Offend in Every Way

Oh joy. David Cameron will be bringing "Cameron Direct" to Bristol this Thursday. Wonder if this will bring my elusive Tory opponent out of hiding? I was meant to be debating her on Monday at St Brendan's Sixth Form, but she had to pull out due to work commitments (or should that be "work commitments"?) and the Tories couldn't come up with a replacement. Pretty poor show considering the students at St Brendan's come from far and wide, and there are quite a few Tory candidates hoping to win seats in the surrounding areas. And it would have been absolutely spiffing to have had Jacob Rees-Mogg there.

As it was, the only other panel members were Vowlsie for the Greens and The Squadron Leader for the Lib Dems, who did a pretty good job of impersonating a Tory. Not that surprising given his past as a Tory councillor in Woking and, according to my mole, rather a right-wing one at that. Someone should ask him how he ended up in the Lib Dems, as it wasn't apparent from anything he said on Monday. The students looked rather bemused when, in response to a Q about the BA strike, he referred to his 20 years service in the RAF - no strikes there! Still, as we say, vote Lib Dem, get Tory.

He did pledge his support for Votes at 16, but as Vowlsie points out in the comments on my earlier "Fighter" post, his conversion to the cause seems to have been rather sudden.

On a more serious note... There are a whole host of candidates standing in Bristol East this time, including the English Democrats, a Socialist/ Trade Union candidate, and the BNP. No word from UKIP yet. The organiser of Monday's debate wasn't aware of the first two candidates and the decision whether or not to invite the BNP candidate was taken out of his hands as the college itself have decided the BNP should not be allowed on the premises.

I've discussed on here before, in the context of Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time, my support for 'No platform for the BNP'. I know it's debatable, and sometimes the arguments against sharing a platform with them can sound a bit flimsy, but one thing I noticed when I was putting this point to the assembled students on Monday, was that while the students were fairly evenly split on the issue, all the BME students were nodding in agreement with me. And I kind of think they're the ones I should be listening to on this issue.