Ask not what you can do for them

There is a by-election for a ward of Lancaster City Council and this area of Lancaster happens to be in my constituency which is Morecambe and Lunesdale. It will be held on the same day as the general election. Now to get a candidate you need ten people whose names are on the specific electoral register. For a constituency it is easy. You can go to ten people that you know and you havc a candidate. When you get to ward level you may not know ten people in that specific area.

It is not necessarily a bad thing to knock on doors and explain and ask for those signatures. You get people who are not usually involved in the democratic process to think about what is happening around them. I did this today and it was very easy. It took around thirty minutes. We saw 14 people. Amazingly one had already signed a Tory nomination paper. This means that if they had signed ours and we had put the nomination paper into the council first then the Tory paper with the same name wouldn't count and they would have to start again looking for thier ten signatures. Even more amazingly one person had already signed the Green Party nomination paper.

There was one person who was fed up with politicians and another who did not want her name linked to a particular party. However she was a great believer in democracy. She mentioned the benefits from fighting wars against tyranny. I did mention that this should mean that she signs because nobody can stand without those ten signatures. It was a good attempt and it was a pleasant conversation, but it only delayed us by a couple of minutes.

It was a really nice way to spend time talking politics. I have knocked on a lot of doors asking if there was anything I could do, but it worked so much better asking if they could do something for us.

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