Gateshead West branch meeting

 

Gateshead West branch had its monthly meeting last night in Winlaton. As expected, the local elections were the main point of discussion. We reviewed the action days held in Birtley, Lamesley, Lobley Hill and Bensham, Dunston Hill and Ryton. Further action days are coming to all 3 Whickham and Bridges wards in the next few weeks.

The most important decision was the Christmas dinner: my research on Saturday paid off. We are to book the Soho Tavern in Kibblesworth.

The Sunniside Christmas tree

 

I attended a meeting of Planting Up Sunniside on Monday. They are planning the event to switch on the Christmas tree, the first in the village since 2018. The switch on event is provisionally in the diary for 26th November, subject to confirmation from the mayor. I will be supplying the reindeer (2 of my goats cunningly disguised.) There are lots of details still to sort out but we are looking forward to a great community event.

The photo above was taken at the 2018 event.

Action day in the Racecourse Estate

 

Another Sunday and another action day in Gateshead for the Lib Dems. This time it was in the Racecourse Estate in Bensham. Again, a positive response from residents and a dire performance by Labour. Sadly, I wasn't able to be there myself as I was moving around sheep and goats on my farm!

My Saturday night sacrifice

 

I was reminded yesterday by the chairman of Gateshead West Lib Dem branch that I had promised to check out a venue for our members' annual dinner. Having heard of the awards the Soho Tavern in Kibblesworth had received, I had suggested this was the place to book. However I had to check it out and make a recommendation to the branch executive which meets this week. So I had to sacrifice my Saturday evening at home last night to try out the Soho Tavern, all in the name of research!

I will be making a positive recommendation to the exec.

More pics from the Ryton action day

 Just a few more photos from the Lib Dem action day in Ryton yesterday.

Ryton action day

Today it was the turn of Ryton ward in Gateshead to host a Lib Dem action day. We ensured a good presence on the Main Road near the Coop. We had a stall handing out our literature including the latest Focus which has just arrived from the printers. The horn meter was in full swing as lots of people tooted us as they drove past. And it was refreshing to see no one signal us by raising two fingers! We had more people there than expected so a team was sent to central Gateshead to deliver the recently arrived Focus there.

Photos from Lamesley action day

 On Saturday 4th October, Gateshead Lib Dems had an action day in Lamesley ward. I managed to sit on the photos for a week so here they are.

And most importantly, the lunch:

Photos in Birtley and Lamesley

 

I was in Birtley and Lamesley again this afternoon, this time to take some photos with a couple of the new Lib Dem campaigners who are part of the battle to end Labour's 51 year rule in Gateshead. Cameron Wallace and Abbie Batey have a combined age which is still less than mine! So as the old man, I took them around the area so we could build up our photo library for forthcoming Focus newsletters and the local party's website. I'm doing the same on Sunday with other campaigners and councillors in Gateshead.

Lifeboats for baggage

It wasn't the best way for the Conservatives to end their conference in Manchester. Twenty of their councillors, in a coordinated move, announced their defection to Reform. Badenoch's response to this downsizing of her party was to describe the defectors as "baggage" from the last 14 years which was being shed by the party.

At a time when every party needs troops on the ground, describing your councillors as "baggage" is not the way to win friends. Indeed, the opposite is likely to be the outcome as Conservative councillors weigh up whether or not to stay or jump ship to Reform. No wonder the Conservatives are in such trouble if they treat their councillors so poorly. Don't get me wrong - I am very unlikely to share any of the political views of the defectors - but the Conservatives are acting as recruiting agents for Reform by treating their councillors so badly.

On the other hand however, the motivation of the defectors has to be questioned. I took a look at the list of the 20 defectors announced yesterday. Not a single one was from a council that saw elections in May. Or more precisely, every one of the defectors is still to face an electoral contest with Reform in play. Given the remarkable ability of the Conservatives to lose seats to Reform, it looks to me like they were jumping ship to save their electoral skins. In effect, Reform are the lifeboat for Tory baggage.

Drifting tumbleweed

I was one of the few people who actually watched Kemi Badenoch's speech to the Conservative conference this morning. I was curious to see how she was going to climb out of the deep hole into which she and the Conservatives had fallen. It was a relatively competent performance but she got a few things wrong. Her claim that the Conservatives brought in same sex marriage was sheer rubbish. Most Conservative MPs in 2013 opposed the legislation when it went through Parliament. They lost because a large majority of Lib Dem, Labour and SNP MPs voted in favour. I'm not sure whether she was wilfully wrong or just incompetent. That's for her to answer.

