...for local services
I'm going to repeat here a comment I left at Girl With a One Track Mind
There are two serious flaws to that Tactical Voting Ploy. The first is: Local Elections have absolutely nothing to do with the war and a lot to do with the delivery of local services including schools, housing, bin emptying and having a concrete carbuncle erected on one's doorstep. It is not democracy to hold people accountable for things for which they have no responsibility and not hold them accountable for what they have direct responsibility for.Secondly, it's a blunderbuss scatter gun approach. I typed in my postcode and was told that I should vote Green as an Anti-war vote. The only problem with that is I know there are Labour and Lib Dem candidates that are also anti-war. I don't know the Tory candidates personally but I know Tories in nearby wards who I personally saw on anti-war demos.
I used to be a Labour councillor for broadly the same ward (pre boundary changes) and supposing I had continued and was standing today, I would be angry at being portrayed as pro-War.
But I would be even angrier at the thought that people who don't need to care about local services would be voting against a candidate who had a track record of being an advocate for the poor and oppressed, of working in a team to try and create a well-run borough that delivers services, and of taking a sensitive approach to quasi-judicial decisions.
Amongst the pledges from my Labour candidates are a new secondary school (a hot local issue where the ruling Liberal Tory coalition turned down £20m grant from central govt. because they don't want a school in the area that votes Labour), mending broken roads and pavements, and expanding household recycling.
It's a travesty of democracy and immature to use the Local Elections as a protest against International Politics.
If you are not interested in schools, home helps, recycling, paving stones, and whether foul concrete monstrosities are erected feet from your house, just don't vote. There are people who do care about such things, and if you vote in these local elections on national or international issues, it is tantamount to stealing their votes.
There are people who believe that local decisions should be made locally. But each time local election results are decided on irrelevant issues it sends a signal to the Westminster politicians that people want central diktat.
