Heavy rain disrupts the campaign trail

THE weather, which has been very kind to us on almost every occasion since last October, has finally broken with less than a fortnight to polling day.
Heavy, thundery-type rain set in just as I completed my circuit of Churchinford and its hinterland, forcing me to take a break.
I wanted to visit Stapley as well, but will have to reschedule the hamlet in what is becoming a tighter and tighter timescale as election day approaches.
Churchinford provided a brilliant experience for me, with a real variety of characters and political beliefs appearing on the doorsteps.
Despite being mistaken for a Green Party candidate - we are using the new Conservative logo, the green tree squiggle, on our rosettes (on which I will make no comment here!) - I managed to put across quite a lot about how the Conservatives have been working and what our plans are for the future.
The village also threw up a first on the campaign trail for me, so far - a council tenant who raised the subject of the housing stock transfer.
It is the one and only time the supposedly highly-controversial topic has come up, and it possibly showed how poorly the Conservatives had put across the case for the transfer.
The lady concerned held a deep belief that her home was to be sold off privately to a commercial organisation with the result that rents would double, etc.
I have never actually been much of a fan of the idea, although I thought I understood the principles behind it.
But standing on the doorstep and explaining face-to-face to a tenant how it would have worked made me think about the idea even more intensely and I found myself beginning to warm to it.
No, the houses were not being ‘sold’, they were being transferred; no, they were not going to a nasty private firm out to make a huge profit, they were going to a protected trust run by the very same people whom you presently call the ‘council housing department’; no, rents were not going to shoot up, they would be protected (and the £14 a week the Government takes away and spends in Labour-supporting parts of the country would be kept here to be spent on improving the properties).
The discussion showed the extent to which the Liberal Democrat misinformation campaign had traded on people’s fears, a campaign which has shamefully continued into the election period with gross exaggeration of the cost of an exercise which was ordered by the Labour Government and started by the former Lib Dem administration before they were rightly kicked out of office by the same voters they have now misled.
On a cold evening, there was also cause to appreciate how difficult it can be for elderly people to keep themselves warm.
I heard how heating systems in some homes seem not to be working efficiently, leaving some tenants unable to afford the expense of keeping all the radiators switched on.
Ironically, it appears it was the installation of a new heating system which has caused the problem, while tenants who opted to stay on the old system seem not to have the problem.
I shall be looking into this one more closely once I am elected.
Elsewhere, the subject of the desperate plight of some farmers came up, and here I was pleased to be able to explain some of the measures the Conservative team on the Blackdowns are looking at in order to help.
There were, as always, a few who will not be voting for me and who did not want my leaflets, not even to keep for a rainy evening’s reading.