Candi-dating

This morning, I caught the 393 up to Stoke Newington, to join in an unusual hustings. The format was meant to be like speed dating - electors would spend three minutes with each candidate, and ask a uniform set of questions to score them against. The trick was, we weren't to say which party we were from, they had to guess from our policies.

Let's just say it wouldn't have been hard for them to work it out from what I said.

Below are the "stock" questions they suggested (people could make up their own), and the replies I sort of had in my head.

Q1:What can you do as an MEP that can make a difference to pour lives?
A: Nothing. We're not making any promises, if you vote for us, you're the one making the promise to work towards abolishing capitalism and the wages system.

Q2:If you had the power what one EU law would you change and why?
A: None. We're going to parliament as rebels and not reformers, changing one law here or there is ineffectual, especially and until we have a mass movement for the abolition of capitalism and the wages system.

Q3:Given the current distrust of politicians what will you do to restore public confidence?
A: Mothing. We don't want to be ruled, and we don't want leaders. Only you know how to run your life properly, and so we seek a truly democratic society in which you don't have to place faith in leaders.

Q4:Would you be happy to publish you wages and expenses?
A: Yes. Our party is an open party, all our meetings are open to the public, and our delegates in the European Parliament would be fully answerable to our members, and would only take workers' wages.

Q5:What would you do as an MEP that would have an impact on climate change?
a: Nothing. You'll need to join the worldwide movement for socialism that will turn our environment into common property so that we can all look after it, instead of seeing it degraded in the tragedy of the commons that is capitalism.

Of course, the conceit never worked. I only talked to about seven people, onhe insisted that capitalism was a set of rules, and we need a set of rules to deal with immigrants coming to Hackney and depriving the locals of homes. Bizarrely, he had a strong West Indian accent... An old lady asked my marital status and if I had a maths qualification. Another lady talked about her freind's diabetes prescription problem 9I said all socialism can do is get us access to doctors and provide them with quality drugs and information, I'm not a medical expert, so I steered clear).

Anoteh feller turned out to be a journalist, with a blog of his own and we just chatted.

The theme of this election seems to be that there tend to be more candidates than electors at hustings, by the end this one did reach about ten electors, but still...