First ever hustings

As part of the whole “General Election 2024” thing, I went to my first hustings event ever last night. It was being run out of our local library (and likely polling station) by a local church which uses this for worship on Sundays. Pleasingly, all six candidates standing in my seat were able to make it to the hustings, and they took pre-selected questions from the audience for a little more than an hour.

Not having been to a hustings before, but being very tired of the tedious shouting matches of Any Questions on Radio 4, I was expecting more heat than light, but thankfully it didn't work out that way.

Bar two brief moments, there was little anger on display. The first of those moments came when an Australian (I think) attendee, in response to a question he’d asked ostensibly around support for working people, interjected to ask our sitting MP to talk about immigration - which was tersely and efficiently put down by the MP. The second was when the Reform candidate, while bemoaning the international responses to current conflicts (emphasis on the moaning part there), was heckled by an audience member asking if he’d get rid of NATO. In both cases, these flare-ups were quickly extinguished, and the bulk of the evening was conducted without rancour.

Also unlike similar set-ups on radio and television, the candidates didn't interrupt, jeer or otherwise interact much with each other. They did take account of what other candidates said, but mostly only positively to re-emphasise points, or for humorous effect. While that made the event rather bloodless, it also made it more of an edifying spectacle than it routinely is with broadcast questions-and-answers shows.

In terms of performances of the candidates, they all cleared the low-bar of sounding confident in front of an audience of uncertain political character, which wasn't a given as two of them were only in their early twenties. Needless to say, the long-sitting MP, Caroline Nokes, was comfortably the most competent in this department, with her many years of experience in, or at the edge of, government (including fighting her own party from time to time).

The weakest performance was from a “pro-life” independent candidate, who, somewhat to my surprise, got more of a positive hearing than I'd expected … having not factored-in the ecclesiastical nature of the audience. Having only a one-issue platform - and *what* an issue - she was pretty unconvincing, and had to demure on several questions where the connection to abortion was especially thin. She also claimed never to have heard the expression “levelling-up” putting her even more clearly in the out-of-touch category.

Another weak performance was from the Reform candidate. Many of his answers were just word salads made from oft-repeated populist ramblings. On a moment-to-moment basis they were coherent, but they didn't say anything substantive and often completely failed to answer the question put. But, despite coasting on thinly-veiled xenophobia and unfocused disgruntlement, he seemed to have an appreciative segment of the audience. (For an anti-immigration candidate he made the schoolboy gaffe of referring repeatedly to his extensive working abroad, something his ideology was very keen to stop other people doing - not that the essential hypocrisy of his position was understood by his supporters.)

Our Labour candidate gave a reasonable though unsparklingly performance, clearly due to her relative inexperience. In what looks like an unwinnable situation this time around, she'll hopefully at least cut her teeth on it.

The LibDem candidate - best-placed to challenge the sitting MP - gave a very competent performance that, for me at least, clearly made tactical voting an option for voters. That said, in response to a question about life experiences to learn from, he made a massive gaffe of oversharing a tale of falling for a mail-order Russian bride. He recovered, somewhat, by emphasising what he'd learned from the whole affair (namely: listen to people who tell you you're flagrantly being scammed), but it was a very strange moment in the room. He needs to dial that sort of unnecessary honesty right down.

There was a very good performance from the young Green candidate. Not exactly convincing to me, and he would have come unstuck if other candidates had a right-to-reply, but very spirited and potentially someone going somewhere down the line. And the only candidate to clearly challenge the sacred cow of Brexit, and also to rebut the claims of “wokery” in public life from the Reform candidate.

Finally, Caroline Nokes gave, as already mentioned, a solid and assured performance. As a Tory, my overlap with her politics is limited, but she's proven herself as a principled politician, and I can't but respect the way she's stood her ground against some of the worst impulses of her party. However, she did also give a terribly fawning answer around the leadership of Sunak that overlooked flaws in his record that, at times, aren't a million miles from his predecessors that she's clashed with. Nonetheless, she's the kind of politician that the Tory Party of recent decades needs to keep hold of, but I suspect she may be on her way out.

Overall, an interesting evening. Difficult to describe as enjoyable, but a more tolerable experience than I’d feared. Whether it worked to inform undecided voters I’m far less confident of. I suspect most people there were motivated by already strong political viewpoints, ones unlikely to be altered by how the evening played out.

---

Stray observations ...

• There wasn't any attempt to characterise the audience by a raising of hands, or determine whether anyone had their voting intentions changed by the event. Possibly efforts this way would have caused more trouble than they're worth, but it would still have been interesting to hear if anyone had been moved by the words of the candidates.
• I knew already from her talking about it in the media, but it was still something to see that Caroline Nokes has bodyguards attending events with her. It's a little sad that even quite good-natured public events like this one require this, but given attacks on MPs in recent years, it seems well-advised.
• In passing, as Ms. Nokes is my sitting MP, she's been in receipt of several missives from me down the years. I have to say that, while I haven't always agreed with her responses, I've always found her replies clear, thoughtful and honest (not to mention punctual). She's definitely what you want in an MP - it's just unfortunate she's representing a party that's so decisively lost its way.

