Campaigning With Eddie Izzard

Yesterday something special. Its been in the papers so its not a secret.

Went with a some Uni students to see Eddie Izzard speak in support of the Labour Party. A great way to spend and afternoon.

Eddie was really refreshing, not too much gas and very straight forward, he should be standing for election.....

Happy New Year!

Ended the day celebrating Nepalese New Year with Reading's Nepalese community.

A great occasion. They even let me speak, as did all the other politicians and candidates. The picture shows Anneliese Dodds Labour Parliamentary Candidate for Reading East.

http://www.grnca.org/ This is a link to the Greater Reading Nepalese Community Association's website.

Anything else go on yesterday, well yes a day of talking to residents, knocking on doors and meeting people in their homes. Had a very instructive conversation with a resident near the Woky Road and drunk the first of many cups of tea.

Did however reach the downside of campaigning and being a politician. Your family life suffers. I offered to take my wife to Weybridge for her to play the piano at a weding. I then couldn't take her as a meeting came up, then I couldn't pick her up from the weding as I had also promised. Fortunately the day was saved by my dad. Well done and thanks...Dad

Also by the by can I recomend Anneliese's new website.

http://www.anneliesedodds-reading.com/

Plant a Tree Save the World

Spent Saturday morning planting trees with other East Reading residents and Anneleise Dodds Labour PPC at Palmer Park Stadium. It was part of an effort to plant 1,000 trees in an hour with the BBC Tree O'Clock Campaign

It was great to see that people could work together to improve the environment. Strange though didn't see any politicians from other parties planting trees, shame really. The picture shows the volunteers just before we started digging.

The adults were planting Yew Trees in a hedge on the banking at the stadium and the children and young people were planting Beech Trees in front of the stadium.

Not sure how many trees were planted but after an hour or so the row of trees that we were planting looked pretty impressive.

This picture shows the the trees that I planted.

I had to retire hurt at the end of the session. On the same subject I have to go back in to hospital on Tuesday for somemore work on my kidney, nothing major but another day under General Anaesthetic. As I know I have a particular readership in France, in the Stassburg area I understand I attach a link to a youtube clip to give an indication of what happened last week and what will happen next week.

Click here for the link

Let there be light

Have spent the week recovering from my operation last week. Frankly felt very poorly most of the week. I found that if I sat on the sofa and didn't move to the left or to the right I was alright. Any movement and....

Despite this the ward work still piled up. I was in Newtown of an evening and noticed a lot of street lights out of order, so this necessitated some calls to the council to get the lights fixed. Once I had started the lights seemed to be out everywhere, so lots of phone calls to get them fixed.

Monday evening we brought the PCSO petition to the Council. Kelly, the Labour Candidate in Redlands made a very good speech to the Cabinet about the importance placed by residents and students on the PCSO's. I couldn't stay to late to hear the whole Cabinet as I was feeling a bit sore. As you can imagine my wife is very supportive to what I do but she has pointed out that I am supposed to be recouperating. Monday evening I thought she had a point.

I got a phone call on Wednesday to remind me that there was a governor meeting that I needed to go to. A couple of painkllers later then I appeared at the Community Committee meeting and ended up as Chair. I have to say it wasn't the best meeting I have chaired I am looking forward to the work we have to do. The painkillers were really strong and I felt quite strange at the meeting. Then to bed.

By the middle of the week I was fading again and so reverted to my sofa to try and feel better.

Richard McKenzie backs the PCSO's

Had a quieter week last week as it was half term. Still found time to work on the petition for the PCSO's.

This is a very important campaign and the University has now been presented with the petition that we gathered from around Park, Redlands and Church. I was amazed at how many people were happy to sign.

Strangely enough I bumped in to the Green who said that he wouldn't sign our petition on campus the other day. I mentioned to him that we were a bit surprised at his stance, but he didn't really have a good answer as to why a Green wouldn't want to sign a petition to support the PCSO's. Shame really.

Following the work we did in the Ward, we are still getting positive comments about our campaign and I hope that there will be further follow ups soon.

Enjoyed half term with the family, although I still had to work and study, I had almost every evening free during the week and it was really, really nice to spend time with Kath and chat round the things in our lives. Trying to get elected and having a family is a strain on all, however I does help to keep you grounded and in touch with real life.

Richard McKenzie spends weekend campaigning for PCSO's

Spent a lovely weekend with my children....oh but what about the campaigning?

Well they, strangely enough, wanted to come campaigning with their dad. What were we campaigning about? The Uni's decision to stop funding the PCSO's.

I am really pleased with the response we have been getting. We knocked on literally hundreds of doors and almost everyone wanted to sign our petition to save the PCSO's. Strangely enough the only person that wouldn't sign was a supporter of the Green Party, which was a shame.

On our way we also bumped in to some of the editorial team of the Student Uni newspaper, Spark and talked to them about the issue. So it was a very useful weekend. As is the way with any kind of street work we picked up lots of other Ward work which we will follow up in due course.

Of course the fight to retain the funding for the PCSO's goes on, you can still sign Anneleise's petition at: http://www.anneliesedodds.org/sign-our-petition-against-cuts-to-pcso-funding . I urge all residents and students to sign, no matter what political party you are. This is something that the Uni really should think again about.