Chris Galley

Welcome to my website!  During the General Election I was campaign manager for Guy Opperman, Conservative MP for Hexham. I am also on the Conservative Party’s Candidates List. You’ll find more details about me here – feel free to look around and send me your comments (they won’t appear online in the first instance). The spotty one is called Rupert.

Chris.

Calling all Conservatives! We have an important by election for Newcastle upon Tyne Council coming up, and an Action Day on Saturday 4 June. Meet at the back of Aston House, Redburn Road, Newcastle NE5 1NB at 10 am. It will be a canvassing and leafleting day. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions via the Contact Me tab. As the LibDems face meltdown we need to give voters a real alternative to Labour, with your help we can make a change for the better.

For reasons which will become obvious I have not been able to blog about this before, but on Wednesday I was in court. For the last three years I have been under threat of being sued for an accident that happened at Border Park Rugby Club. A spectator was injured watching the game, sustained some pretty nasty injuries, and then sued the club – or rather me since I am the club’s secretary. On Wednesday the case finally got to Newcastle Court Building on the Quayside, and thankfully, thankfully, the claim failed. The judge held that I had not been  neglectful in my duties and that in any case the accident would not have been avoided. The spectator got nothing.

This goes right to the heart of “Compensation Culture” and the dangers of Conditional Fee Arrangements (CFA) - better known as “no win no fee”.  Frankly I now believe that CFAs represent a nice little earner for the legal profession which now has developed all manner of self serving restrictive practices off the back of it. The spectator may have got nothing but his solicitor, his barrister, the judge, our barrister will all have ensured they were paid for their contributions.

The underlying legislation is not recent - namely the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957, which in turn is built upon a Common Law principle. The relevant clause is in 2.2 :

This is the legislation that allows people to sue for slips and falls. In this particular case a visiting spectator at one of our games was injured when a legal tackle involving several players slid off the pitch. This led to a very severe knee injury, the visitor was left in hospital over Christmas, has had extensive medical treatment and risks non trivial degeneration of his knee as he gets older. The spectator used one of those solicitors that advertises endlessly on daytime television, which resulted in me getting a writ.

I suspect that the spectator was mystified why I defended the case so strongly. After all he had a bad accident, he was out of pocket, there was an insurance company that could be made to pay up. But the point is that insurance is not free, the money directly and indirectly comes out of an amateur sport, and at some point the insurers would want to limit their risk by changing the sport in ways which come back to adversely affect unpaid volunteers like me.

Now luckily I was backed by the RFU’s insurers. Our barrister was Claire Lindsay and she was excellent. My direct out of pocket expenses will be covered, but the time I have spent on this case over three years will not be, in a sense it is literally priceless. I guess I have spent about 80 to 100 hours of my life handling this claim over 3 years – equivalent to a short holiday. I suspect that I will have to give that time up without compensation. I am not easily stressed, but I have lost sleep on this one.

My rugby club is one of the smallest (but definitely the proudest) rugby clubs in England. It’s the furthest flung club from Twickenham. We normally have twice as many players as spectators at our grounds, we do all we can reasonably do to prevent unnecessary accidents. Yet I and a number of other people have had to slog through this case for years, pointlessly, in order to keep the legal industry happy.

The judge, in his verdict, was completely clear that this case was bound to fail. I had done a risk assessment before the incident, we take particular measures on the rare days that there is a big crowd, we followed the various best practices that exist. In other words I had taken reasonable care.  The judge also pointed out that if the claim had been allowed the implications would affect every rugby club in the country and indeed other sports (he specifically mention football and hockey).

I did speak to a friend about this case – he is a barrister working in another sphere. He defended the CFA arrangements since in practice everyone caught up with this is insured. Indeed the very first inkling I had about this case was when I got a phone call enquiring whether we were covered by insurance. I suspect that if we had not been insured then the case would not have gone ahead since without that the risk equation (to the solicitors) would slide in the wrong direction. But that “well it’s all down to the insurers” is just plain wrong. Yes they pick up the tab, but they need help to deal with the mountain of evidence (114 pages in this case) and that comes from those of us at the coal face.

In my opinion CFA should be scrapped completely. Claims under £50,000 should be handled by county courts, which means that 95% of claims will lose 95% of legal fees, since broadly speaking county courts won’t award costs. That would result in an element of rough justice due to the complexities of medical claims in particular but in justified cases access to justice would actually be improved on both sides.

Some alternative arrangement would be needed for the more serious cases, which indeed could be modelled on CFA, but there is one other restrictive practice that needs to end: if a judge holds that a claimant is (for example) 30% responsible for an accident, his or her compensation will be adjusted downwards accordingly. This happens a lot, and recognises the complexities of life. But in that situation the legal industry will still get 100% of their fee. In fact may end up with more than 100%. That is both unfair and self serving.

What a week, and an outcome no-one predicted. My overseas friends are somewhat surprised that a deal was sorted out so quickly. It took Angela Merkel the best part of 40 days to get her first terms negotiated.

One of the few odd moments in our Hexham campaign was a young lad, with presumably Liberal Democrat inclinations, getting very cross with us in Fore Street. “It’s an oxymoron,” he claimed, in respect of our slogan ‘Vote For Change’. Not sure how he feels today! Here’s my guess.

