Vote, Vote, Vote, Maybe? (Part 4)

Seven days until the election and I’m still no further forward than after my last blog.


So far I have only had two candidates reply directly to my email, The Green Party candidate, Rachel Collinson, and the Conservative candidate, Festus Akinbusoye.

An assistant from the Labour candidate, Lyn Brown, emailed me six days ago wanting my postal address so Lyn Brown could post me a letter. He hasn’t responded to my reply that I wanted an email response because I wanted to read her reply soon, not later.

The Liberal Democrat candidate, Paul Reynolds, and the UKIP one, Jamie McKenzie, have still not even bothered to acknowledge my email, let alone reply to it and answer my questions.

The two other candidates (Andy Uzoka of Christian People’s Alliance and Cydatty Bogie of Communities United Party) are completely unreachable, neither of them seems to have an email address to contact them on.

I feel so frustrated and sicken by all this. It really feels as if those candidates just aren’t bothered about my vote. Really, is campaigning so unimportant to them?

I was watching the BBC news last and they had a report on South Thanet, in Kent, where Nigel Farage is one of the candidates. There people are being bombarded by the candidates seeking their votes, there is wide-spread door-to-door canvassing and it seems almost daily campaigning in the streets.

Here, in West Ham, if you didn’t have the television on you would barely know there was an election coming. We have had fliers push through our front door (The Labour and Conservative candidates also posted me the same fliers I’d had pushed through the door) but apart from that nothing else. If there has been any local hustings they have been very quietly advertised. There is a large local Community Hub centre, two minutes walk from my home, ideal for a general Election hustings, yet there has been nothing there. No one, from any candidate, has canvassed me on my foot door. No one has been campaigning around here, not at the busy tube station or our new parade of shops. Nothing.

Is this because we don’t have a high profile candidate standing? Is it because it is a very safe seat? Is it because the sitting MP has to do very little work to get re-elected and the other candidates don’t stand a hope-in-hell of getting elected? Or is it a combination of all of the above?

Russell Brand famously has never voted. I used to pour scorn on him for it but more and more (after the way I’m being treated by these candidates) I am understand why people didn’t vote, especially when the candidates barely seem interested in my vote.

Drew.

Vote, Vote, Vote, Maybe? (Part 3)

The saga of my attempts to get my local candidates to reply to my email and give me a straight answer further continues.

After Friday's blog things have moved on, but not that far. Today I came home from work (As a nurse I have to work weekends, and no 9% pay rise for me, unlike MPs) to find an email from the Conservative candidate, Festus Akinbusoye, but from the tone of the first paragraph my tweets to him galvanised him into replying.

That still leaves the Liberal Democrat candidate, Paul Reynolds, and the UKIP candidate, Jamie McKenzie, who haven't even acknowledged that I sent them an email, and the Labour candidate, Lyn Brown, who hasn't answered my questions.

21 days since I sent out my email, and only 11 days until the General Election, and only two candidates have replied to email and only after a bit of naming and shaming on social media; plus two other candidates (Andy Uzoka of Christian Peoples Alliance and Cydatty Bogie of Communities United Party) are completely unreachable. Am I asking too much, are these candidates ignoring me, or are these candidates so incompetent/too lazy to reply to me?

The media tells us that this election is too close to call, so I would imagine that candidates would be chasing any vote they could get, or is that only in marginal constituencies?

Drew.

Vote, Vote, Vote, Maybe? (Part 2)

Update on yesterday's blog posting. I've now had some responses to my email.

Firstly The Green Party candidate, Rachel Collinson, finally replied to my email yesterday. Unfortunately it took a shaming on tweeter to get her to reply to me, her excuse was that she's working 17 hour days, but she had not even acknowledged my email to her before yesterday.

Today one of the assistants from the Labour candidate, Lyn Brown, emailed me wanting my postal address so Lyn Brown could write me a letter. It is thirteen days until the General Election, I emailed her 19 days ago. I wanted an email response so that I can read it as soon as possible, not have to wait for a letter that might not even arrive until after the election. If she wants my address to know that I am a genuine constituent, fine, but we've had emails for over twenty years so why can't she email me her reply?

