I still can’t believe that I was persuaded to swap at the last minute from standing in Maidenbower to standing in Furnace Green. I was always prepared to be a paper candidate, but can’t totally swallow my pride and must have thought that losing by 600 votes was preferable to losing by 1200, forgetting for a moment that elections are fundamentally a binary thing where the result counts for everything and the scale counts for nothing – just look at TP’s experience in the Broadfield North drawing of lots.

There are other factors though. Even standing in a ward with no hope of winning, I still feel happier in myself if its a place where I would l would like to live or represent, and Furnace Green is one of the half-dozen parts of town where I would like to live and Maidenbower isn’t. In fact, and I know this sounds bizarre, there are a couple of parts of Furnace Green which really remind me of life in the North Shore suburbs of Sydney. Anyway, it makes going through the motions a lot easier if you can identify with the place and its residents.

Still. Nobody really enjoys losing, even if there was never any prospect of winning, so I think I will give it a rest next year, even if Jayne doesn’t stand anywhere but I am definitely not having both of us fight elections at the same time: its just too much to do.

One of the reasons why I am presently happier to be a civilian than a councillor is that I am enjoying the freedom to say what I think without having to look over my shoulder for the Standards Board. Its not that I disagree with having some standards, but its much more fun to not have to show respect to people you don’t actually have any respect for. Its bad enough with some of the councilor, but I imagine the rules can stretch to cover the BNP which would cramp my style a bit! Maybe in the future it will settle down and the whole standards thing will be more concerned with what really counts like undeclared interests instead of acceptable political verbals.

Having said that, its a freedom I don’t use or abuse enough so I think it might be time to do some catching up and have a swipe at a few easy targets in the near future 🙂

Not that the new intake of Tories are universally bad: just most of them. Jayne’s opponent in Tilgate, for example, seems to be OK. By a strange coincidence they both worked at the same school at the same time about 5 years ago but didn’t realise it until they were chatting at the polling station. Jayne seems convinced that he will do a good job for Tilgate – even if she would have done a better one.

My only concern about him is that he seems too nice to be a Tory. That could be down to my lack of imagination – I just can’t imagine how a genuinely pleasant, churchgoing, committed Christian who has worked in the public sector can be an ideological Conservative. I can, however, imagine the culture shock he might get at his first Conservative Group meeting when he gets to see what is behind the curtain. If I had to bet on the person most likely to follow Marcella Head across to the Lib Dems I would put my money on him.

Tilgate was close last time when it was a two-horse race. As soon as we saw that the Greens, Lib Dems and BNP were joining in this time we felt it was more likely to go. In that case its easier to take if its someone who appears to be decent and straightforward rather than some of the other Tory candidates like Jarnail Singh or Alex Maple.

I still think I had an easier time of it than Jayne though. That John Cleese quote seems particularly apt again: “Its not the despair. I can take the despair. Its the hope I can’t stand”