Dear Karl Turner

Dear Karl Turner,

As my MP, I would like to urge you to support the various amendments
which have been proposed to the European Union Bill by various of your
parliamentary colleagues. While it would be an understandable instinct,
given that the amendments have been proposed by Conservative MPs, to
vote against them on principle, or to avoid voting for them in the hope
of the whole Bill being voted down, I urge you to act in the national
interest and make this loosely drafted legislation into something which
the whole parliament can get behind and which will protect our
sovereignty against the encroachment of the EU. While (as you may have
guessed), I didn't vote for yourself (Conservative, not UKIP, although
definitely on the Hannan/Carswell wing...), I urge you to support these
amendments as being in the best interests of your constituents.

Also, good work on supporting the No2AV campaign, the concept of
referendums on important matters is an excellent one, but frankly AV
does nothing to help reassure voters that their representatives are
actually....representative! Open Primary ballots and citizen-initiated
recall mechanisms on the other hand I can definitely get behind.

Hope you're having a good new year and Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes)
has stopped giving you quite so much grief,

Yours sincerely,

Daniel Bond

The long and winding road(s) to victory

I know a few things about this evening:

• I started the evening with a pile of leaflets, now I have less
• I have walked some distance and my knuckles are sore from being scraped by letter boxes

Other than that, it's all a bit of a mystery. I know I delivered some leaflets to some houses, I'm willing to bet about 75% of the ones on the estate I was doing, but for the life of me I couldn't tell you which 75%, because I got a little lost. Now I'm a methodical guy who has a map of the estate and everything, but there are two small problems:

1. The map doesn't even try and illustrate all of the streets in the estate, and there are lots, because....
2. The layout of the streets and cut-throughs and paths would make Escher take one look and have to go and have a lie down in a darkened room

So a successful evening in that I've delivered some leaflets, and I can now in good conscience tick off that area, but I can't honestly say I'm convinced that I didn't miss bits!

In other election news, the candidates have been announced for the local election, and I now know I face people from Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, UKIP (which is annoying because I'm very Eurosceptic dammit), English Democrats and the National Front. Yes, that's right, the party for those who just don't think the BNP are extreme enough is fielding a candidate in my area, actually quite looking forward to seeing if they put any election materials out, not quite sure what they stand for other than white people.

All of which brings me to my final point:

Why is it, less than a month from the election, that the only things I've seen from candidates are mine and a letter from the Labour guy? I know not everyone has money to spend (although leaflets really aren't that expensive it turns out), but I'm starting to wonder if everyone is actually going to campaign that actively, would seem odd if the Lib Dems didn't at least make a bit of a go of it! Oh well, only time will tell I guess...

Leafletting query of the day

As I wandered around Hull Marina and the surrounding area, a number of questions came to mind:

1. How is it that all the prime development space in the old Fruit Market can be left to rot like it is?
2. There are some really nice properties down near the Marina, both commercial and residential, quite a few for sale, would definitely be an attractive proposition if Hull gets back on its feet and attracts businesses to locate there
3. How does the postman deliver things to the lovely warehouse conversion apartments, because I can't for the life of me see how he gets past the coded door to get to the letter boxes

Dan Bond for Myton Ward?

After a long absence, I'm back and hopefully blogging more regularly, lots to say about Hull and in particularly Myton Ward where I live and *drum roll* have been selected as the Conservative candidate for the upcoming Hull City Council elections. Interestingly, given that the election is only a month away, I'm still not entirely sure who else other than the Labour candidate is actually standing, so that will be an interesting surprise. Might actually stick my head in to the Lib Dem office at some point and ask, although I suspect there may be a proverb about poking sleeping dragons which applies here....

Have been out delivering leaflets with details for myself and Gary Shores, including clearly one which went through a current Labour councillor's door because I received a surprisingly civil email from him thanking me and wishing me good luck for the campaign. Not entirely sure what to make of that, but nice gesture anyway...

A Tale of two constituencies

Yesterday I helped distribute election literature in two different areas, and what a contrast they were. Starting off in the centre of Hull campaigning for the three Hull candidates (Gary Shores, Victoria Aitken and Christine Mackay), the response was variable at best. True, one person congratulated us on getting out there and raising the profile of the Conservatives, but most were entirely disinterested or outright hostile, with one gentleman suggesting he wouldn't "wipe his f**king ar*e with the leaflet" and referring to us as "Tory bast*rds". What was most striking about the responses was how upset people still are about the 80s and Margaret Thatcher, entirely forgetting that, just like will happen in the next few years, a lot of the pain the country suffered was a direct result of the economic mismanagement of Labour.

After a few hours of campaigning, we went and joined Andrew Percy in Brigg and Goole, a very different area indeed. Currently held by Labour, Ladbrokes are currently giving odds of 1/7 on the Conservatives winning the seat, and with the effort and enthusiasm I saw yesterday I can understand why. We ended up distributing leaflets in Hook, a beautiful little East Riding village which made me feel very poor since I knew I would be unlikely ever to earn enough to buy a house there. The residents who I stopped and spoke to were friendly, they smiled and at no point did they call me a Tory basta*d, and while I don't mind the abuse it's nice not to feel loathed on occasion!

Cameron on Transparency

Just a quick note to remind people that they can still pose David Cameron questions on the Conservative draft manifesto on Transparent Government and tune in at 5:30pm to see him hopefully answer at least one of the 4 questions I currently have in the top 10!

Cameron talking dirty to the TPA

This is the kind of stuff that members of the Tax Payer's Alliance might find themselves spending £1.50 a minute to hear, because it's about as close to porn as political party policy gets for them. I am, of course, talking about David Cameron's outstanding suggestions on how to bring transparency back into government spending. To quote from the introduction,

Government has been far too profligate for too long. Billions are wasted each year on pointless bureaucracy and failed projects that do nothing to improve the lives of the taxpayers who foot the bill. The explosion of unaccountable quangos, public sector ‘non-jobs’ and costly bureaucracy is an indictment of Labour’s reckless approach to spending other people’s money.

So far so good, but far too often that sort of statement doesn't have an effective follow-up to actually solve the problem. People complain that political parties are big on rhetoric, but short on workable solutions to the problems which nobody can fail to notice. No longer, because with the 5 words

sunlight is the best disinfectant

we have the solution that is just a little too radical and risky for Labour to ever contemplate. 13 years of backroom deals and hiding behind "commercial sensitivity" has got to stop, no ifs, no buts, and the only way to stop that is for a million pairs of eyes to watch every move that our elected representatives make. Whatever else the Conservatives do if they win the next election, opening up government spending and contracts to this kind of scrutiny will keep the next government and the one after FAR more honest than the current one.

And while we're at it, I can't wait for the current shady deals and suspiciously lax contracts to be shown the light of day. I can only imagine the skeletons lurking in the current government's cupboards...