The new coalition agreement strikes me as a genuine attempt to build a document which represents the electorate’s composite view, as opposed to jettisoning or LCD’ing (lowest common denominator).  The outcome is fairly close to my personal politics, though I have some concerns (e.g. the triple lock on pensions giving a minimum 2.5% increase – marvellous, but what if we have poor growth and low inflation for a while? Generous commitments like that are nearly impossible to reverse and risk being paid for off the back of private sector wage deflation). But this is not the time to carp, oddly enough it truly was a case of “Vote For Change”.

Up at 6 am, and to the terrible news that Wendy Morton had not succeeded in winning Tynemouth. She is a good friend and would have been a wonderful MP. She worked remorselessly in trying to win over the voters, but it simply didn’t work out. Other results confirm that we are heading to a hung parliament, confusion and disappointment all round.

Well Hexham has its own count to do, just about the last one in the UK to be declared. We assemble to act as count agents, checking up on the Returning Officer’s staff. There are two stages – verification and the count. Both of these have two sub stages. Firstly the postal ballots get verified (to ensure what went into the ballot box was what came out), then the polling station votes. From this I see we have won comfortably in Hexham. The second stage consists of assembling the ballots into piles for each candidates, then clipping each pile into groups of 50 ballots. It is easy to make a mistake, I spotted 16 errors at this stage, so I kept raising my arm to get the supervisor over. The clipped ballots then get put into a set of wooden troughs and it’s immediately obvious how well we are doing.

The result was declared just after 2 pm:

Guy Opperman –  Conservative, 18,795 votes, 43.2% + 0.8 percent points
Andrew Duffield – Liberal Democrat,  13,007, 29.9%  +4.2 
Antoine Tinnion - Labour, 8,253, 19.0% -11.4
Steve Ford – Independent, 1,974, 4.5% +4.5
Quentin Hawkins – British National Party, 1,205, 2.8% +2.8
Colin Moss – Independent, 249, 0.6% +0.6

So we increased our total vote, our majority and our share of the vote, which with a new candidate is as good as it gets. Guy makes a gracious acceptance speech, which is more than be said for some of his opponents. It was also an occasion to meet up with the other candidates, with whom we’ve generally had good relations.

After the declaration we head to Bev’s house for a celebration drink, but we’re so exhausted that it did not turn into a marathon session, thankfully! And further good news from Berwick, where Anne-Marie Trevelyan has given Sir Alan Beith a real fright, along with one of the biggest swings in the country.

This is it – Election Day. I go to my polling station to vote at exactly 7 am when it opens. Not surprisingly I am the first voter. It is one of England’s smallest polling station in terms of electors, but there are quite a few in that category in the Hexham constituency.

Afterwards I head straight to Percy Park Rugby Club. I know this place very well, having played on all three pitches there in recent years, but today it is Wendy Morton’s campaign centre. I help Wendy get the tables lined up by electoral division and shortly after 8 am we are ready to roll. What a day! Jon and JonJo had two Merlin screens rigged up and throughout the day we were sent out to knockup voters. In other words, trying to jolly our supporters to get out there and vote for us. I was particularly buoyed up by my second set of print-outs. I must have annoyed JonJo since he gave me a huge list to keep me quiet, but almost all in one street in Monkseaton. Must be a big street I thought. It wasn’t, it was just a case that almost every house was listed as Conservative voter or potential voter. Has someone been over optimistic in compiling the canvass? Nope, every house I went to was solidly Conservative. One lady danced a gig on the doorstep when I asked her if she had voted yet.

It was a long day, I arrived before 8 am and my last task was to take a voter with a foot injury to the polling station just before it closed, in one of the poorest areas in the constituency. Her son said hello afterwards, at 17 years old he was a few months too young to vote but he was a Tory too.

My JonJo paranoia is increased when he sets me up on a knock-up patrol with two Conservative Future chairmen, I am not exactly used to running at that pace!

I got home just before Sunderland three sets of votes came in. Houghton le Spring and Washington results were very promising – big swings to us. Then the first shock. Sunderland Central stayed Labour. I had a bad feeling about how things were going. But I also knew that I had to be bright eyed on Friday since I was one of Hexham count agents. So I went off to bed at 3 am……

This is the weekend round up. On Saturday we spent the morning in Ovingham and Wylam, and the afternoon at the top end of Hexham’s Beaumont Park. Sundays have been frowned about in Tory circles. I can well remember as a kid seeing Tory campaign calenders with Sundays blocked out with the phrase “Dies non” and getting somewhat worried – in my state school we only did Latin from the age of 13. But with the stakes so high I helped to leaflet Castlefields in Prudhoe; and in fact nearly 2000 households were leafleted that Sunday in 4 separate locations.

For Bank Holiday Monday we decided not to knock on doors until after lunch. I leafleted Prudhoe earlier in the morning, then seven of us leafleted Hexham’s Priestland area, tripping over another candidate for the first time, in this case Antoine Tinnion from Labour, who is actually quite nice. Which begs the question, where are the LibDems? After all their posters claim they are “winning here” and their dodgy statistics put them into a self declared second place apparently. Frankly that is simply unsupported by their efforts on the ground.

Our biggest canvass today was Allendale (and a leaflet drop in Allenheads), where we were somewhat mob-handed. With me taking the picture, and Anthony Braithwaite joining at lunch, we were a magnificent 10. We rounded off with Corbridge canvass and ended up in The Angel.