I sent a reply to her assistant saying this, now lets see how long it takes to finally get a reply back. There's 13 days to the election, at this will I even get to read her answers to my questions before then?

As for the other three candidates, the Conservative (Festus Akinbusoye), the Liberal Democrat (Paul Reynolds) and the UKIP (Jamie McKenzie), I have heard NOTHING back from them. They haven't even an acknowledged my email.

Since I emailed the five candidates there have been two more candidates announced they're standing and wanting my vote, here in West Ham, Cydatty Bogie (Communities United Party) and Andy Uzoka (Christian Peoples Alliance); but I can't send them my email because they don't have email addresses were they can be contacted. Is it that they don't want voters contacting them?

Thirteen days until the General Election and only one candidate has answered my three questions. It feels as if they don't want to reply to me, what are they afraid of or am I is unimportant to them that they arrogantly ignore me?

Drew.

Vote, Vote, Vote, Maybe?

In case no one has noticed, there's a General Election in just over two weeks. Well I intend to vote

My vote is special to me, I only get one vote and I want to use it well. To that aims I have emailed the five candidates that were then standing for election as the MP for my constituency (Since I emailed them two more, fringe candidates have stood and I will email then too). I’ve pasted a copy of the email below.

I asked the candidates three questions:

How would they protect the NHS as it faces increasing demands on it?

How would they recruit more nurses into the NHS? There’s already 20,000 empty nursing posts in the NHS.

How would they help the NHS become a community based healthcare provider, rather than a hospital based provider?

These are the five candidates I emailed:

Festus Akinbusoye, Conservative, email, festus@fest4westham.com, Twitter @fest4westham

Jamie McKenzie, UKIP, email jamie.mckenzie@ukiplocal.org (No Social Media)

Lyn Brown, Labour (Current MP), email lyn@lynbrown.org.uk, Twitter @lynbrownmp

Paul Reynolds, Liberal Democrat, email paulemreynolds@gmail.com, Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/paul.reynoldslibdem

Rachel Collinson, Green Party, email rachel.collinson@greenparty.org.uk, Twitter @Rachel_shares

I emailed them all on the 5^th April and since then... Nothing. I got am automatic email receipt from Lyn Brown saying that she was very busy and could take up to ten days to get back to me. That’s all the response I have received from all five of those emails

None of the candidates have answered my questions.

None of the candidates have responded to my email.

No assistant or campaign worker or volunteer or anyone from their office has responded to my email.

Nothing!

Is this how candidates view the people they want to vote for them? If so it is deeply arrogant and patronising. If my questions are too complicated or that they just can’t them answer then why can’t they say that to me. Instead they just ignore me and their silence speaks a thousand words.

So far, as of today, all the campaigning I have received for my vote is four, very brief leaflets pushed through our front door; one each from the Labour, Conservative, UKIP and Liberal Democrat candidates. Nothing more.

Do these candidates think that my vote is so cheap that those leaflets are all they need to do to receive it?

No wonder that people don’t vote.

I’ll keep you informed if they of these candidates to do reply to me, but I am not holding my breath waiting for their reply.

Drew

My email to these candidates:

Why Should I Vote for You?

Dear ______,

I live in the West Ham constituency and I intend voting at the coming election, but I am not sure who to vote for. I work as nurse, in the NHS, and I am very concerned about the state of the NHS. To help me decide who to vote I'd like to ask you these three questions:

The NHS is facing more and more demands, especially with an ageing population and the increasing cost of healthcare (the cost of new medications and clinical equipment). How would you ensure it stays fit for purpose, meets people's needs and is still based on people's clinical need?

The NHS has approximately 20,000 unfilled nurses' posts, which has a direct impact on patient care. The NHS is short of nurses due to people leaving nursing, many nurses have retired or approaching retirement, and that we are training less and less nurses each year, we now train 12% less nurses then we did in 2010. How would you reverse this and ensure there are enough nurses to provide the high standard of care needed?

