Thanks to Norman Tebbit

I enjoy canvassing. You get to hear ordinary people's views and it can throw up some real surprises. Yesterday I was in Bulkington with candidate for Nuneaton & Bedworth Borough Council, Julian Gutteridge. A man of retirement age with a north eastern accent called me over. "Do you know what the Tories did for me?" he asked. Fearing a tirade against Mrs Thatcher & how she single handedly destroyed British Industry and put millions on the dole, as I had heard many times while the Parliamentary candidate in Nuneaton, I replied "No" and prepared myself for the onslaught. But I was told a different story. The man said he had been working in the shipyards in Sunderland and had been intermittently out of work, with no job security when he heard Norman Tebbit speaking about has father getting on his bike and looking for work. The man said to me that after listening to that speech he decided to leave the north-east and move to the Midlands where he found a permanent position working in a local authority where he worked until retirement. His biggest complaint was the fact that he is being taxed on a modest income additional to his pension where the tax rate has just doubled from 10p to 20p and whatever fudge Brown & Darling are bringing in to compensate him doesn't impress him in the least. I left with a spring in my step!