One of the things that make elections so interesting is when something happens quickly. Believe or not, the picture shown left was almost a spontaneous demonstration! The back story is that we had planned for Theresa Villiers (Shadow Transport Secretary) to visit us possibly next Monday to talk about the A1. The Conservatives have promised to restore the A1 Newcastle to Edinburgh stretch to national Trunk road status, which is important in terms of the campaign for turning it into a dual carriageway throughout. As things stand there is a dual carriageway from Poland to Morpeth, when this main artery suddenly goes to single carriageway for most of the section until Scotland. For nearly 50 miles Juggernauts slow everyone down to 40 mph, or even 20 mph if a tractor has to use the road.

We heard that Labour’s blundering Prime Minister is heading to the North East on Sunday – incredibly he hasn’t visited yet, maybe he’s not wanted. But given his track record of self destruction anything we do on Monday won’t get airtime. So we moved Theresa’s visit to today at very, very short notice. The Alnwick office starting ringing round people at 8 am, checking venues etc, and by 11 am we had the above photo opportunity sorted out, and the BBC’s TV cameras rolling. We ended up leading the regional TV news that night, what a result. I only discovered my role, dealing with Theresa’s logistics, at 9 am.  Here we are, 3 pm, back at Newcastle station by its iconic column arch. In between we went to Newcastle Airport, where the management gave us their view of the challenges involved in running a regional airport.  After that – something completely different. I headed over to Haltwhistle where the local old folks home invited us in for tea. And cake, lots of it. Luckily I arrived late. One lady did a monster spread of carbs for us, and the residents really did seem pleased to see Guy. He didn’t do too much politics, but made a charming speech about him and his background. I’ve no doubt it hit the spot as much as the malt loaf.

On a number of fronts it has been a strange few days. Yesterday I was in Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (BRS) constituency, which is just over the border from me in Scotland. Currently held by the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative candidate John Lamont is hoping to win the seat, and there’s certainly a lot going on. Incidentally Lamont in this case is pronounced LAMont, not LeMONT. After delivering 300 leaflets in Jedburgh (in one of the hillier estates), I spent 3 hours telephone canvassing the postal voters, who received their ballot papers on Monday or Tuesday (or not yet in the case of some voters in Hawick). Several voters noted with bemusement that they could vote Jacobite. The constituency office was particularly grateful for my few hours of effort. Be warned Hexham: their office does better coffee!

Today I’ve been hosting Mark Francois (below, second from right), the shadow Europe minister. He went to the Egger plant in Hexham with Guy Opperman, then to Tynemouth, where Wendy got us out for a brisk round of leafleting in Cullercoats.  Finally we had a long drive up to Berwick, to talk to a farmer about the impact of European policy on farmers – he had a long list. Mark Francois is a real pleasure to have around, a genuine human with considerable generosity of spirit.

Today I’ve been campaigning for Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who is standing as the Conservative candidate against Sir Alan Beith in Berwick upon Tweed. This is (like Hexham) a massive constituency, it takes multiple hours to get from one corner to the other. My canvasss and leaflet round was based on the left hand side of the constituency about half way down and involves some of England’s most isolated voters. For starters, we still have snow on the hills. Secondly the distances between each voter can be up to 8 miles apart. This photo being the most extreme case, only accessible by a 4×4 and a powerful one at that. Luckily this particular voter is “one of us”.

One big help today is that it is rubbish collection day, so I was able to locate houses that need leaflets by the wheelie bins. The other clues include following the overhead telephone wires.  A lot of homes around here are second homes or weekend lettings. The worst case I had today being Alwinton, where about half the houses no longer have a voter in them. What’s worse, some people do register at their second home. It’s a bit of red letter day since the postal votes have started to be delivered, so in one real sense polling has started.

One light relief has been a nifty idea by Hexham Cinema. Each of the early declared candidates has been asked to come up with a favourite film to be shown on successive nights at the Forum, which the candidate can then introduce. Guy Opperman’s film was The Shawshank Redemption, playing into his deeply held concerns about prison policy, and a cracking film to boot.

The other candidates’ choices are interesting. In the case of Antoine Tinnion (Labour) it is The Third Man (based on the novel by Graham Greene). Dr Ford (Independent) was suitably zany yesterday with Dr. Strangelove. And you’d never guess this, Andrew Duffield (LD) has gone for The End of Poverty – Think Again.

On one poll we are already ahead! More punters at the cinema than Dr. Ford!

On Friday we packed off to Carlisle to help out John Stevenson, who is fighting to win Carlisle off Labour – we call it mutual assistance. We canvassed a lot of houses, but it was only a small chunk of what seemed like a huge estate. Being Tories, we benefit from top flight canvass board managers, in this case Lady Caroline Henley, who was as effective as she was efficient. But she mentioned one thing that I had noticed in Hexham. She said that though Labour had put some leaflets out – mainly by post – she hadn’t noticed any other teams or groups from other political parties. My perception is that Labour has seen a gradual hemorrhage of its foot soldiers. My theory, backed by admittedly weak evidence, is that the Iraq War along with the abolition of the 10 pence tax band, were the final straws. The Lib Dems aren’t doing too well there either, though they never had the sheer numbers that the big parties have had.

