HUSTINGS HULLABALLOO

My personal General Election Campaign really kicked off with the Croydon Area Gay Society Hustings on February 2nd 2010. The main topic was the EU equality bill. Asked whether I was pro a quota of gay and transvestite employees in schools and given that members of the audience had been calling for funding to be cut off to faith schools that refused to comply with the bill, I simply replied that “It is irresponsible to endanger the education of children over a political disagreement between adults”. I followed up with outlining the UKIP policy which is that head teachers and boards of governors should decide the ethos and who is employed in their particular school. That neatly parried (as I thought) I could concentrate upon answering Jane Avis, Labour Candidate for Croydon South who laying into myself for raising the issue of rampant crime in Croydon and then into Croydon North Tory Jason Haddon for no reason at all. A robust exchange followed but Jane blew it at the end by announcing that ‘Gordon Brown had saved the world economy’. Even her own supporters were not immune to the laughter at that one.

A few days later, Gordon Ross, the Green Candidate for Croydon South was accusing me of homophobia and Jason and myself of having had a go at Jane Avis and being against human rights, all on his blog. He refused to apologise. I regarded this as an opportunity not to be missed and promptly sent his material and my responses to the Croydon Advertiser pointing out I was out there supporting the rights of faith schools and family values. Not only do I think I won the exchange of letters in the press (and Many thanks to the Monster Raving Looney Candidate John Cartwright for defending myself and Jason Haddon), but the Pope visited the UK a few days later and new Labour shelved the EU Equality Bill this side of the election. I haven’t heard from Gordon Ross of the Greens since, but in contrast to him the members of CAGS were always supportive and behaved fairly to all concerned throughout.

As for the Human Rights issue I pointed out that in fact Tory Jason Haddon was quite clear that the Conservatives will replace the EU Human Rights Directive with a ‘mirror image’ UK Human Rights Bill. Only UKIP will go for outright abolition and we don’t want to be accused of complicity with Conservative half measures thankyou! But no one took me up on that one.