- Details
Spending the entire day organising the election, delivering leaflets with Dina locally early on, touring the committee offices to keep them organised and then supervising the counts with Debbie's Birthday taking the back seat. We had just retained Paxton and Priory, but also won the Eaton’s to give us four seats tonight and a total of seven on the District in all. After composing, typing and then faxing a press release to the media announcing our results, it was after 3.00am by the time I went to bed which was the third very late night of the week!
Up before 5.30am and then out on my bicycle, delivering the morning leaflets to remind our supporters to vote before they left for work. Diana was also doing the same thing. It was a fine and warm morning and a pleasure to be around at that time so that we both actually enjoyed the experience. I toured the village to see if the other helpers were also succeeding in delivering theirs and helped one of them finish his round before coming back to The Hayling View to serve everyone coffee and get the committee room ready. It being a nice day, I decided to send John over to Southoe at the opening of the poll to start telling there in the hope that we might be able to keep the process going for some time in the day. Chris James was here on time to start telling at Paxton and I personally saw her start there to make sure everything went well.
** "Read More" BELOW for the complete story **
- Details
Managing some very difficult arrangements on the Eve of Poll, struggling to set up the Ears computer data in Eaton Socon but then finding John Davidson, the Priory computer co-ordinator, had been very remiss with his system until I had to intervene forcefully to sort it out. Very late setting up Poll Station ‘telling rotas’ and delivering ‘Please vote today’ leaflets for circulating by our helpers
The election was now really upon us today and, with four wards to fight and not a great deal of people to do it with, there had to be some urgent last-minute planning to get the show on the road. I ended up getting Percy Meyer and John Brown to come round to The Hayling View and then, with Sally joining us later, we completed the manning schedules as best we could. These still left us short of people for Paxton and so I got Percy and John to put their heads together and then telephone several supporters of which a couple agreed to help with telling tomorrow. Sally and I worked on the election day manuals with instructions and master forms for copying and using on the day. Instructions and confirmations had to be copied and circulated with rotas to the volunteers so that each would know their place in proceedings.
** "Read More" BELOW for the complete story **
- Details
A very busy day after a very late night, driving to Norwich to collect the necessary calculations from the structural engineer and then the piling log plans from Amis some time later in Horning. Off to North Walsham and some time in town appreciating the old corn exchange building until Mr Cooper arrived back and accepted my plans.
Back to Heronshaw to hear the bad news of Daniel’s car being stolen but, there being nothing I could do to help, the drive back to Paxton to review canvassing progress. Realising that candidate John had not delivered the key leaflets I helped him until the job was done in Paxton today, leaving Southoe and Diddington to be done very early in the morning
I was awake at a reasonable time despite my very unreasonable retiring time, and this enabled me to get ready to leave for Norfolk after a normal breakfast. I drove steadily, arriving in Norwich first and going to the office of David Townsend to collect the additional page of calculations that the council wanted. There being no conflict within them with my new plans, I then went on to the Xerox copying centre and got copies of them for the council, before driving on to Heronshaw to meet up with Amis for the piling log and specifications. Unfortunately, they had been delayed in arriving on site after completing another job and I was left kicking my heels for a while.
** "Read More" BELOW for the complete story **
- Details
Spending the day modifying and completing my plans for the Building Control Officer and then compiling letters and leaflet articles to try and improve my LibDem colleagues’ prospects for the forthcoming local elections.
Today was spent almost entirely on preparing for my important meeting tomorrow with the building control officer, but I also spared time to compose and prepare two letters for use as a target mailing in the Paxton election campaign. One was straightforward enough, attempting to squeeze the Labour vote to beat the Tories, but the other was more innovative, being sent to "probable" and "undecided" voters, promoting John Brown in contrast to Tory Nichola Kay and trying to develop his "local" credentials to counter her actually living in the village. I also tied the future of "FOCUS" to that of his own. I had to do this as her simple message was hitting home and our support was ebbing away.
** "Read More" BELOW for the complete story **