This was brought home graphically recently when I went with Guy and other team members to a former mining village in our patch. We knocked on one door, where we got a really warm reception from a former miner. Nothing strange in that, Labour voters tend to be incredibly friendly to their opponents. Unlike some middle class Lib Dems, but that’s another story. This miner had lived in that house all his adult life - his mine had gone, but his home had not. He told Guy: “I’ve lived here 48 years, and I can honestly say you are the first politician to knock on my door”. I assumed he meant the first Tory politician, but no – absolutely no party had tried to canvass his support before, at least not at his home. I suspect that miner and his wife have gone from S to P or even C in 10 minutes.

Now I am not going to name the village, since I feel we better nuture it rather than our opponents, but I am still a bit shocked by it. Now it’s not good that we Tories haven’t been there, but given Thatcher and the NUM it is kind of understandable, and yes it’s a massive constituency, size wise, so in any prioritisation this village isn’t going to be well placed for us. But where is Labour? If no one looks after their voters, or starts taking them for granted, then no wonder there is so much disillusionment, expenses or no expenses.

In previous elections I recall we were constantly playing slightly amusing cat and mouse games with our opponents’ teams. Not this time, we’re largely on our own. On Saturday we did come across a small Lib Dem bunch in Hexham and one of the Independents supporters (of Dr. Ford) blowing up balloons in Ponteland, but their numbers aren’t there. We had several teams out, in Hexham, Prudhoe, Corbridge, and here’s one of our two Ponteland teams:

Today’s highlight was undoubtedly the Hexham Abbey hustings. Personally I also greatly enjoyed the Sung Evensong beforehand, using the Book of Common Prayer. The language of that service is familiar to many, many generations of my family. There’s a line in it towards the end: “by Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night”, which reminds me of how not so long ago people used to literally dread the hours of darkness.

I was really pleased by how well Guy did in the debate, scoring several direct hits. Steven Ford did well too, with many sharp responses, and a lot better than in the last debate I went to, back in December.

Earlier on I was out canvassing Corbridge with Elly Jupp, who came all the way up from Exeter to help out Guy. She’s well experienced in the world of canvassing so she will be a great help to us. Lunch was at our unofficial Corbridge  branch office, Tea and Tipple.

The secrets of canvassing won’t be revealed here. Other than that we use various letters to describe voters. So C is Conservative, P for potential Conservative, L for Liberal and so on. Labour’s code letter is S, as in Socialist, which sounds perversely quaint now. Actually those who get an S in this election’s canvass generally are Socialists, I rather suspect that social democrats are  now voting with their feets.

Earlier on in this campaign I knocked on a door, it swung open and before I could even breath in, the householder imperiously barked “Two Cs and one P, now get cracking on the rest of the estate”. Clearly a current or former activist who fully appreciated our need to get as much ground covered as possible. If it is properly organised it is possible for a canvasser to talk to well over a hundred voters in a couple of hours.

I mention that incident since this evening I inadvertently canvassed one house – “Can we count on your support?” I asked the smiling householder. Her reply was “Oh I would have thought so, since I am chairman of the Corbridge branch of the Conservative Party”. Perhaps I need to do more homework.

No photo today, just didn’t find a good opportunity, so you’ll have to take my word for it that we canvassed Stocksfield, Acomb, Corbridge twice, Catton and several parts of Hexham. At least 14 canvassers were involved, which isn’t bad for a mid week. At one point we had 3 canvass teams working simultaneously in 3 separate parts of the constituency.

Guy Opperman was doing a pub meeting in Catton, afterwards he seemed to be very happy with the outcome, though 2 plus hours is a long time on the stump.

I know this will get more feedback than any other picture I put up this week. I’m a dog lover in a big way, and this puppy is the latest addition to the farm. She has the working title of Precious, and is now 6 weeks old. She spends her whole time sleeping or eating, whereas I seem to struggle to do either. So much so that today was actually the first time since the general election was declared that I managed to get into the office. Here being the proof of that.

This afternoon I checked out our hoardings and fixed a few blown down by the wind. Then I went leafleting / canvassing and came across one house with this note on the front door: “Please use the back door due to difficult parrot”. I slipped my leaflet into the letter box and swiftly left… Finally I finished off the day with some canvassing over in the bit of the Berwick constituency that is near to where I live. I ended up beyond Alwinton, a wonderful upland area.

Today’s crowd of supporters come from Ogle, which is not one of the larger villages, so it didn’t take long to get the place canvassed. It was deceptively cold this morning and so we were glad that mugs of coffee in the heated conservatory were laid on, though I managed to leave my camera there by accident – can’t manage without that!  We also did most of Stamfordham, bits of Kirkharle and all of Kirkwhelpington. The frost-bitten canvassers then went down to Ponteland, but I also discovered a minor glitch in our hand delivered leaflet distribution coverage so I went over to Gilsland to do the missed properties.  It’s quite hilly over there and the electoral roll is all over the place. Today’s nutritional intake consists of a plate of sarnies at Kirkharle, a chocolate bar in Gilsland and ginger pork from Harry’s Chinese Takeaway in Bellingham. Probably not ideal!

