Had a visit from Ian Duncan Smith this morning. He came to Kingston to visit the Kaleidoscope centre. It was not especially a political visit. He has an interest in the work of the centre because of his new activities leading the Centre for Social Justice. Actually I was pretty impressed by the extent of his knowledge of the drugs issue, not just from a UK perspective but from what he has clearly seen around the globe.
Then paid a visit to the Newent Centre in Browns Road to meet some of the elderly residents. I think they might have been a little more interested in the Bingo I interrupted but nevertheless they had some good questions on pensions and tax and even one on road humps!!
After this was the Tiffin Boy’s School hustings. Some really intelligent questions around the subjects you would expect – Iraq, tuition fees etc. Actually turned into one of the best hustings we have had to date.
This evening was another hustings, this time at the Kingston racial Equality Council. Ed Davey did not turn up to this but instead we had Susan Kramer in his place. She seems a good person but I do wish she would learn when to stop talking! Unsurprisingly there was quite a lot of debate about immigration and asylum and once again lots of attempts to misrepresent our policy by saying we were arguing for no immigration. One of the accusations that is beginning to bore me about this issue is the idea that we are somehow whipping up racism on this campaign. All sides agree that the press are not helpful on this but neither are our opponents when they seek to mislead and spin our policies into something they are not. In fact the Lib Dem policy on immigration is that there should be a skills based quota, as is ours. The difference is that we would let parliament decide the number whereas the Lib Dems would hand control to some pan European quango.
