To do lists, campaign law and jumping up and down. Lib Dem PPC for South West Devon Anna Pascoe’s week

By PRSD, on Tuesday, December 8, 2009

What a To Do! Anna Pascoe, Lib Dem Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for South West Devon, has been tackling her piles of To Do lists – and jumping up and down to keep warm while battling with VAT, campaign law and her Christmas card list

Monday, November 30
The week began with a day shift at work and all of the delightful paperwork that accompanies the end of the calendar month. No doubt this will seem like a mere breeze come the end of next month when an entire day of productivity will be written off changing hundreds upon hundreds of VAT codes back to 17.5%. Has anyone heard from Labour as to how much of a “success” the VAT cut has been, by the way? Last time I looked, shops were still closing down, it was still really hard to find a job, afford your weekly shop, or get the bank to lend you any money to support your business. So I’m still not entirely sure what the point of it was.

Spent my evening catching up on casework, interspersed with jumping up and down to keep warm (I don’t have any central heating)!

Tuesday, December 1
Hauled myself to the gym first thing in the morning before heading over to Ivybridge to meet some residents and catch up with Frankie Dolan, the founder of the Ecoivy website, to chat about how the campaign against Viridor’s proposed incinerator at Lee Mill was progressing. I was really surprised to hear that Gary Streeter MP had organised his public meeting about the incinerator without getting in contact with Frankie, who has put in so much hard work to date making residents aware of the issues surrounding the proposal. I got two personal invitations from Gary, perhaps one of them was meant for her! After a quick massage at the Ivybridge Treatment Rooms, which sorted out my huddled campaigning shoulders a treat, I headed back over to Roborough to arrange meeting up with some South Hams residents’ groups next week.

Wednesday, December 2
The day began with a conference call with the South West Devon team to plan out our continuing opposition to the Ivybridge incinerator plans. More of the delights of the gym ensued before wending my way to work for the afternoon/evening shift. Rather like bacteria, my To Do list tends to divide and multiply when I’m not looking. I then tend to do either the easiest couple of things off it, or the couple of things that actually can’t wait any longer, then perhaps re-write the list a bit more neatly in order to make it look smaller. After finishing this evening though, I had a rare burst of energy and finished off one of the things I’d been meaning to get round to for a while – the telephone campaigning training pack for my team of volunteers. At this time of year, it often works better for the campaigners and the local residents to be contacted by phone to find out about any issues in their area, we don’t freeze and they don’t let all that precious heat flood out when opening the door to us!

Thursday, December 3
A double shift at work today beckoned in order to make up some undertime I’d accrued buzzing here there and everywhere on the campaign trail. As daunting as this seemed when the shift actually began on Wednesday afternoon, by the middle on Thursday I was actually pretty pleased that I’d caught up with loads of the things that had been on the back burner of my work To Do list with the busy times of preparing awards submissions and the daily hustle and bustle. The hotel closes for a couple of weeks in January so I’m accumulating plenty of winter projects that I’m looking forward to getting stuck in to, including working on greening the hotel even further ahead of our Green Tourism Business Scheme assessment.

Friday, December 4
Today was the day when we found out how Primrose Valley Hotel had done in the Sustainability Awards. Having come runner up the year before, fingers and toes were tightly crossed for one better this time around and our hard work was rewarded when we were presented with the prize for Best Managed Small Business. After the journey home, made the most of the first interlude in pouring rain for weeks and went for a country stroll as the sun dimmed in the sky. I hacked away at the email inbox catching up with some campaign admin before taking the evening off to scoff a takeaway with my sister. Not missing an opportunity to coerce work out of a captive volunteer, I suggested that we could continue the sisterly bonding by putting up my Christmas decorations together, and together we achieved just the scrappy-but-jolly Yuletide look I was after.

Saturday, December 5
Friends and colleagues often poke fun at all the exciting things I get up to in my spare time – council meetings, poring over planning applications, complaining to the council about potholes (how are the repairs going in Mudge Way car park btw, Plymouth CC?). Saturday all-day training in Liskeard on election law was even towards my lower limits of tolerance though, and much hot chocolate and Red Bull was required to get through the day. Joking aside, it was a really useful session, as election law has had some major changes, so I am now fully-equipped to panic about the fact that although we don’t actually know when the election is going to be, I have to account for everything I spend from January 1st 2010 (the day I’ll be changing the VAT codes over, probably best to avoid me on this day!).

Caught up with the news from Lib Dem colleagues who had attended the Wave in London lobbying for positive action on climate change when I got home, courtesy of the tweetosphere.

Sunday, December 6
The apparently bright and breezy morning was in fact characterised by an Arctic chill and 1-degree-above-freezing-style rain showers. Spent a bit of time shower-dodging and leafleting before repairing home to tackle some more emails and preparing a press release before heading off to work in the afternoon. The work-packed week caught up with me a little bit and I was ready for bed a good hour before my shift ended and enabled me to do so. For the past couple of years, I’ve forfeited doing general Christmas cards in favour of giving money to an HIV support charity following World AIDS Day on Tuesday, December 1 and just oblige with a handful of greetings cards for the customary aunties and grannies. In a week dominated by tackling To Do lists though, even writing these out was one thing I decided to roll over to the following week in favour of dozing off with the Observer Magazine though.

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