Why I didn’t stand for Leader

The two Green Party Leadership Candidates have completed [well one didn’t answer all the questions] the Total Politics questionnaire.
Caroline Lucas and Ashley Gunstock.

Here are my responses to the same questions

Q1. Why did you get involved in the political world?
A1. Yes, I’d like to know that myself.

Q2. When did you join The Green Party?
A2. about 1999, 3 years after I retired

Q3. What is your earliest political memory?
A3. Suez

Q4. Which one law would you repeal?
A4. The off-side law

Q5. Which one law would you introduce?
A5. All new laws must have an exit strategy for when they don’t work or become irrelevant

Q6. What’s your favourite view in the world?
A6. The [clear] night sky

Q7. What’s your favourite political quotation?
A7. “In politics friends come and go, but enemies remain forever.”

Q8. What music gets you up to dance?
A8. I don’t dance, I sort of shuffle

Q9. If you could have been present at any debate in the House of Commons over the last three hundred years, which would it have been, and why?
A9. The shortest one, and then to the pub for the real debate.

Q10. Imagine you are planning a dinner party, pick six people (living or dead) to invite.
A10. Albert Einstein, Mary Wollstonecraft, John F Kennedy, Elizabeth I, John Stuart Mill, Benazir Bhutto

Q11. Who is your best friend in politics?
A11. See A7

Q12. What’s your favourite form of transport?
A12. Feet.

Q13. What’s your favourite dish?
A13. Anything with Chips.

Q14. Do you have any phobias?
A14. Yes!

Q15. What do you dream about?
A15. Naked women

Q16. When did you last cry, and why?
A16. My Dad’s funeral

Q17. What’s the last thing you bought in a shop?
A17. A packet of cigarettes

Q18. What’s the funniest You Tube video you’ve recently seen?
A18. “For Pities sake Women – Don’t Drive” – Harry Enfield

Q19. What is the best speech you have ever heard (and been present at)?
A19. I was outside having a smoke

Q20. Who’s your favourite comedian?
A20. Tony Hancock

Q21. Have you ever cried at a film? Which one(s)?
A21. All of them, when paying to get in.

Q22. Which is your favourite political biography or autobiography?
A22. I don’t read such crap

Q23. What is your favourite novel?
A23. Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Q24. Name a book you have read which has failed to live up to expectations.
A24. I forget

Q25. Who would you like to say sorry to, and why?
A25. My Mum. For being me.

Q26. What job would you be doing if you weren’t involved in the political world?
A26. I don’t want a job. I never did like work much.

Q27. Do you have a party trick, or hidden talent?
A27. If I have it’s well hidden

Q28. What’s the best holiday you have been on?
A28. I don’t like holidays

Q29. Where in the world would you most like to go on holiday?
A29. Ditto

Q30. When was the last time you used public transport?
A30. Yesterday.

Q31. When was the last time you went to the theatre and what did you see?
A31. Er, couple of years back in a small theatre over a pub in Greenwich. I forget the name of the play but Ashley Gunstock was playing “The Devil” – rather too convincingly for my liking. [See A7]

Q32. What do you collect?
A32. Problems

Q33. What is your most unusual hobby?
A33. Sleeping

Q34. Which newspapers do you read regularly?
A34. None

Q35. Which websites do you visit regularly?
A35. BBC News Football page

Q36. Which blogs do you love or hate?
A36. All of them equally

Q37. Which magazines do you subscribe to?
A37. None

Q38. Which five words would your friends use about you?
A38. Lazy, Idle, indolent, lethargic, remote [all taken from school reports]. The key to my success. Lazy people are the ones who find the easy way to do things or a bloody good reason not to do it at all.

Q39. Which five words would your enemies use about you?
A39. Ditto.

Q40. Are you into sport? If so, which ones?
A40. Football, Snooker

Q41. Which is your favourite football team and player?
A41. The Mighty Spurs [they might or more likely might not]. John White who was killed by lightning in 1964. Nickname “The Ghost”.

Q42. Who is your political hero?
A42. George Washington

Q43. Who is your political hate figure?
A43. Gordon Brown, or the current UK PM until such time as we get a Green Party PM and even then I might not be lenient.

Q44. What’s your most memorable time in politics?
A44. Being present at the Redbridge local election count in 2002. So many emotions and a feast of body language.

Q45. What’s your most embarrassing moment in politics?
A45. Admitting that if I thought I’d win, I wouldn’t stand.

Q46. What’s your prediction for the next general election?
A46. The Conservatives will win with a narrow but workable majority

Q47. Who is your favourite and least favourite political interviewer?
A47. Paxton – Humphries.

Q48. What do you never miss on TV?
A48. Football

Q49. Which current foreign politician do you most admire?
A49. I view them all with equal loathing

Q50. What do you listen to/watch when you get up in the morning?
A50. I don’t get up in the morning

Q51. Complete this sentence: The thing I hate about politics is...
A51. ….politics

Q52. Complete this sentence: The thing I love about politics is...
A52. ….politics

Q53. What would you like your political epitaph to be?
A53. Your turn.