I’ve spent the last two days promoting the new Lib Dem Green Tax Switch policy on Chesterfield’s markets and in Nottingham city centre.

A few months ago, the central party offered us goodies like pre-printed leaflets and correx boards and stickers if we’d sign up to standing in the middle of town and talking to people.

We hired a market stall yesterday in Chesterfield, and talked to hundreds of people.  Being a contact point was a real plus; standing there with our council leader, our MP and our MEP meant we almost always had the right person to field questions if we were short of knowledge ourselves.  And being so prominent in Chesterfield meant lots of people wanted to talk to us.  We actually didn’t get on to talking about the environment all that often.
In Nottingham today we stationed ourselves in a very busy part of town and handed out our flyers, but most people were too busy to stop and talk to us. We distributed a lot of flyers – fewer than I thought, but still hundreds.  It will be interesting to see how many get returned.

And the differences between the two sets of people?  In Chesterfield, there was a trend for woolen scarves that look like tinsel, and I didn’t see that in Nottingham.  In Nottingham the most striking thing was the eye make-up!  So much of it!