Where to go for your Holidays!

Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, of course and, for many, politics is either a complete mystery or is plainly understood as one lying idiot talking against another (rarely is it face to face!).  For anyone holding either of these opinions the mere mention of politics is an incentive to switch off.  For some the switch-off is literal, causing a changed TV channel or a blank screen, while others simply glaze over and think of a sunlit beach or the beauty of nature until it passes.

It's an ideal time just now, if you can stand it, to offer a personal view.  If I'm honest, I can't blame those 'off-switchers' one little bit and, for many years, I was one of their number.  That said (and I'm sure this snatch appeared on this blog some years ago), I've always voted Liberal, and have taken a mild interest in their fortunes (or lack of them) over the past forty-odd years.  I never knew how my parents voted ... I guess Labour, but that is only a guess.  I remember my father once telling me that his father - he died when I was only a year old, so I never knew him - always spoke well of the 'Little Welshman' (i.e. David Lloyd George).

For years my political interest was purely mathematical ... remember that Swingometer on the TV coverage decades ago?  This view peaked when I found I was able to listen to RTE on my radio as I drove around the country, and I followed the Irish General Election in 2007 intently, supporting what I heard by online research about their voting system, a proportional system called the Single Transferable Vote.  There each constituency elects four or five members, ensuring that virtually everyone is represented by someone of their own persuasion ... something I've never experienced in fifty years of adulthood!

Looking back from now, I can't be clear whether it was my recollection about my grandfather, or the Irish system, or simply the devastating cut in the number of Liberal Democrat MPs in the 2015 General Election, about which something clearly had to be done.  Whatever had led to my decision, that last was the actual trigger!  On the day after the election, I enrolled as a member of the Party.  Soon I began to get emails, and later that year I went along to a meeting where a local branch was being created.  There were many new faces, and among them a couple of people I knew.  I soon got to know a few more!

The following year, I was persuaded to join the branch committee and allowed my name to appear on a ballot paper for the District Council elections.  One summer's evening in 2018, as I was leaving the theatre in the town, I was spotted by our chairman.  He quickly explained that the secretary had resigned and asked if I would be able to take the minutes at our meeting in a few days' time.  The rest, as they say, is history, and I've now been the branch secretary for a year and a half.

Administration is one thing, but what does it achieve?  From the outset, I needed to do something.  I quickly discovered that I couldn't cope with the twists and turns in and out of gateways to go delivering leaflets and I knew that I don't have the personality to get involved with canvassing.  So I became an itinerant helper with the operation of election campaigns.  My first venture was just after the famous Brexit Referendum in 2016, when the Prime Minister resigned and there was a by-election in his constituency, Witney in Oxfordshire.  I realised that this was a driveable distance from home and, over three weeks, I spent a total of four days in their office, albeit staying one night at a charming little B&B near Swindon, and making a 'mini-holiday' out of it.

The next spring came an impromptu General Election, where I found that the candidate in St Albans - much nearer home - was the daughter of someone I was at school with, so I went there for a week, commuting on a daily basis and I've just started an elaborate plan of helping there again for three days a week to fit in with my other commitments.

Meanwhile, there have been other excursions.  This summer I spent a couple of days in the lovely countryside of eastern Wales, staying at a B&B in Llandrindod Wells and helping in the Brecon & Radnorshire by-election.  In Sheffield in September, there was great uncertainty whether there would be a by-election or an imminent General Election and I found it convenient when house-sitting for my cousin's holiday, to commute in that direction for a couple of days helping a campaign that had been reduced to a gentle simmer.

All in all, it's a wonderful combination.  There's the underlying feeling of 'doing something to help' while, at the same time, the mundane duties and growing friendships with new colleagues are an adventure of themselves.  And if - as in the case of Wales and Sheffield - there's equally attractive scenery as a backdrop to it all, that's an added bonus!  To me politics is far more than talking and a cross on a ballot paper!