Given my taxi services to the Tory frontbench, I’ve been – let’s say – a bit more careful about keeping my car spick and span of late. One friend of mine saw it in the back of a regional TV news bulletin and rang me up: “Have you bought another new car?! It’s very shiny.” So last night I know the car was in fairly good nick. This morning it was covered in reddish soot, particularly the section pointing into the wind – as you can see:

If my guest today noticed the soot, he was far too polite to say. So this morning I was driving Grant Shapps to Tynemouth, indeed this picture shows us in Wendy Morton’s nerve centre, just prior to him visiting the Conservative Party’s stall in Bedford Street. He is the shadow Housing mininster. Trivia alert: Grant is the cousin of Mick Jones of The Clash and Big Audio Dynamite. In the photo background there is, well, a photo gallery. Just by Grant’s left shoulder is a pic of me in a blue T shirt, with Wendy. Good to see this election campaign has made me lose a bit of weight since then.

The afternoon I was supposed to be playing rugby against a touring side from the United States – that volcano snuffed that one out too, they are still in Maine. So instead I delivered some leaflets off in some hard to reach areas such as Deadwater, Yarrow and Catcleugh.

Canvassing everywhere it feels. First off was Wylam, then Ovington. After that I went with Guy, Fiona and Bev to Ovingham, before ending up in Horsley.

Then we did one good canvassing chunk of Corbridge with the assistance of this motley crew! Plus a camera shy Penelope. Lovely warm day, tanned if not burnt.

Not many orgies in Corbridge, or so Guy Opperman was told today by an 85 year old resident, and who are we to challenge that? Location will remain anonymous to protect the guilty, and I am sure Guy’s blog will tell us more in due course. And not many Liberal Democrats either, it would appear, if you look over the tumbleweed bouncing past their deserted office. Hopefully they’ll field a candidate in this General Election.

In my quest to meet more Shadow ministers than David Cameron, today’s haul comes in the form of Lord Bates, or Michael Bates as he is more generally known, who very kindly helped us with some advance canvassing of Corbridge. It was very good to see that he is prepared to get stuck in to the nuts and bolts of politics.

Later on we went over to County Hall Morpeth to meet the Conservative councillors, to tell them how things were going.

Finally more canvassing, this time in Stannington, where the six of us got most of the village done in a few hours. Cllr Mel and Guy were heading for the pub afterwards, where I hope Guy didn’t try to keep up with Mel….

Here’s is today gratuitous shadow minister shot, Jim Paice, shadow Minister of Agriculture.  This came at Darlington Station at the end of a long, long day of driving, from Berwick down to the North Riding of Yorkshire, and quite a few points in between. There were 4 farms involved, all very different from each other. The first visit was to North Doddington Farm, north of Wooler, where the Maxwell family have successfully diversified their small dairy into cheese and ice cream production. Anne-Marie was our first host in Berwick – and in Wooler I saw my first Lib Dem poster, the usual luminously tedious “winning here” on a lopsided square.

We then had a 97 mile trip down to Middleton on Tees. Our schedule had an error in it, suggesting it would take an hour to make that journey, when it takes, well, two hours. This meant we were horribly late into the Upper Teasdale’s Agricultural Support Service (UTASS) office in the middle of Middleton. Luckily Jim Plaice was able to quickly address the concerns of the 20 – 25 farmers that candidate Barbara Harrison had invited along. There a lively discussion on farming, and it was good to hear Jim being so articulate about issues such as cross-compliance and Higher Level Stewardship.

Finally off to Paul Bristow down in Middlesborough South, or rather Guisborough. Here he is with a local dairy farmer, plus dog. Jim finished off with a particularly good and punchy interview on BBC Tees (Iplayer link, approx 1:12.32 in) local radio, and still managed to slip onto the train as scheduled.

Gosh, I am tired!

By popular request (well one person has asked me), here is a sheep picture. Knowing about the general election likely timings, I sent the tups (rams) in a few weeks early, to get the lambing out of the way. This is my main Zwartbles tup, Poseidon. Quite a hefty character. One down side of early lambing is that the grass up here is not really rich enough for the grazing ewes, so they get supplementary food, mainly for protein.  Most of my lambs seem huge compared to my neighbours, but they did have  a head start.

Afterwards I smartened myself, went canvassing in Corbridge for a couple of hours. Then I went over to help out with the launch of the Conservative Party’s manifesto in the North East, which was held by Tynemouth. First off was collecting Caroline Spelman, the shadow secretary of state for local government, from Newcastle’s heliport (which is not as grand as it sounds). Then we went off to Tynemouth’s lifeboat station where quite a reception was laid on.

Caroline is very down to earth, with a “can-do” attitude, and seems able to relate to anyone of any background. So she had no problems working the crowd. A lot of the activists were from Conservative Future, and it was good to see them turn up for this event, despite the short notice. Caroline went out of her way to point out that they were not just the Conservative’s future, but also Britain’s future, one big reason why this election matters so much.

And here is the obligatory photo of me with another member of the Shadow Cabinet, I reckon I met more of them this week than David Cameron!

My final photo is actually quite remarkable since you won’t easily get all these northern women in the same place at once!  From left, Caroline Spelman, Wendy Morton (Tynemouth candidate), Linda Arkley (Elected Mayor of Tynemouth) and Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick candidate).

I guess Chris Grayling gets fed up of people commenting on his height, but he really is tall. He is also cool, cerebral and likeable, particularly on a one to one basis. Today I was asked to take the shadow Home Secretary around the North East, which we did at break-neck speed.

