On the campaign trail in Dunston Hill and Whickham East

Our Dunston Hill and Whickham East team were out on the doorsteps of the Lakes Estate today. This will come as no secret to the Labour candidate who was able to watch Cllr Peter Maughan and Kevin McClurey from the comfort of his car. Sadly I wasn't there for the canvass as I was tied up on other activities. I haven't checked the canvass yet so I've no idea what the figures are though it is fair to say the Lakes Estate is a good area for us. The canvass is done using an iphone which automatically uploads all the information to our Connect database. It's a bit of an advance on the election campaign that saw me elected for the first time in 1987. We would spend a weekend chopping up electoral registers and pasting them onto canvass cards, then drawing lots of lines across the pages. Every night after canvassing we would eagerly add up all the figures and add them to the running total. The technology is somewhat more sophisticated now. The tedious scissors and paste jobs have gone. Now it's all high tech.