Badenough also claimed that the last Conservative government cut taxes for ordinary people. Her omission is that it was the Lib Dems who put forward policies to raise the personal allowance thereby taking many more people on low incomes out of income tax. The Coalition government agreed to this Lib Dem tax cutting plan. Alas, the Conservatives then put them into reverse and the personal allowance has now been frozen for a number of years, a tax rise that has also been continued by Labour.

And another issue which caught my attention was Badenough's claim that the civil service has now grown too much and she will cut it back to the level of 2016. This rather overlooks that fact that much of the increase in the size of the civil service has happened because of Brexit. With all these barriers now imposed between Britain and her former partners in the EU, no wonder more staff have had to be taken on.

But Badenough at least came over as a bit more self-confident than previously. That will not be enough to save the Conservatives. Indeed, her speech will only be watched by a small number of people. No one is particularly interested in what they have to say.

So as the tumbleweed drifts through the Conservative conference as they pack up to head home, the Conservatives have not yet avoided the existential threat they face. Next year's elections will be the really big test. And if the Conservatives fall at that hurdle, that will probably be the end of them. However, 7 months is a long time in politics.

The Conservative ghost town

The first party conference I ever attended was at Buxton in 1984. It was a quaint spa town with assembly rooms small enough to accommodate the SDP. A few hundred people at most. Decades later and we are stuck with the usual venues for conference that are big enough to accommodate the thousands who now attend. Lib Dem conferences in recent years have alternated between Bournemouth and Brighton. There are the occasional conferences in Liverpool and Manchester. As long as we are not n Blackpool, everyone is happy.

Well, not quite so happy for Conservative members. It looks as though their conference in Manchester was a ghost town. Hardly anyone was there. Mel Stride, the Tory shadow chancellor, gave his speech on uncosted spending commitments and unaffordable tax cuts to a hall where over three quarters of the seats were empty. Sky News reported that there were far fewer exhibitors and partitions had been erected to close off much of the empty space. It's a far cry from the 1980s when Thatcher pulled in the crowds and the Tories were guaranteed to have the biggest conference going. As we stared enviously from the SDP conference in the phone box in the corner of the Old Assembly Rooms in Buxton 41 years ago, did we ever think the Tories would have to downsize to the likes of Buxton? What a strange world we now inhabit.

Lamesley action day

 

Gateshead Lib Dems had yet another action day on Saturday. This time it was in Lamesley ward. It was also the 2nd action day in Lamesley (soon to be renamed Birtley North and Lamesley) in the past month. 500 doors were knocked on and there was a positive response to us. The returns were terrible for Labour. This is not just in Lamesley. Everywhere we are canvassing, the result for Labour has been dire.

I was unable to get to the canvass myself as I was working on another Focus on Saturday. I caught up with the team for lunch where we were able to look through the canvass results. We also had a discussion about Labour's struggles to get candidates for the local elections in Gateshead next year. As there will be new boundaries, all 66 seats are up for election. A couple of weeks ago, a well placed source told me that Labour have only identified 42 possible candidates. More and more Labour councillors have indicated they will be retiring next year, adding to Labour's candidate woes.

If Labour are to avoid a repeat of what happened in Co Durham in May, when they dropped from over 50 seats to just 5, they had better pull their finger out in Gateshead, or face extinction.

Survey printing

 

I was in the Lib Dem office in Co Durham on Friday. My job was to print 500 surveys for the Lamesley Lib Dem Focus Team. They were due to do some more door knocking on Saturday. It was a quick job, less than 20 minutes to print the required numbers. I like jobs like that!

Small but deadly

On Wednesday, Sunniside History Society held their monthly meeting at Sunniside Social Club. My job was to chair the meeting. The talk was given by Dr Alice Burridge and the title of the talk was "Small but Deadly". It was a look at how bacterial and virus based infections were treated throughout history and how they spread. It was a fascinating talk which kept the audience spellbound. The next meeting is on 5th November. The speaker will be Paul Stott who will be looking at the decline of ship building in the North East.