Congratulations to David Chadwick, the new Liberal Democrat MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe.
Congratulations also go to Ellie Chowns, who won for the Greens in North Herefordshire. I'm very happy that I was a tiny part of helping her campaign!
And goodbye to Fay Jones and Bill Wiggin, the Conservatives who lost those seats.
I was phoned up a few days ago by a lovely lady from the Green Party who asked if I'd like to volunteer to help on election day. They think Ellie Chowns has a good chance of winning in North Herefordshire, so they were asking people from surrounding constituencies to go there, to concentrate their efforts.
I said I would help if I could get there - buses are always a problem - but they found someone else from the Brecon and Radnor constituency who was going to help, and I was able to get a lift with him and his wife. We were sent to Weobley, where bundles of leaflets were waiting for us. They even gave out wooden spatulas to poke the leaflets through difficult letter boxes. I was a bit dubious about that at first, but it turned out to be really useful!
The husband and wife team went out around the rural area, since the instructions said that it should be done in pairs, and I went off to Dilwyn with a chap from Wrexham. We each did half the village. I've never seen so many Green posters on display before!
I met some lovely people on the doorstep, and only one lady refused a leaflet. "I'm neutral," she said. "I'm a Jehovah's Witness. I'm waiting for God's Kingdom."
Back at the hub in Weobley I waited for my lift to return, and chatted with another couple of people who had come down from Chester. It was all very well organised, and by the time I left leafletting had been replaced by the volunteers who were going round knocking on doors to see if people had voted yet. The couple who were hosting the hub provided teas, coffees and a snack lunch, and they were also baking biscuits for an allotment event on Saturday.
They arrived with an injured hedgehog that they'd rescued from the side of the road, so our journey home was diverted to Kington vets, so they could drop it off there. Somehow it seemed like a stereotypically Green thing to do!
After that, I went to cast my own vote, and saw quite a few familiar faces in the queue to the polling station. The chap who was telling outside the polling station admired my suffragette badges (I always wear them on election days) and said what a pity it was that some women he knew wouldn't vote, after all the trouble the suffragettes went to.
This evening I shall be sitting down with a glass of wine and the radio into the night to see what the results are. It should be an interesting night.
A Facebook page started recently for pagans who are local to the Herefordshire and Worcestershire area.
Normally, I can't go to meetings, or moots as pagans call them, because they're in the evening and there are no buses (and my broomstick can't fly all the way to Hereford!). However, the Facebook people organised a picnic on Saturday on Castle Green in Hereford, so I thought I'd like to go along to that.
Little did I know that the picnic was cancelled at the last minute because of the dodgy weather - I was already on the bus.
Going through Herefordshire was interesting, in the run up to the general election. I saw about 5 Labour posters, and one for Reform on the bus route.
Dorstone was having a Heritage Skills Day, and as the bus drew up by the Pandy, two ladies were setting up a wicker weaving area on the little green.
I didn't go straight to Castle Green when I got into Hereford, either. It seemed like a good opportunity to find the EE shop and renew my phone contract, since there is no longer an EE shop in Hay (it's now St Michael's Hospice shop). The young lady I spoke to was very helpful, and even got a slightly cheaper deal for me.
Some pagans (and a couple of cute dogs) had turned up at Castle Green, despite the weather, and it didn't actually rain while we were there. I'd brought food to share, and we chatted about local history, and archaeology, and pagan meetings and rituals, and it was lovely. It's a pity more people didn't turn up anyway.
I also discovered that there is a labyrinth elsewhere on Castle Green, and I think I'd like to go back soon and walk it.
The meeting was supposed to finish at 8pm, but there were lots more questions on the list, and the consensus from the audience was that they should carry on - the Globe allowed the meeting to continue until 8.30pm, when they really did have to kick everyone out!
One question came from a seventeen year old girl called Daisy, who was probably the youngest person in the room. She pointed out that she had lived under a Tory government for fourteen of her seventeen years, and wanted to know if her future looked brighter?
Fay Jones said something about educational standards (and was heckled with "She's lying!"). Matthew Dorrance said that the system was broken, and the last Labour government had been better, and Ammi Kaur-Dhaliwal, who works with secondary school children, said that kids today are much more aware of the issues, and they need empowerment. Later, she mentioned being in favour of young people voting from the age of sixteen. David Chadwick quipped that asset prices are better.
The candidates were also asked what their priorities would be as an MP.
Ammi Kaur-Dhaliwal said it would be dealing with issues for constituents.
David Chadwick said there were different responsibilities between the Welsh government and Westminster, and who controls what, and that funding was important.
Fay Jones talked about better broadband for rural areas.
Matthew Dorrance talked about stopping younger people from needing to move away from the area, and international development.
And at one point there was uproar as David Chadwick went completely off the topic of the question to attack Vaughan Gething, the Labour First Minister of Wales and his funding scandal. Despite shouting from the audience and the efforts of the moderator , he would not stop. Roger Williams, the previous Liberal Democrat MP for Brecon and Radnor, was in the audience, and he actually stood up to remonstrate with him. It took some time for order to be restored. Matthew Dorrance also mentioned that he was a friend of Vaughan Gething.
Up until that point, David Chadwick was looking like quite a reasonable candidate, but he did himself no favours with that outburst. Matthew Dorrance has a lot of local experience, and he was getting on quite well with Fay Jones, chatting quietly between questions. After all, they have been working together locally. Ammi Kaur-Dhaliwal impressed me too. I'm afraid that, whatever her personal qualities, Fay Jones is part of the Conservative government that has got the country into the state that it is now in, so I can't bring myself to recommend her as a candidate.