For the last twenty years we have been told by different governments that the NHS needs to move away from the hospital model of providing healthcare and towards a community based one. Yet still the community remains the poor relation of the hospital, with much less staff and resources. I know this fist hand because I work as a District Nurse. How would you ensure that the community has the resources to deliver healthcare were people live and that the NHS does finally move to the model of community based healthcare?

My vote is important to me and I would appreciated your answers to my questions to help me decide who to vote for.

Yours,

Drew Payne

drew@________________

Sent 5^th April 2015.

The New Midnight, Eternal Love Saga

(And now for some silly and fictional humour)

Stephanie Myers has written the last twilight novel, well for now, and JK Rowling has finished the Harry Potter saga, until her next novel bombs. So Persephone Hebdon-Bridge, author and inbreed middle-class floozy, has written a new saga to fill the void, The New Midnight, Eternal Love Saga, which she’s confident will soon become an international movie franchise.

The Twilight books had a vampire as its hero, Harry Potter was a wizard. Persephone Hebdon-Bridge has chosen, as her hero, a far older and more elemental mystical being. A man, Jeremy, who is un-dead.

Her heroine is a young gal, on the verge of womanhood, a mere eighteen years old, from one of the best Home Counties’ families, Tamara.

Tamara is tired of the usual sweaty palmed and chin-less boys she meets at the tennis club and the Young Conservatives’ Barn Dances. So, when one night, on the way home from an England for the English meeting, Tamara meets the tall, dark, handsome and un-dead Jeremy. It’s love at first sight.

Extract from The New Midnight, Eternal Love Saga

Tamara pulled her Porsche 911 to a stop, at the side of the country lane, in the heart of England. God’s own country. Where the ancient Oak trees spread their two hundred year old branches protectively over the lane. Their leaves cast a dappled pattern over Tamara’s high-end car.

Tamara turned to the handsome passenger next to her. The moonlight fell upon his face, turning his green skin to a pale olive. His eyes, in that moonlight, shone a deep gold, rather than their normal demonic yellow. In that fading light she could barely see the drool from his rotting, black teeth and his putrefying, grey lips. He looked especially handsome tonight, she thought.

“Jeremy, you’re not like the other boys,” Tamara said.

“Ugh,” Jeremy replied.

“You treat me so differently to all the other boys,” Tamara gushed. “You’re not always trying to get inside my Janet Raeger knickers and wanting me to do unspeakable things on the backseat of your BMW.”

“Ugh,” Jeremy replied.

“It’s so refreshing that you want to get to know me as a whole person before we give ourselves to each other on a physical level,” Tamara said.

“Ugh,” Jeremy replied.

“I feel so squiffy just merely being in your presence,” Tamara said. “I don’t need to resort to mere Champagne cocktails, like the other girls do.”

“Ugh,” Jeremy replied.

“Oh, Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy,” Tamara said. “I wish we could stay together forever.”

Jeremy smiled at her, hungrily.

Drew Payne

November 2011.

Art is the Best Revenge

Desperately Seeking the Exit, Peter Michael Marino’s one man show

What do you do when you’re in a foreign city, you’ve written the book for a musical but everyone has their own “ideas” about it and aren’t talking to you, you’re smoking so many cigarettes that British American Tobacco shares have gone up 5%, everyone keeps asking you if you’re “all right” when you obviously aren’t, you’re bleeding from the rectum, you throw yourself in front of a bus in desperation but it’s going so slow it doesn’t harm you and Debbie Harry is delighted she “wrote” your musical? You go mad or write a one man show. Peter Michael Marino did both, though not at the same time.

In 2007, Marino wrote the book for the stage musical version of the film Desperately Seeking Susan, with the music of Blondie and Debbie Harry. The show lasted four weeks before closing, not so much flopping as crashing and burning. But was Marino disheartened? You bet. Out of the ashes of that disaster, and after a lot of therapy, Marino had created his one man show Desperately Seeking the Exit.

