News from the front line: The Shekinah Centre, Penzance.

At 6.30pm on Friday, 24th April, 2015, Graham Calderwood entered the lion’s den again. This time it was the hustings in the Shekinah Centre on Taroveor Road in Penzance. These are the premises of the Shekinah Christian church, an evangelical non conformist church.
The doughty Stuart Guppy and your Editor were in attendance. Graham acquitted himself well but there was MAJOR problem with the format of the meeting as unlike the hustings in Helston, the chairman of this hustings was not allowing those putting the questions to comment on the response of the candidates.
This of course gave the candidates a VERY easy ride as it meant that weak and unprepared candidates could not be snared by the audience.
This of course favoured the consensus – which probably was why the chairman of this particular hustings adopted this democratically deficit policy – that is generally used in such delightful bastions of democracy as Belarus!
This meant that to our question about the consequences on “fuel poverty” brought about by the CO2 nonsense could not be followed up. We did however manage to declare to the meeting that we would like to see and increase in CO2 and not a decrease as this would help crops grown in drought prone areas, help the rainforest and of course relieve fuel poverty!
The reaction of the audience showed which of the candidates they supported:
“Criminal” was the reaction of the Greens.
“Dangerous” was the reaction of the Liberal-Democrats.
“Eccentric” was the reaction of Labour.
“No comment” was the intriguing reaction of the Tories.
Which of course was why your Editor made the comment in the first place!
After the hustings tea and biscuits were served and several members of the audience came up to us and agreed with us. This demonstrates a very common occurrence; most people do not wish to “put their heads above the parapet” when someone is expressing an unpopular opinion. The is natural as most people do not like to be thought ill of or laughed or jeered at.
What was amusing was that the Green, Lib-Dem and Labour candidates were all of the opinion that the effects of the high cost of green energy could be mitigated by using less of it through the better insulation of homes. This of course COMPLETELY FAILS TO MISS THE POINT that British industry NEEDS RELIABLE LOW COST electricity to compete in world markets!