First stop was Alnwick, where Anne-Marie was on good form as ever (she doesn’t seem to do Bad Days). Here we were avoiding any odd shaped vegetables. There was a town walkabout, which went well, it prompted one person to approach me saying he had just moved into the area and how did he register to vote. I gave him the relevant website address so I am fairly sure I’ve added at least one vote to Anne-Marie’s total. Incidentally the deadline is 20 April.

Then we whizz down to Blaydon, or rather Gibside Hotel in Whickham, to meet Glenn Hall and some supporters who have managed to keep the Tory flame alight an area where we’ve never been strong.

Finally down to Durham to meet David Skelton, who found a particularly good vantage point for the photo, under a cherry tree in full blossom. And here’s one of Chris Grayling with me.

Then the most important task of the day – leafleting Haltwhistle with Guy, Ian, Christine and Graham. It’s a bigger town than it looks, as everyone says. I now rather like the place (I vividly remember visiting it on a wet Sunday when I was a kid and that was somewhat offputting), despite its tradition of voting Labour, but it’s been a long day, so after thanking some supporters we head home. Haltwhistle has now been 100% covered by our leaflet networkers. Still no sign of a single Lib Dem or Labour poster yet…..

And so to Gosforth to help out Nick Holder, who is standing for the Conservatives in the new seat of Newcastle Central. Newcastle also has local elections for its unitary authority, and so for the first time I came across Labour and Lib-Dem election material. Incidentally I’ve still not seen a single poster for anyone other than the Conservatives – Vote For Change is well represented down the A68 and the A696.

with Matt Sinclair and Nick Holder (right).

Nick is a friend of mine and it was great for me to be able to help him out, rather than vice versa. I delivered 480 leaflets, which is somewhat short of my record (1000 in Norwich North, but that was a killer!), but still a good rate per hour. I was delivering to places that sounded very familiar to me, such as Chollerford Close and Barrasford Close. There were about 14 helpers today, including Peter and Terry from Hexham plus two candidates for Newcastle Council, Karen Jewers (West Gosforth) and Mehrban Sadiq (Wingrove).

I didn’t see many people outside, Gosforth is a bit slow on a Sunday morning! But one man doing some gardening took the leaflet, stared at it and said with admiration: ”that’s really local”. And so it was – the photo on the front of Nick Holder  had  been taken just in front of his house. I assured him that we didn’t have it specially printed for that street, though it’s technically possible to do that now on a cost effective basis.

Guy Opperman rings just after his appearance on the Politics Show, he is in good spirits (update: having watched it on Iplayer, I can see why!). So far the election seems to have gone well for us, at least we seem to be setting the agenda and everyone else then reacts to what we say. The Tory party machinery seems to be in robust health, which bodes well for the weeks ahead.

I spent the whole day in Prudhoe. Now this is unlikely territory for us, but we rolled in with 18 helpers and got 85% of the town leafletted and canvassed. Not sure where the other parties were, not much evidence of them on the ground. I was with a team of 6 and we really stormed through our patch of Castlefields, and in fact got that 100% canvassed. Here we are at lunch at Piccola restaurant, by the police station.

One of our crew came close to a very severe mauling (ok he was slightly nipped) by a huge white poodle, it must have been at least 6 inches high. The first I saw was young Ben running past like his life depended on it, followed by the white fluffball. He’s not going to live this down in quite a while, oh if only we had videoed it, it would be a YouTube sensation.

We watch the Grand National. Guy was interesting to watch. Though I’ve spent a lot of time working with him, he’s always been very cool and controlled. But put him in front of a horse race and his passion comes out. Which is a good thing!

One enormous privilege I have already had out of this election campaign has been to take shadow cabinet ministers around the area. For a number of reasons I was particularly pleased that Nick Herbert was able to visit Belsay and then Berwick, speaking at farmers’ meetings in both locations. Nick is the shadow secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs.

With Nick Herbert (right) and Cllr Richard Dodds

He had so many positive messages about rural issue, not least “no farms, no food”. He pointed out that taking a holistic view, the world’s farmers currently feed 6 billion people, or at least try to. Imagine how they will feed the 9 billion that will be on this planet sometime in my lifetime.

Nick with Anne-Marie Trevelyan, Conservative candidate for Berwick

On hunting his view is identical to mine: genuine respect for those who are concerned for animal welfare, an acceptance that the hunting community needs to take some of those welfare concerns on board, but at the end of the day the choice of sport, including country sport, is up to the individual’s personal freedom.

Nick with Guy Opperman

With Ken Clarke in Tynemouth

My first VIP job. Today I am driving Ken Clarke around the North East. We started at BBC Newcastle, went around to Tynemouth to see Wendy Morton, then off to Sunderland to support Lee Martin, before ending up in Durham. Luckily he made his train back to the Midlands, since we were running horribly late in the middle part of the day. Everyone else seems  more relaxed about timekeeping than me, they’ve seen it all before presumably, but I do my best to keep the show on the road.

Lee Martin, PPC for Sunderland Central

We got coverage on both ITV and BBC, and I make a cameo appearance in the regional news. I noticed one of the reporters had a Glastonbury tag on, so I end up swapping music tips with him. He is connected with Detroit Social Club, which is a Newcastle group that’s certainly going places.

