How are you going to vote?
So today is the day of the local elections and the London Mayoral elections.
How are you going to (or did) vote? Considering that many of the customers of the Raccoon Arms are libertarian in leaning (don’t lean too far you might fall over) are you going to vote for None of the Above or just not bother because the choices available aren’t suitable. Or will you make do with UKIP as the best of a bad bunch.
Have the local elections left you cold and apathetic that politicians will actually do anything to change your life. Or do you think politicians are a pox on the earth because they do too much to change your life with so many new laws and regulations.
Me? I’m going to vote NoA by placing my ballot straight into the ballot box without even bothering to go to the cubicle to pretend that I’m actually voting.
SBML
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1
May 3, 2012 at 07:08 -
I think a big ink blot covering most of the ballot paper is called for this time around.
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3
May 3, 2012 at 07:28 -
Faced with three LibLabCon mainstreamers, no other choices and no communication from any of ‘em about anything, I shall pass.
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4
May 4, 2012 at 05:52 -
It seems like the good citizens of this Parish more or less thought likewise with about 1 in 3 being the best turnout in a ward, with less than 1 in 5 in some being recorded.
Will they care? Doubtful. I rather fancy that far from stating the obvious truth that they utterly lack any kind of mandate from a thoroughly disinterested populace. One of the “successful” candidates failed to attract 9 out of 10 voters, so let’s start spending and meddling with abandon (after some hand-wringing and pointless soundbites about how to increase turnout of course).
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5
May 3, 2012 at 08:00 -
It might be worth giving an Independent your vote – someone with no real political tribe or axe to grind. The few that do achieve office often aquit themselves well, and whilst their numbers are few, so it would be difficult for them to change much in the face of the entrenched hegemony, at least it’s a start.
Make sure you don’t pick a watermelon by mistake, though.
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6
May 3, 2012 at 08:44 -
The cabinet system will pretty much exclude any ‘non aligned’ councillors, and most of the others from any form of democracy. (or common sense)
The b******s in my district have plotted with a saintly supermarket to treble it’s size in the middle of our village, the only village in W Sussex with an AQMA, i.e. air quality problems bad enough to need action by statute.
No sign of any action on traffic and air quality because they’re too busy making it worse with the supermarket plan, which despite it’s size and extra 80 staff will allegedly have almost no effect on traffic or air quality.
Unfortunately, no election for another three years, but I will then campaign against the present ward members if they have the neck to stand.
Gripe definitely not over.
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7
May 3, 2012 at 09:04 -
I’d have considered voting for one of the two Independents standing in my ward had he even bothered to try and solicit my vote. As he didn’t, I didn’t and instead drew my cross through the entire paper.
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8
May 3, 2012 at 09:52 -
Our best recent local councillors were ‘Residents’ Association’.
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9
May 3, 2012 at 10:36 -
I believe he was a representative of the local residents association but if he can’t be bothered to try and attract the vote of this resident then I have no time for him.
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10
May 4, 2012 at 00:52 -
Funny creatures, voters, most wish not to be canvassed.
Personally I like the door-to-door canvass and will usually make time for the candidate (exception-watermelons), but I hate the telephone canvass.
Very difficult for the candidate to get it right.
However in the dire situation that GB is in at the moment, I think I would cut the independent some slack and try to educate myself on the de/merits of his/her position. I think DaedalusXP @10.07 summarizes the situation very well below.
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11
May 3, 2012 at 08:02 -
I shall be voting for a wonderful woman called Margaret who does a great job as my local councillor and is a good friend. Which is easy as it means voting the way I always vote.
I shall also be voting “yes” to Bradford having the chance to elect a mayor rather than stay with the system where “them the councillors” decide who leads the City.
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12
May 3, 2012 at 09:32 -
Presumably this has nothing to do with the fact that you are a Conservative councillor and that Margaret Eaton (whom I presume you refer to), is the group leader.
I note from your comment here and from your informative blog that you support the concept of elected mayors (or elected mares, a more appropriate term coined by your fellow Bradfordonian Richard North).
I think your argument is best summed up by this quote from your blog:
We have to do better. We have got to start having a public debate about the priorities for Bradford – the city centre, schools, jobs and the environment. Rather than those priorities being determined by whoever officer is most successful at scaring the councillors into action, they will emerge from a public debate. And will be owned by an elected mayor.The Bradford people will choose that mayor
The Bradford people will hold that mayor to account
And the Bradford people can get rid of that mayor if that mayor fails.
