Student debate and Tong Court residents

9.17.00pm GMT Thu 24th Feb 2005

This morning I attended a politics debate/question time and this afternoon had a meeting with residents of Tong Court as part of my role as Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Wolverhampton South West.

Ounsdale school in Wombourne was my first public meeting since being selected as PPC and whilst it is not in the constituency many of the students are from Wolverhampton. The panel consisted of me, a local Conservative, the Labour MP's (for Wolverhampton South West) Assistant, the Black Country organiser for RESPECT and the Chair of Wolverhampton Green Party. We all had a few minutes to introduce ourselves and then it was into questions from the 150+ students that attended. At the end of the session the students were asked to show their support for the Party they were most convinced by, the Liberal Democrats got over 50% which was very pleasing!

In the afternoon I went and met with residents of Tong Court, which is a block of sheltered accommodation for retirees. I met with about twenty residents and discussed a number of issues from pensions to Iraq to Council Tax. It was a very useful meeting and I picked up a number of issues that I promised I would talk to the Council about.

All in all a busy but useful and successful day, to finish off the day nicely when I checked my email a student from Ounsdale had emailed me asking how to join - needless to say I have been back in touch and am meeting up with him soon.