Stuart Holmes does not give the impression that he is a user of social media. I was present at several fringe meetings linked to the Labour Party conference this week in Brighton when Stuart and his dog, also known as Stuart made their presence felt in St Pauls Church. He is a very articulate and persistent campaigner and I am pretty certain that the apostrophe on the signs that his dog carries are intentional, in a bid to irritate observers.  However he never once resorted to a computer or mobile phone in the whole time I was in his company. He is in fact the perfect foil to someone like Iain Dale from whom seeps social media campaigns with every step. Iain is now helping Sussex Police with their enquiries over the attack on Stuart that has been aired by a number of news channels. Perhaps old fashioned campaigning is not dead after all. During the fringe meetings I attended, Stuart waited until the Q&A element before turning the subject to nuclear power and its abolition. He did not seem to mind if this was in the context of a discussion on Domestic Violence or reforming the Banking System, he had a message and he was determined to get it out. During the meeting on banking reform he also suggested that one way forward was to abolish our currency which seemed to amuse Will Hutton.

I suspect that many of the people across the road from the attack, sitting in the Brighton Centre must have wanted to thank Stuart for his impact on the interview with Damian McBride and the Conservative icon Iain Dale. However despite this I understand that later on in the day, Stuart was asked to leave a fringe meeting due to his previous disruptive behaviour. Of course by then he had been given 3 minutes of fame for his persistence on the seafront, so he at least has had a good conference (dog bite excepted). There is something rather prophetic about the work of Stuart Holmes, here he is in 1986 at a time when smoking was seen as socially acceptable. It took Parliament 20 years to listen to him. Knowing how he managed to be ahead of public opinion then, perhaps Mark Carney needs to give some consideration to Stuarts ideas on our currency, whilst Nuclear Campaigners might like to adopt the dog with adverts approach in addition to their twitter campaigns?