Each week a different PPC provides us with an insight into
life as a candidate and gives us a flavour of their own campaign and
interests. If you are a candidate
and are keen to be featured, please email Jonathan Isaby.
"Northfield is a fairly densely populated constituency in the South West of Birmingham, made of four wards: Northfield, Longbridge, Weoley and Kings Norton, which has just been added in the recent boundary changes. It is largely white working or middle class with some areas within the top 5% of the Government's indices of deprivation, but also some very wealthy area, all within a few miles of each other. It is famously the old home of MG Rover and the constituency is still suffering from the fallout of the collapse with areas of high unemployment. I am lucky enough to have a full set of hardworking Conservative Councillors in the constituency, with all 12 out of 12 - the last two seats being gained in 2008.
"I was selected to fight Northfield in May 2007, aged 25. I followed the debate about younger PPCs with interest, being number 9 on ConservativeHome’s list of the 10 youngest PPCs, and hope to address some concerns and points that were made concerning younger PPCs, especially with regards to life experience. I have spent the vast majority of my life in South West Birmingham; it is very much my home. I have always been very proud of being a true Brummie, even my distinguishable accent which I vow never to lose. I am not from a political family by any means but my parents taught me the importance of voting from a young age and this combined with playing a very active role in my local community from a similar age led me to wanted to play a more active role in society. I married my wonderful and eternally patient husband Tim, who is a Councillor in neighbouring Bournville Ward, in 2007. I left college at 18 with four A-Levels and went straight to work, being lucky enough for my employer to sponsor me to do an Open University degree of which I am very proud. I graduated in May last year, three weeks before my daughter Katie was born. She is the light of my life and gives a deeper purpose to every leaflet I push through a door and a new conviction when speaking to people. I don’t want her to grow up in this world as it is now, fighting for change became so much more personal as soon as she was born. I took voluntary redundancy in April of the year to enable me to look after Katie and run my campaign full time."
Here's Keely's Diary of the Week...
Saturday 11th July
I have started my diary on Saturday as today we held a big event that I have been planning for what seems like forever. Today was the annual Kings Norton Festival and Northfield Conservatives had a stall. We ran a tombola to raise funds for Help for Heroes, so poignant on the day that eight of our solders had been killed in the previous 24 hours. It was a really successful day, we had the best pitch going and so many prizes we had to commandeer three tables on which to put everything! This was a good example of how well the Northfield team works, with all of our prizes being donated from within the constituency and there were plenty of volunteers willing to give up their Saturday to help man the stall.
After the event I head down to London for my friend Sian’s hen night, (Katie having some quality time with daddy); she has been my best friend since the age of four and has always dreamt of doing the job she is doing now – rocket science! Seriously! I am so proud of her for achieving her dream and grateful to the support that she has given me over the years in my political career. On the way down to London I do an interview with a local paper, the Birmingham Mail, and look forward to seeing the profile article that is being written.
Monday 13th July
Quickly skipping over Sunday… Hen night in Camden - need I say more?! Makes me realise that however much Birmingham will always be my home, I do love London as well and hope to be spending more time there after the General Election. Monday starts the way I like a week to start, that is by taking Katie to playgroup in Kings Norton. I have been taking her to playgroup since she has been very little and she has lots of little friends with whom she is just starting to interact, although she does usually ignore all the girly things and go straight for the cars. Quite often playgroup turns into a mini surgery, I often pick up casework from the other mums, and sometimes wider afield, but I am just happy to help if I can, that’s the major advantage of holding all of the Council seats in the constituency - we can work as a team to cover almost any issue.
I leave playgroup and head to the constituency secretary Sandra’s house to return a gazebo I borrowed for the Help for Heroes event and to pick up some more donations that have been sent straight to her. From there I head over to Keith and Sue Barton’s, a husband and wife Councillor team in Longbridge. Keith is my agent and I am so grateful to have his help. He is a really hard worker and it is no surprise that after he won the first Conservative seat in Longbridge in 2004 (where I was also on the ticket and narrowly missed election), that we now hold all three of the Longbridge seats. I pick up the rest of the money raised on Saturday and we catch up with the week ahead.
I spend the afternoon visiting our friends Carolyn and Craig and their adorable 13-week-old baby, Isobel, who I am sure Katie will be firm friends with as they get older. I drop off some baby clothes - I seem to be running an unofficial recycling centre for baby clothes, it seems all of my friends are having babies at the moment and I am only too happy to do my bit for the environment by circulating clothes around. After all, how many times do they wear things?? I get an unusual Monday night off: usually I help teach music - brass - in a local band, but this has finished for the summer.
