I was caught unprepared by an actual parliamentary candidate knocking on the door this evening! Unfortunately I was about to bath the kraken so I didn’t have time to come up with any sensible questions. Still, it’s about time I took an interest in the election…
It’s not long since I last got to vote for an MP and, like last time, I’m undecided. Unfortunately there aren’t as many candidates to choose from this time, with the final list being:
- Declan Clune (TUSC)
- Patricia Culligan (UKIP)
- Mims Davis (Conservative)
- Ray Hall, Beer (Baccy and Scratchings)
- Mark Latham (Labour)
- Ron Meldrum (Green)
- Mike Thornton (Lib Dem)
There’s more information about all the Eastleigh candidates on YourNextMP, which was handy for finding most of them on twitter. At some point I hope to get round to contacting all the candidates with a few questions and, if I do, I’ll post any responses in case it helps anyone else. The first source of inspiration I’ve spotted is the Open Rights Group general election party manifesto wiki.
Early impressions are:
- the the Lib Dems are still as annoying as ever with their graphs (and they seem to have forgotten there was a by-election!)
- Mims Davis is the only candidate I’ve met in person
Hopefully I’ll have more to go on by 7th May! If anyone has any thoughts, including any of the candidates, please leave a comment.
Notes from a small field 
Hi,
A very interesting read and thanks for getting in touch by tweeting me. Unfortunately, as a shift worker and active trade unionist I have found it difficult to get time to canvass and speak to the residents of Eastleigh as much as I would have liked. I hope that you and some of your readers will have seen the TUSC election broadcast that went out across all the major channels this evening. If you did you will know what TUSC represents but if not I will try and offer a flavour.
We are the only anti-austerity party committed to fighting all cuts to services. We reject the austerity lie that ‘there is no money’ and ‘we are all in it together’. Along with the politicians of Westminster, the wealthiest 10% of this country have grown their wealth in the time since the economic crash, some have doubled their vast wealth. Since 2010 bankers bonus’ have amounted to £80Billion, the exact same amount cut by government from our public services in the same time period.
We are proud to join the Bakers Food & Allied Workers union campaign to fight for a £10 an hour minimum wage backed up as official policy of the TUC. This is not unreasonable but affordable employers but will require company’s and corporations taking less profit and giving more to their workers. Many corporations suck their profit straight out of this country into offshore tax avoiding holdings and not paying their share of tax.
Housing in this country is in crisis with record amounts of people on housing waiting lists and many young people living at home with parents, sofa surfing and homeless. We would start massive council house building projects all around the country and introduce rent controls that we once had to counter the effects of slum landlordism and greedy profiteering from poor housing conditions.
If elected, I would stand as a workers MP accepting only a workers wage. I will accept the average pay of a worker in Eastleigh and donate the rest to local community campaigns and organisations committed to Eastleigh communities. All TUSC parliamentary candidates are committed to the same pledge following the lead given by ex Labour MP Dave Nellist who served communities in Coventry under the same commitment. Dave Nellist is now National Chair of TUSC and standing again in Coventry for TUSC in 2015.
If anyone has any questions or would like to know more or get involved please get in touch.
Solidarity to you all.