Sunday 26 April 2015

Truths and untruth in Camborne Redruth - what the Labour candidate actually said!

There has been much media interest in comments to me by the Labour Party candidate Michael Foster at the West Briton debate for Camborne and Redruth chaired by Kernow King at Cornwall College on the 16th April. I therefore feel that I need to publish the real story!

I want to make it clear that it was neither myself nor any of  my Mebyon Kernow team who reported these events to the media and that I would much rather be talking about Mebyon Kernow's policies for Camborne and Redruth constituency than the unpleasant scare tactics of a rival candidate.

However since it is now in the public domain I will recount the actual events as heard and experienced by me and also written down by me in my notebook at the time. I believe that the debate was filmed but unfortunately I don't think that any of the comments made by Foster were caught on the audio or heard by anyone but me.

During the debate a question was put relating to taxes and Foster was speaking about the mansion tax when he asked the audience "does any of you know someone with a million pound house?"
I smiled at the audience and pointed at him at which point the audience laughed.
Foster turned to me and demanded "what did you say?"
"Nothing, Michael" I said. "I only indicated that I knew you had a £1million house"
"That's right" he said "I do have a £1million house" and continued to answer the question.
When he had finished speaking and as he went back to his seat he turned to me and said "if you pick on me again I WILL destroy you"
I was so shocked at this invective that I wrote it down in my notebook with his initials against it.

Later, when I was answering another question I was taken aback to hear clearly from where he was sitting a voice which I truly believe was saying "you c***, you c***!" It is, of course, perfectly possible that the comments weren't addressed to me as I was not looking in Foster's direction when I heard them but it was loud enough to distract me from what I was saying and when I had finished speaking I again wrote the comments down in my notebook.

At the end of the debate Foster approached me, waved his finger at me and said "Don't you do that to me again". I held out my hand and said "All I did was indicate to the audience that you have a £1million house - which is the truth". He said "don't you point your finger at me." I replied "I am not pointing at you, don't you point your finger at me. I am quite happy if you want to fight but at the moment I would rather talk to those young people waiting to speak to me than to spend time talking to you." I then walked away from him.

I have been involved in politics in Cornwall most of my life and have had many debates with people who have vehemently disagreed with my political views. I expect critical comments from opponents and normally I would pass these off as part of the rough and tumble of political debate but I have never felt so nastily threatened by an opponent as I did by Foster that day. In fact I repeated the remarks to several people as I was so astonished and disgusted by them.

This man is already known to have anger management issues and his attitude in this instance was arrogant and bullying. However, I am made of true Cornish grit and it would take an awful lot more than this incident to scare me off and, as I said to Kernow King, I reckon that if I challenged Foster to a spot of Cornish wrasslin' I could beat him fair and square!

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for posting, Loveday - the truth about this disgraceful incident needed to be made public.

    I suspect his Mammy didn't smack his legs often enough when he was a child...

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