Tuesday 14th July
The day starts with another playgroup but I have to leave a bit early to head over to Longbridge as Cllr Sue Barton (wife of Keith) has a meeting with someone she wants me to meet prior to an action day in August. As these things go, when I get there the lady I need to meet has not come to the meeting so instead take the opportunity to visit Joanne, one of our hardest working volunteers in the constituency. It’s nice to see her as I haven’t seen her for a few weeks and we catch up; I also let her know of all the lovely work planned for the summer and am grateful for her willingness to help. No campaign would ever get off the ground without such willingness from volunteers such as Joanne and I am lucky enough to have a bank of people on whom I know I can rely for any last minute delivery, come rain or shine.
My parents come over to babysit tonight as I am going on a Governors' evening with the Governors of Dame Elizabeth Cadbury (DEC) Technology College. I have been a Governor there for two years now and find it very rewarding. It is a small school with a really excellent Head, the sort of Head who inspires you to get back into education just by being in the same room for ten minutes. DEC has a large number of special needs pupils and so never tops the league tables, but the value-added scores it achieves is astounding. It also has the most talented pupils when it comes to sport, with many Local, County and even National successes in Basketball this year. I like to go and watch home games when I can, as for me being a Governor is so much more that just attending meetings, but rather being part of the College.
Wednesday 15th July
Probably the busiest day of the week. Tim drops Katie off with Jean, our amazing neighbour who is also a childminder and has a granddaughter, Flo, six months older than Katie. Katie and Flo are already firm friends and Katie adores Jean, and her husband Dave (who chairs our local neighbourhood police tasking meetings), to pieces.
Anyway, as Tim drops off Katie I head over to Longbridge to Forestdale School. There is some scrub land adjacent to the school that a small and very committed team has been trying to turn into a better community facility, including great children's facilities, for a while now. However, there have been a number of issues which mean that this is taking a lot longer than first anticipated. I got involved a year ago, hoping to be able to share my previous experience in funding and bid writing to help raise funds - nearly £1million needed - but we need to sort out other issues before we get there. Nonetheless, the group of people remains committed and I am sure that the area will be amazing once we get round all of the issues.
I leave the meeting, pick up Joanne and head to a local pub to meet Penny Harbour, organiser of the great initiative “Women on Wednesdays”. She has arranged for women (including Wolverhampton North East PPC, Julie Rook) to come over to Northfield this afternoon for a few hours and we start the afternoon with some sandwiches - important to keep the workers well fed! - and then we head off for a successful canvassing session.
My sister Nicky and her boyfriend Anthony come over for dinner and we spend a lovely evening together, although my sister is seriously awful at Jenga.
Thursday 16th July
I spend a day in catching up on paperwork and emails. We have been delivering surveys over the last few months to big chunks of the constituency so this has generated a lot of responses – as have several local issue petitions I have helped to collect along with the local Councillors.
I have also been invited to speak at a CF event in Louth, Lincolnshire, this weekend, so I grab a few minutes in between running after Katie to pen some ideas down for what I will be saying. I have recently been working with a top guy called John Chubb who is a presentation and speech-writing expert, specialising in Obama-style techniques, so I am trying out some of the techniques that I have learnt. Unfortunately the Louth event was subsequently cancelled, but it’s all good practice nonetheless.
Friday 17th July
A day I have not been looking forward to: Katie’s final injection as an infant, the MMR. Despite controversy over the years I feel that giving Katie this vaccination is the responsible thing to do. She is very good and after it’s over is easily bribed into stopping crying with her current favourite snack, raisins. She has her one-year development check straight after and I am delighted that she passes with flying colours. She is very close to walking but not quite there yet, although she gets into enough mischief now, so goodness knows what it will be like once she is actually walking! I am also pleased that she is finally over 20lb as she was quite small when she was born and was quite slow to gain weight, clinging onto the 0.4th percentile (parents will know what I mean!) but apparently this is common for exclusively breastfed babies. She is tall though in comparison, taller than average, so I am looking forward to an old age living off her supermodel wages.
We go to Grandma and Grandpa’s for lunch (Tim’s parents) and Katie stays there for a few hours while I head home to do some catching up. The plan was to deliver some surveys that we have at the moment but unfortunately the weather was really against us so I take the time to scale mounting ironing which has been building up and reflect on the week.
August is traditionally a quiet month (although there are plenty more surveys to deliver) and this week has certainly been a bit quieter than previous weeks, but I hope you have had a flavour of my life. I know that come September we are into a higher gear and I can’t wait to really get going on the final stretch of the campaign, which will have most likely lasted for three years. One thing is abundantly clear: I am so very very lucky to have the level of support around me that I do. It is hard juggling a young child with a high quality Parliamentary campaign and I couldn’t do it without my family and Jean to help with Katie. It’s a hard, but incredibly fun journey. I would say to anyone else considering it in the future, Alton Towers hasn’t got anything on this ride. Go for it!
Next week's Diary will be written by Richard Merrin, PPC for Hornsey and Wood Green. Last week we featured a Diary from Andrew Stephenson (Pendle)