A history lesson

Netley Hospital Chapel, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Something of an education on the history of Southampton, specifically Netley, this afternoon courtesy of Royal Victoria Country Park and local author, Philip Hoare. The location is important since it was once the site of the world's largest hospital, Netley Hospital, in fact the world's largest building when it was completed back in 1863. All that remains now is the hospital's chapel, pictured above - and in many other photographs I've taken over years of visiting the park.

Anyway, Hoare's lecture took in the history of the hospital, and that of its site, from when it was originally commissioned by Queen Victoria in 1856, through its part in two World Wars, to its eventual demolition after more than a century of use (and, potentially, misuse) in 1966. It being somewhere that I've visited many times over the years, not least because it has a great war cemetery, I've picked up some basic history but, as Hoare uncovered, only the slimmest of slim fractions.

Some of the most interesting parts of Hoare's account were how familiar certain tales about the hospital are to the modern audience. So, we started with the NIMBYs who protested its construction, and who, apparently, even claimed the risk of malaria to patients as a reason for building elsewhere. Then there were were the complaints that the resulting hospital wouldn't be fit for purpose from, of all people, Florence Nightingale. And on top of all that, the massive cost overruns that construction incurred, with the hospital ultimately costing more than twice its original budget. The lecture certainly made the 19th century seem strangely resonant to ostensibly 21st century concerns about big government projects.

It was particularly striking to hear how ill-planned and poorly executed quite important aspects of the hospital and its rationale were. Few, if any, of the painfully-gained lessons that Nightingale learned during the Crimean War were adopted into its design, and poor decisions often came back to haunt the hospital. For instance, Nightingale noted that, should the hospital need expanding, its linear design (an impressive 1/4 mile in length) would mean that expansion would be very difficult. Which was subsequently borne out during WWI, when injured troops were housed, albeit with improved treatment, in a "shanty town" of tents behind in the main building. Victorian Britain certainly felt more a part of the continuum of history rather than the exceptional Golden Age that it's sometimes presented as.

Also alarming, though more from the standpoint of 21st century medicine, were some of the practices employed at the hospital. Hoare recounted one tale involving leeches, spoke of the level of training afforded to nurses (let's just say it wasn't degree-level), and showed contemporary video footage of some rather unconvincing physical therapies. He also spoke about Netley Hospital's military asylum which served, effectively, as a holding facility for victims of "shell shock", as well as a source of dark, if unconfirmed, tales of drug experiments (interestingly, it's now used by the Hampshire Constabulary for training). Much of this is understandable in terms of the evolution of medicine as a discipline, but at the same time it was clear that patients were also viewed as, and treated as, guinea pigs by the doctors.

Overall, it was excellent. Talking without notes, and using only 30 or so vintage photographs for illustration, Hoare did a great job tracing out the biography of the hospital, from construction to destruction. He's clearly done a lot of formal research on the subject, but has also spoken to quite a number of people who either worked at the hospital while it was still open, or who somehow have a family connection - including the grand-daughter of the builder, who revealed some details about the costings. And he also presented quite a few of the loose ends of his digging, hints of stories that he'd come across but been unable to finally resolve. Being a "local boy", one who actually used to break into the hospital's derelict asylum, he was well aware of the familiarity of the location to his listeners, and the resonance the old hospital still has for some of the more senior ones. As a way of dramatising this, he spoke of how, during dry summers, the foundations of the hospital can appear as a ghostly shadow on the lawns that now overlie them.

Definitely recommended should he talk on the subject again.

West Dean Gardens

West Dean Gardens, a set on Flickr.

Out to this year's chilli festival courtesy of Alex. As usual, lots of chilli-themed culinary experiences to be had, including some quite strange ones - chilli fudge anyone?

Anyway, as on previous occasions, the best bit was the chance to wander around West Dean's walled garden. As evidenced by the (inevitable) plethora of photographs.

Walking with Wolves

Walking with Wolves, a set on Flickr.

In something of a break from the norm, this past weekend we travelled up to a place called Beenham in Berkshire to visit the Wolf Conservation Trust, an organisation that C is a member of. One of the perks of membership is the chance, once a year, to go on a "wolf walk" with several (three in our case) of the wolves that live at the Trust's centre.

We also got to see, usually pretty close up, all of the other nine wolves that the Trust currently has on site, including three new puppies bred there, and three Arctic wolves recently arrived from Canada (and given special quarantine dispensation to stay in the centre).

Anyway, the Trust did a really good job organising and filling our afternoon with the wolves, and we did learn a lot about them. It was particularly interesting to see that while they were somewhat more like dogs than I expected, they were also clearly a whole lot more than dogs at the same time. There was certainly no doubt that, though socialised with humans, they were still pretty switched on in a wild sort of way.