Ed Balls talks a lot of...

Aha, I know what you were expecting.

This evening I attended an evening event put on by the Wolverhampton Labour Party. I am live in the only Wolverhampton constituency which isn't represented by Labour so it was good to see the other two MPs around.

As expected, Ed Balls did speak. To begin I felt perhaps he, like our government currently does, was talking in grand notions, large sweeping ideas. He spoke of our being in a double-dip recession despite Conservative-Lib Dem cuts promising different, he spoke of creating jobs, and he briefly spoke of students in debt. Good, I'm one of those, only fortunately for me I'm not hitting as much debt as those two years below me, beginning now. It was an appropriate time for those students to be mentioned, embarking on their degrees now as they are. Thankfully, Mr Balls did move on to be a little more specific about how he wanted to go about things, and he managed to make me like him a little more than from when I've seen him on television. He also spoke for a while of his first day in Parliament and being stitched up by a Conservative. Something to do with shaking hands once only. I thought that went on a bit and I admit I faded out a little there.

Whilst the speech was good and I agreed a lot with what he had to say, he was rather preaching to the converted and it smacks a little of a waste of time. We sat there as members of the party, not really needing convincing. Afterwards, it definitely felt that the politicians had rather a lot of time for their own teams and those that they already seemed to know than anyone else. Those at my table barely got a look in; I believe I got a glance and a "thanks for coming", not even a handshake. As seemingly the youngest person in the room, and a student, and one of politics, I thought I might be quite an interesting person for politicians to talk to. Perhaps I ought to have pushed forward but it's a little daunting in amongst such a group of suits.

So it was fairly interesting all in all, and the food was good. Well, I did pay for it, so I'm pleased about this. If I'm honest though, I'm not very interested in many politicians, and I don't think I'll bother again.