clegg and the leaderships apparent consensus around the right of the party I picked up on the abandoning of the 50p tax band. I was well and truly told this was a red herring and they had not abandoned their commitment to using taxes to fund investment. On questioning exactly what they were going to do for those of us who were having to pay our own student loans back, contribute to our pensions and wanted to support our children who would still have to pay fees, (because the Lib Dems had extended their phasing out period), I was told people like that would be £700 a year better off under Lib Dem plans. Have to admit I'm not convinced about their sums. There was lots of talk about investment, but I was still not clear on how the necessary money was going to be raised and where they would inflict the cuts in other areas to afford the investment into house building, etc. The other thing I didn't like, particularly with Chris Huhne's warm up act, was the way they mainly focused on some major Tory and Labour bashing without much positive campaigning. Sums up the nature of much of the campaigning around here in a clear Labour/Lib Dem marginal....very negative. All that said, bearing in mind I feel totally let down by New Labour nationally, and totally disenchanted with politics generally Woods is likely to get my vote - simply because I trust the Lib Dems not to get power nationally. Yet again I am left wishing there really were a proper, credible progressive socialist party to vote for in this country.
A will they / won't they week regarding the Durham Union and a couple of BNP representatives. In the end it has been cancelled. The Durham Times carried the story on this one. My own view on this one is the only way to defeat the BNP is through exposing them for what they are through debate but I also think they should be opposed, and their appearance as "respectable" questioned. As such I signed the petitions against their presence but would not have tried to stop their entry to the debating chamber.
A romantic weekend in York where TOH took me off for a spot of pampering, for a birthday / valentines experience. Have to say it was a wonderful chilled weekend and I feel thoroughly spoilt. Wierdest part of the weekend for me was choral evening song at the Minster....TOH is high church and so loved it, I struggled but was glad she enjoyed, even if I was apparently a tad embarrassing through my obvious (and slightly vocal) discomfort. Got my own back this morning, by accident. Went to G2 an off shoot of St. Michael Le Belfrey thinking it would be a bit like Visions (another off shoot), as a compromise between high church and evangelical. In actual fact is was well low church.