scott, in brief

I spent some of this morning at a Scottish Conservatives event in the East End of Glasgow.
Due to our late arrival I ended up with front row seats for the event as we sat next to Annabel Goldie. (leader of the Conservatives in the Scottish parliament).

The room hosting the event was a small medium size hall. with 12 chairs. (this is glasgow and this is the conservatives. but at the end it was standing room only with journalists, camera men, tripods and invited guests all over the room. We were twenty minutes late in starting.

First up was the candidate for the Glasgow east byelection, Davena Rankin, She was very brief but spoke well. just a few cameras going off at this point.

Second up was Iain Duncan Smith, bringing us reflections on what ha had done with the centre for social policy. theere was quite alot of Photgraphy at this point but he spoke on. quite short. but spoke about broken families and a broken society.
His main point was brokenness exists, what we need to hold on to though is the Hope that also exists in areas for Glasgow east. (The big obama thing in the states is "Hope" perhaps thats what they were playing on.)
Mr Iain Duncan Smith had nice shoes and blue tie with red specles. he aslo had 4 buttons on the sleeve of his suit and was wearing clufflinks not a button sleves shirt. (I did mention i was front row didn't I)

Third up was Conservative Party Leader David Cameron,His speach was much longer 8 pages of a4 or so, he spoke well, particlarly on the problem of knife crime and the problem of a broken society.

He said two thing i was unsure about. His stance that if you are convicted of knife crime then you should assume you are going to jail. I am aware that the knife crime sentancing legislation is beeing considered by the justice department. Hence the policy statement. I was just unclear about what he actually said about it. It sounded to me like he said anyone carrying a knife would go to jail. Now thats a whole different ball game! (having checked the footage on the BBc website i can confirm he did say convicted)

The second thing he said was that even though context is important, their was no stuctural reason which would affect people in there lives. So if you are born into an area of mass unemployemnt. there would be nothing which could stop you from finding employment. Yet context is important. I an not sure how those things go together.

Anyway
He as wearing a blue tie and had five buttons on his suit sleeve. (I wondered if it was a ranking system like the pips in star trek). Anyway he had nice shoes and seemed slightly older and less sharp that when i have seen him on the TV.

He handled the questions well, in particular dodging the one his voting record, (Not as bad as Tony Blair, not as good as Dennis Skinner.) Told a very bad joke about Newsnight which didn't really get a laugh.

All in all quite a bizzarre experience. The amount of distractions to be dealt with was substantial.(cameras going off, people writing, people moving about.

Yet despite being on the front seat there was no eye contact.

anyway expect to see me in the front row listening intently! (aparently i missed out on the news programmes but i haven't checked this mornings papers

Technorati Tags: Iain Duncan Smith, David Cameron, Glasgow East By-election, fixing our broken society