Today we finish off Otterburn and Tarset. The weather is very pleasant and I meet a few residents pottering around in their gardens, or farmers busy with lambing. I’ve been asking whether our leaflet is the first one to get out, and everytime we’ve beaten the competition, so far at least. One local character, when I asked him, burst into song: “You are the one and only…..” Another elderly voter decides that I am the candidate and keeps calling me Guy. Clearly I am overdue a haircut.

Then I head off to Alnwick to collect my leaflets for the Berwick constituency, and I deliver a few hundred leaflets around Alnwick itself (and get to the barber’s). Completely different from my own patch in that except for 2 outlying streets I deliver the whole lot on foot. Then back to Humshaugh to meet the Hexham Executive. Guy Opperman delivers a pep talk to a packed meeting which is standing room only.

Shaking off a bad cold, picked up last week from our PPC, Guy Opperman, I race up to Byrness as soon as the Gordon goes to Buckingham Palace. I’ve only got 820 leaflets to deliver, but covering a vast area, nearly 500 square miles in all. Byrness is an easy one, 50 houses built by the Forestry Commission, almost all with identical letterboxes. I get that done, with help from a neighbour, in just 10 minutes. The next 50 take nearly 4 hours… But at the end of day one I’ve delivered 310 leaflets in all, covering Byrness, Rochester and most of Otterburn. Weather is damp but not too bad considering. Then a quick dash to Northumberland Park metro station to hand out leaflets for Wendy Morton to evening commuters. Reactions vary from commuters queuing up to take a leaflet through to one swivvel eyed character so appalled at seeing a Tory hit squad at his station that I feared that he was in danger of retina detachment.

Somewhere under this lot is the track in to my home:

Frankly I could have taken this photo at anytime since I got back from my globe trotting on Christmas Eve. Not that I am going anywhere soon, since I am definitely cut off from the outside world (digital connectivity excepting). It’s now about 40cm deep out there, with more to come….

There won’t be many other people who enjoy visiting Hong Kong for its countryside but I firmly fall into that category. Hong Kong is an amazing place, not least for its beaches and islands. Last time I visited, 2 years ago, I went to Cheung Chau island, which was amazing.

This time I went to Lamma Island, which lies just off Aberdeen but is a world apart. I walked from Yung Shue Wan to Sok Kwu Wan, the two main villages on the island, both renown for their fish restaurants. I want over the top via Ling Kok Shan, the second tallest point on the island. I took this photo just before the summit, Aberdeen is in the background on the left and Stanley on the right.

I am quite into Maps (and maps for that matter). The Maps in question is a music outfit, though in reality it’s the work on one man, James Chapman. He came close to winning the Mercury Prize for his first album, We Can Create, and that was just about my best album of 2007. We Can Create was one of those records that half way through the first track you think “this is amazing”. Mr. Chapman has now produced his second album, Turning The Mind, which is not quite as mindblowing, but still very good.

Today Maps performed in Newcastle, at The Other Rooms under the Life Centre. I’ve seen him / them before in Copenhagen and then Paris, and what is worrying is that everytime he has fewer band members and smaller audiences. In Newcastle’s case we were down to about 40 or so enthusiasts and one backup on keyboards. Still a good time was had by all. The venue was a bit strange – very low ceilings. If you were peforming there was literally no headroom for jumping around on stage.

Well it was not my night at the Primary for Penrith and the Border in Penrith Mart. Congratulations to Rory Stewart for his victory, he’s got a fantastic seat to represent and I wish him well. It was an interesting experience for me, there are things that I can learn from it. I am (curiously) relieved rather than upset.  Another positive was that as far as I can tell all the candidates fought good, honest campaigns with honour – there was absolutely no mud slinging going on, and we all got on well together. So I’ll have a sleep on it and then move on. And I’ve got a backlog of things to sort out up here, having spent virtually a month in Penrith, and that all starts tomorrow. My thanks to my supporters, I am grateful for all the help and advice they gave me – I will never forget that. And well done to the 180 or so voters in the Primary for surviving the marathon session.

The day ends at 8 pm, rather later than I had planned, with canvassing around Wigton and Caldbeck. In the last 10 days I’ve met 218 potential voters on the doorstep, though not all of them are able to devote 5 hours of their Sunday to the Primary – and I don’t blame them. I’ve also been to 3 Eden Council meetings, 2 neighbourhood forum meetings, 3 parish council meetings, 1 theatre production and 2 coffee mornings. And 5 days by-election campaigning in Penrith West too. I am – as you can imagine – somewhat exhausted and already looking forward to it all being over.

Earlier on Friday I was in Brampton, Carlisle, Penrith, Temple Sowerby, Appleby, Penrith again and then off to Wigton. On my final visit to Penrith I picked up an early edition of the Herald – there’s a big piece on the candidates on page 4, complete with photos. My picture stands out somewhat because it’s obviously outdoors and I am wearing a rugby top. The others look a bit more professional. Not sure whether this is good or bad, but there again probably most people won’t notice it. My write-up is good, I am happy with that.

Rugby tomorrow, away to Alnwick, so a bit of a trek. We’re struggling for numbers at the moment, 11 confirmed, but let’s see what comes up.

Time for bed, said Zebedee.

Today’s picture is of Castle Sowerby church just by Hutton Roof. It’s quite an isolated and magic spot, with the view onto Carrock Fell behind. The church is dedicated to St. Kentigern, which is itself was unusual at least to my eyes.

