I had never an evening before like last night. Part of the joy of life as a politician is its unpredictability. It was fun, stimulating and instructive.
The Caerleon Rotarians led by Hugh Edmonds had organized a unique competition for would-be future media interviewers. Last night the final six under 19 year old contestants fought to prove that they could Paxman me.
They were all cool and assured. I was less so. The format was a challenge. After a five-minute presentation from me on the merits of legalising drugs, I was grilled for five minutes by each of the contestants. My fear was that the questions would be very similar and I was in danger of boring the packed audience stiff by repeating the same answers.
Happily each of students took a different approach. They had all been crawling over my blog and were well informed of my views. One even mentioned the health advantages to inhaling cannabis as a gas. That was on this blog about a year ago. They were all skilled and subtle.
The winner bravely ran the interview without a note and followed expertly the line of the interview based on my answers. The judges were Nick Partridge of HTV, Dr Rhys Jenkins (aka Mr Eluned Morgan) and an Argus journalist (whose name I did not catch). I am told they were unanimous in their decision to make Samuel Stensland of Whitchurch High School Cardiff the Rotary Young Interviewer of the Year 2009. The other splendid contestants were Alex Gabriel, Howells School, Cardiff, Camille Ivinson, Howells School, William Jones, Caerleon Comprehensive, Grace Lane, Whitchurch High School, and Rob Sherwood from Caerleon.
Adding an unexpected layer of joy on to the evening I discovered afterwards that he has just joined the Cardiff West Labour Party. A young man of a similar age has just joined the Newport West Party.
We must be doing something right.
Twin thrill
It was a refreshing pleasure to met meet a modest diplomat who is doing a great job.
Foreign Office staff are meant to dream about postings to Paris or Washington and to dread possible exile in Belarus or Baku. Yesterday the splendid Denis O’Keefe, our man in Tiblisi, delighted and informed a Newport audience. The city has has had a very active twinning with the Georgia’s second city of Kutaisi for more than 20 years.
Forget any pre-conceptions about smooth, self-regarding Foreign Office elitists. Denis is a down to earth and practical. Already an accomplished linguist before he was posted to Georgia, he has learned the notoriously complex Georgian tongue to fluency. A Georgian woman who has settled in Newport told me her mother sent a message from Georgia saying how impressed the country is with his command of the language.
The twinning has been hugely successful with strong links being forged by individuals & organisations of both cities.
The Newport-Kutaisi Association has shared the last 20 years of tumultuous history of Georgia
with a succession of internal wars and the recent Russian invasion of South OssetiaThe Chair of the Association, Catherine Philpott, was in Georgia when the invasion began. She expressed her personal gratitude to the Ambassador for the Embassy’s organisation during that time where they were committed to the safety of British citizens caught up in the incursion.
In his tour d’horizon of the current situation Denis was optimistic and positive about the future. In common with all the world’s other problems the coming of Obama offers fresh hope.
http://www.nkta.org/kutais002.html
Fiat Lux
Writing by candlelight tonight, I am faithfully observing Earth Hour.
While there was a little resistance for some members of my family, every electric light in the house is out. It makes very little difference to my writing on the computer because the glow from the screen is enough to illuminate the keyboard.
Several constituents have asked me to support this gesture. I hope it’s a great success. It certainly makes a powerful point about the need to conserve our finite resources.
Half-truth
My local paper starred me in their Quote: unquote section today with a quotation from this blog.
Unfortunately they only mentioned half of my comment and left out the bit below in heavy type below.
"I know MPs who are shameless, stupid, greedy, vain, lazy, drunken, malign, pompous, sly, insane, treacherous and untruthful. But not many managed to be all those at any time."
I also know MPs who are principled, honourable, wise, frugal, sober, industrious, gifted, idealistic, inspired, honest, eloquent, and worthy. Not many manage all those simultaneously.
Balance was never the paper's strong point.
I know exactly what you mean, I sent in a letter to the South Wales Argus a year ago to highlight the need for Newport Council to do something about the appalling light pollution in our city (I enjoy the occasional astronomy), while the letter was featured, they had edited my wording to sound more dramatic.
Unfortunately their choice to replace words like "thousands of stars" to "million of stars" just made me look like an idiot, because the naked eye can only observe several thousand.
If they had done their homework before editing, they would have realised that an edit wasn't required.
Though, that's the press for you!
Posted by: Gareth Williams | April 17, 2009 at 05:34 PM
Paul, Like you I observed Earth Hour last evening. A great prelude to the clocks going forward and the start of BST - I love the night we do this, but dread that awful nigh in October when we put them back again and contemplate it getting dark before 5 the next afternoon.
I just wish we could keep BST all year. Harold's government in the late 60s had a three year experiment of keeping BST but sadly the experiment was never tried again. I think it is time it was.
Posted by: Graham Marlowe | March 29, 2009 at 04:19 AM
That's interesting, KayTie
I found studying Google streets scenes in France very useful last year when I was motoring through strange towns.
Posted by: Paul Flynn | March 29, 2009 at 12:00 AM
"Unfortunately they only mentioned half of my comment and left out the bit below in heavy type below."
Fortunately, the net is changing the game and the weasels who lie by misquoting are increasingly being caught out by quick Google search.
Top hit in Google is your original post. Second hit in Google is this post.
Posted by: Kay Tie | March 28, 2009 at 11:42 PM