This sounds like an admission of defeat, you are saying that you cannot get the current tiers of governance to work so you want to create a new one without defining how to remove the failings of the old system.
Sounds like optimism thwarting experience. If you admit that the incumbent unelected council executives will bully elected councillors and prevent them implementing the will of the voters, what chance has one mayor (sorry, mare) against the same powerful forces?
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13
May 3, 2012 at 09:43 -
14
May 3, 2012 at 11:10 -
Like Simon Cooke, shall be voting in favour of an elected mayor but for disappointingly negative reasons. It can’t be any worse than the previous system, which has seen destruction, devastation and corruption, therefore let’s at least give it a chance.
On the local council front, I shall be voting UKIP. This is not about any local council issues or the personal attributes of that candidate, but rather to send a message to all Party Centrals that we have had enough of all their pointless pandering to the Brussels mafia and their lies about resisting it – if the major parties don’t give us the exit referendum we deserve, then we’ll just keep voting UKIP, in ever greater numbers, until either (a) they give in and we get out or (b) the EUSSR appoints a Gauleiter for GB, like it already has in Greece and Italy, thus finally acknowledging its anti-democratic purpose.
And then we will take to the streets like never before – we may be slow to respond but, once aroused, they don’t have enough police, troops or water-cannon to stop us.
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15
May 3, 2012 at 08:17 -
I’m only voting for London Assembly (no local election for me!) so I’ll be voting Boris with UKIP as second choice. At all costs, Ken must not get in!
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17
May 3, 2012 at 09:30 -
Misquoting Shakespeare slightly:
“A plague on all your houses” -
18
May 3, 2012 at 09:40 -
Don’t anyone support this local mayors stuff, it’s all part of the EU’s divide and rule strategy to abolish England.
They’ll do it anyway (how would we stop them?) but at least we can register a protest and deprive them of even the semblance of legitimacy.
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19
May 3, 2012 at 10:07 -
This is how I see post-Blair politics:
1. If you are rich, you’re OK, all three parties support you. Tax loopholes will never really be removed, there will be a plentiful supply of cheap compliant nannies, maids, plumbers etc.
2. If you are honest and from the working and middle classes and without excessive pots of cash, you’re stuffed, LibLabCon don’t care about you, you are annoying to them, just eff off and die.
3. If you are a dedicated dole scrounger, an immigrant, a greeny or a civil servant then you are blessed and will forever be the recipient of generously filled wheelbarrows of gifts such as free cash, free housing, free mobile phones, free cars and jobs for life. All paid for by those in category 2, while they are allowed to live.
The solution by the way is simple:
– We can no longer trust the political classes, so start the fightback by joining an existing non-mainstream party. Do not start a new party, they usually take well over a generation to get enough support, also note the recent problems of the Libertarian Party. If enough of us do this, we can use the party infrastructure to promote Libertarian policies.
– Get politically active yourself. Do not trust existingactivists to promote your ideas of fairness, they can’t be trusted, we must all do the politicking ourselves.
Do leafleting and canvassing. I know it sounds extreme action to take, but it does have an effect. We can’t convince people from our armchairs via blogs. We have to get off our posteriors and get out there to the public. We need to push the message through their letter boxes and by face to face conversations.
Me? I’ve just joined UKIP in East Anglia and I welcome any free thinking readers to join me. I believe UKIP is young enough and open enough to be the platform for Libertarians to form a caucus and to push Libertarian policies like no other party.
I welcome contact from any readers who wish to join me in forming such a Libertarian voice.
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20
May 4, 2012 at 09:37 -
Too right, don’t moan, do something.
Too many councillors think they owe their loyalty to the other members, and will roll over because that’s easier than confrontation at the table.
I was told some years ago as a new parish councillor: ‘you don’t need to be able to live with the other members, you do have to be able to live with yourself’. -
21
May 4, 2012 at 13:23 -
“plentiful supply of cheap compliant…plumbers”
Reely? Cheap plumbers?
What part of Fairyland do you live in then?
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22
May 3, 2012 at 23:56 -
why not vote with your feet?
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23
May 4, 2012 at 02:37 -
I didn’t vote. I went to the pub.
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24
May 7, 2012 at 05:16 -
I voted as I usually do – early, by post and anti-Labour. It may have helped.
Unfortunately, the alternative to Labour up here in the frozen (but not as damp as it might be) North are the hordes of bewoaded Nats.
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