Fortunately, this isn’t the “pity-me” style of theatre. Marino tells his story with humour and energy, but this is still the dark side of show business. This show is about the failure of a West End musical, the crash and burn of this musical and the effect it had on Marino. But in the same way this isn’t a self-pity show, it isn’t a downbeat and depressing one. Marino has a sharp and lively sense of humour and fills his show with it, making us laugh at his nightmare experience.

I never knew that producing a musical was such a long twisting journey. Marino’s humour navigates this journey for us, with the constant changing “vision” for his musical, as director, chirographer and then producers all add their “ideas” for how the show should be and Marino’s nightmare deepens. His is a truly nightmarish journey downwards, at one point I even wondered how he survived (when he described a two hour meeting to find an alternative to the word “pot” you knew all hope was lost), this world was as unreal as Lewis Carol’s Alice stories. Marino also proves that, even in the theatre, the writer is at the bottom of pile but the first to be blamed when things go wrong, even when it’s all taken out of their hands (So, not much different then for writers elsewhere).

A lot of Marino’s humour does come from the differences between American and British culture, though his are much more intelligent insights then how we pronounce tomato and the temperature of our beer. At first, I was disappointed to hear so many jokes about our differences but as show when on they served to show his alienation, he was in a foreign country as everything went wrong.

From such dark material Marino has crafted a lively and funny show, with a heart that is all too human. This is a must-see show for Marino’s insights into the madness of producing a West End musical and his always sharp humour. Unfortunately we saw Desperately Seeking the Exit at the end of its run at the Leicester Square Theatre but Peter Michael Marino will be performing it elsewhere so check him out online. Unlike the musical, this is no flop.

The website Desperately Seeking the Exit.

Desperately Seeking the Exit on Facebook.

Desperately Seeking the Exit on Twitter.

Desperately Seeking the Exit on SoundCloud

Desperately Seeking the Exit on Tumblr

How to write a West End flop, BBC online article about the show

Original Guardian review of Desperately Seeking Susan (The Musical), and it’s not good.

Drew

Sex Sells (In the Literary Sense)

Last month, two of my short stories were published in the anthology Eros at Large, twenty-seven stories about the “erotic impulse” (Surprise, surprise they are all about sex).

When I received the submission call for this anthology, it said that they were looking stories about Lesbian and Gay life and how sex relates to it (Though they said they were looking for stories about sexual attraction). I tried to write something along these lines but found I couldn’t, I kept wanting to put twists on that or have a frustrating and unfulfilling ending. None of them worked. So instead I look a different take on the erotic.

I submitted two short stories about men in long term relationships. The first story dealt with a man who finds out that his lover is cheating on him, yet again, but doesn’t react in the “traditional” way. The second story was a about a couple, who’ve been together over ten years, and are trying to spice-up their love-life, with messy and embarrassing consequences (These stories are much more my take on sex and relationships). The editor obviously liked them because they’re both in the book.

Eros at Large had a book launch last month (I was tweeting about it madly in the weeks before) at the Houseman’s Bookshop, in Kings Cross, and I read at it. I didn’t read from the story about the couple spicing up their love-life, it starts with a description of them using whipped cream in sex, a rather explicit but not very erotic scene, and I didn’t have the nerve to read that out in public. So I read from the other story, stopping when the narrator finds out his lover is cheating on him.

It’s a long time since I’ve read from my own work in public and it’s always been a strange experience. When I’m reading my own writing it always feels as if there’s nowhere to hide. If it was someone else’s writing then it’s their words people like or dislike but when it’s my own work I worry that people won’t like my writing, won’t like how I deliver it or both. Yet I want people to read my writing and book launches are all part of the process.

Well, no one booed me and Martin said I read well, so someone liked it. The evening did go well, but most importantly my stories are included in that anthology. So, onward and upward...

Eros at Large can be bought here, at the publisher’s website, or you can find it on the “Bookshop” page of my website.

Drew.