The rest of the day was spent around Great Sakeld, I got very lost at one point even with a SatNav, and around Appleby, then over the top to Tebay and Gaisgill. Finally in the evening I went to a Neighbourhood Forum in Armathwaite. This was interesting since money was up for grabs, and instead of going for the project with the greatest direct benefit to the 30 or so participants, the overwhelming consensus was to focus on a scheme to provide greater safety to a group of schoolchildren who cross the busy A6 every day in a bus swap manoeuvre.

 This was indeed inevitable as a photo shoot, these have their home by Corby Hill. I’ve seen them before but they always been at the wrong end of the field, but not today. Other places on the SatNav today were Irthington, Warwick Bridge, Brampton, How, Castle Carrock, Lazonby, Patterdale, Penrith, Dacre and one of the Newbiggins (don’t ask me which one, there are a few in Northumberland too). The problem I am seeing now relates to the fact that registration for the Primary is basically online – the postal option has been scuttled by the strike. Many of those interested in participating simply don’t have internet access.

The phrase “politics of the gutter” is a popular one, it was most recently deployed over the Damian McBride affair (though I personally thought it was closer to the sewer). Here’s my spin on it. This photo is of my next door neighbour (4 miles away!), Dougie, at my farm:

His father used to be one of the farm’s shepherds (there were 4 of them at one point in addition to the farmer). So Dougie spent his childhood at the farm, and his younger brother was born in the building in the photo’s background. He still does the maintainance around the farm. I won’t embarrass him by revealing his age, I would probably have Age Concern onto me demanding to know why I’ve got OAPs clambering around my rooftops. However! A few weeks ago we had some strong gales and in the middle of the night I heard a mighty thump – my guttering came off one side of the house. Luckily it didn’t hit anything or anyone on the way done. As you can see they are quite serious gutters:

 Dougie came today to renew them. He told me he had a confession to make – he had put this original set of gutters up himself, he recognised the bracketing technique. Oh dear I said, when was this? His answer: 1949! So these gutters had survived for 60 – yes sixty years and were replaced by the same builder! I told him to book a date in the diary for 2069. The other odd thing is that the old gutters are worth a lot more as scrap now then they did as originals all those years ago, so invest in gutters!

So Tuesday saw me in Carlisle, Corby (again), Penrith, Wigton and .Skelton It’s hard work this campaigning lark!

Today I’ve been to Lanercost, Brampton, Warwick Bridge, Shap, Penrith, Newby and Great Salkeld - all in one day. And also Great Strickland, where a herd of 100 dairy cows gets walked through the middle of the village twice daily for milking. The farmer considered himself lucky that he also had sheep - they are currently keeping him afloat.

This particular tour meant I saw 7 castles in just a few hours. Including Naworth:

And the nearby Lanercost Priory:

This is a particularly wonderful spot, it’s well into the country and it’s difficult to imagine such an impressive building being located there.

I had to get some material into the post today. Up here in the sticks the final Saturday collection - alright the only collection – is at 11:15 am, and it’s not unusual for it to be collected early. Right, I thought, I’m campaigning in Corby Hill later, so why not dash into Carlisle and post them there, perhaps it’s a bit later in town? It certainly is,  2:45pm to be precise! Until quite recently there was a Sunday collection up here, which was brilliant. Times have changed and the postal staff are due to go on strike later this week, which doesn’t seem to be the best way to get middle England on your side.

Never mind, I had a productive time campaigning in the three Corby villages, and I even found a parking place in central Carlisle on a Saturday. Rugby was cancelled (the 4th cancellation this season!), though I was grateful, it’s been a long week!

At long last we candidates are officially allowed to campaign!

Not that I did very much of that today, in the final analysis. However I did meet David Maclean MP in the George, Penrith this afternoon. He was in town for his surgery and fellow candidate Christine Emmett and I were able to introduce ourselves to David; and also a bevy of councillors, viz. Cllrs Fearon, Nicolson, Temple and Thompson. It ended up with a big round of drinks and open table discussion, putting the world to rights.

After supper at Giannis with friends of the owner, I then went to Penrith Playhouse to see Imogen Stubb’s play, We Happy Few. I had heard mixed reviews beforehand, I can’t claim to be a regular theatre-goer, so I was wondering whether I was going to like the experience. In fact I really did enjoy the performance, even if sometimes the plot seemed to have  a sense of implausibility that would have stretched the credulity of Brookside’s script-writers. But it was a very British play in many ways and I would recommend it.

The George is an august (in fact the august) hotel and watering hole in the centre of Penrith. The staff there, drawn from many nationalities, are particularly competent and friendly, the venue still harks back to an elegant past. The phone book on the reception desk is not the most up to date – in the days before BT, it is dated January 1962:

I turned the pages to W and there – for all to see – was William Whitelaw’s home phone number:

Yesterday I went to Dacre, just outside Penrith, a charming village, with a well known inn, and a classically English church. In with all the other graves was one that stands out, not for it’s size or position – it is in there with everyone else – but for its inscription:

On the way home I came across another souvenir, in – of all places – Southwaite Service Station on the M6. He certainly got to many places in his time.

A trip out to the hills, and here are the photos. This one with Rupert is from Kirkstone Pass. I don’t think it is possible to exaggerate the beauty of Lake District, and this is one of the many amazing views.

And this is me in Patterdale with a friendly pony: