Snide comments

The snide comment to this blog "do you think 3% is a good showing?" started me thinking about other snide comments and I was remind of an incident during the Romsey by-election.

Candidates (and minders) for the three main parties had to get up early to stand in the Watrose Car Park being invterviewed for Five Live (It's such a glamorous life). For some reason the Tory candidate (Tim Palmer) suddenly went into overdrive about how he (Dorset farmer, born in London) was the only truly candidate. Labour guy and I burst out laughing and presenter asked how that was possible when SG lived in constituency and he didn't. Rant continued and accompanying Tories clearly didn't regard this as the most helpful interview in the world.

Once the interview was over the Tory accompanying Tim came over to me and sneered, "Enjoy it back on the Parish Council won't you?" I was a Borough and Town Councillor at the time and asked what he meant.
"Enjoy it. Because that's what you'll be going back to after the election."

His attitude annoyed me so I told Mr Sneer that I was going to Parliament as well and then said

"You people just don't know how to be nice to other people do you?" and I was robustly informed by this guy that he "had no intention of being nice to people like you"

I can't recall quite how the conversation ended but was quite surprised to see on the lunchtime news that the then deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party was sounding off about something or other. I recall pointing at the screen and saying, "That was the bloke who was so rude to me this morning!" - it was none other than John Hayes MP whose first words to me when he saw me in Westminster were, "I see you've managed to find the tea room!"

To be fair - he did later approach me and give me a friendly little chat about how MPs really tried to work together in Westminster and what happened in the by election was a completely different ball game.