25 April 2005
Before the flood
You know how you feel when it's Monday morning, you're back to work and the rain is bucketing down? Well imagine if you were going on an open top bus in the bucketing rain with low visibility and no heating.
That was my start to the week. The idea was brilliant but the execution didn't take into account the British weather_and these weren't just April showers. We were going to do a tour of historic east London and its radical tradition from the match girls' strike to Cable Street. We invited the press and got the east London candidates on the bus.
But we got no further than a photocall with London Tonight on top of the bus before we repaired to a cafe for a cup of coffee and a dry out.
We've had a marvellous weekend across east London and today we had a lot of people out. Went to a school in an area which isn't our best and found a very high recognition factor. People voting for us and more considering it.
I see that it has been decreed that the war is an issue in this campaign! Tories and Libdems are obviously finding it a huge issue on the doorsteps. We know now that the attorney general thought it should go back to the UN and Britain and the US couldn't just start a war.
Kennedy is trying to make it an issue but he is too timid to really take advantage of Blair's dilemma. Apparently he was asked would he have preferred Saddam in power and din't have an answer. My answer is, was overthrowing Saddam worth more than 100,000 Iraqi dead? Or let's put it another way, what about all the other Middle East dictators supported by the west? Such as the Saudi and Jordanian royal families or Egypt's Hosni Mubarak.
The switch to the Iraq war will help Respect. I'm looking forward to the next week.
That was my start to the week. The idea was brilliant but the execution didn't take into account the British weather_and these weren't just April showers. We were going to do a tour of historic east London and its radical tradition from the match girls' strike to Cable Street. We invited the press and got the east London candidates on the bus.
But we got no further than a photocall with London Tonight on top of the bus before we repaired to a cafe for a cup of coffee and a dry out.
We've had a marvellous weekend across east London and today we had a lot of people out. Went to a school in an area which isn't our best and found a very high recognition factor. People voting for us and more considering it.
I see that it has been decreed that the war is an issue in this campaign! Tories and Libdems are obviously finding it a huge issue on the doorsteps. We know now that the attorney general thought it should go back to the UN and Britain and the US couldn't just start a war.
Kennedy is trying to make it an issue but he is too timid to really take advantage of Blair's dilemma. Apparently he was asked would he have preferred Saddam in power and din't have an answer. My answer is, was overthrowing Saddam worth more than 100,000 Iraqi dead? Or let's put it another way, what about all the other Middle East dictators supported by the west? Such as the Saudi and Jordanian royal families or Egypt's Hosni Mubarak.
The switch to the Iraq war will help Respect. I'm looking forward to the next week.
