local elections are coming up

so guys and ladies who will you be voting for in the local elections?

for me i am saying screw labour and am going to speak to my local (wanna be) elected official and see what they will improve in st albans first,

This will be my first time voting To be quite honest the whole system is confusing, ive no idea who's supposed to be running for what not to mention all those poor trees (crap load of leaflets through the door).

Apparently in one of the votes you can vote for everyone, hows that for confusing (numbering them 1-however many, 1 being your first choice), I can under stand 1 & 2 since theres two people running for whatever there running for (local elections ?? ) but the rest.

Oh, btw, don't nesiseraly say 'screw labor' my grandad is the councillor for Johnstone and most seam to think he does a pretty good job despite what the guys up top are currently doing wrong, hes definitely done more then the current SNP guy in charge of where i live who in the past god knows how many years hes managed to fill one pot hole.

Anyway.. I think its going to end up being the case of choosing the people who will least wreck the country, which is unfortunate.

Welll...i know who i am voting for,

Labour are the only party in my area who are going to deal with the poor street lights and the fact that the Tory council in Canterbury are on a higher pay than the Prime Minister, is a good enough reason to not vote Tory.

[edit on 28-4-2007 by infinite]

I wonder...

How many people actually read local manifestos as opposed to just thinking "Labour = Tony Blair = yuck!" or whatever party you particularly dislike at the moment?

It really is worth taking local elections seriously (all elections, for that matter). They do decide how often your bins are emptied, how much council tax you pay, how your money is spent in the community etc. after all.

Im not basing my vote on National Issues more, local issues, such as The Lab Gov in Scotland want to build A Massive Incinerator in the east of scotland, which most are against..... (Is bad enough there is a Massive Oil Refinery, Plus a massive chemicals refinery around that area), now they want to pollute the east of scotland more...

No public consultation as of yet.......

So thats one so far, that I will be voting against....

Also overcrowding in prisons is another issue, that I will be voting against the Gov......

There are other local issues but havnt made my mind up as of yet...

My local council is Conservative at the moment and historically it is Conservative with the council only falling to Labour once in the last 34 years.
The current council has twice as many Conservatives on it than Labour does, and the Lib Dems only have a third of what Labour has.

I shall be voting Conservative in the Local Elections for the reason that I like how my local area is being run and yes I am more than happy with the fortnightly black bin collection, to be honest I think my council does the whole recycling thing a hell of a lot better than most of the other councils that have attempted it.

One of the main issues from my point of view in the planned construction of a shopping centre and cinema which has been in the works for a while now, the plans themselves are even in keeping with the historical aspect of the city and I fully support them as I believe many other people do to.

The whole process would have been alot further along now than it currently is, the original plan was to build it in my town (just outside the city) apart from the fact a member of another council complained to John Prescott that the proposed cinema, shops and bowling alley would have hit their local economy, so John Prescott in his none existent wisdom put a big fat line through the plans.

Damage their local economy my arse, I have to take two buses and travel for well over an hour to get to the cinema in their area.


The Beeb is covering the election well as always: Interactive Election Map

[edit on 29-4-2007 by UK Wizard]

Still have not made my mind up and will decide as I stand in the booth with my ballot paper.

I have voted differently in local and national elections as any interested in who looks after the local area better. In the past, have voted Liberial and Green in local elections.

I think Ste2652 raises a good point. How many voters will vote based on the national picture. Maybe to punish Labour rather than thinking who is the best person to represent them locally.

With many results now in perhaps it's a surprise to some that Labour (whilst not exactly having had a 'good' night) have done a lot better than was expected.

The Liberal Democrats achieved two significant early gains in the industrial north. But they were flaking away in some councils, hit by a squeeze from Labour and the Tories, especially in the south......

.......The Conservatives made some gains in the north, but were continuing to struggle outside rural and suburban districts. They failed to win any seat at all in Manchester once again.......

.......Jon Cruddas, another candidate for Labour's deputy leadership, said: "It's still early, but things aren't looking good. We went into this election with a councillor base at its lowest level since the late 1970s - and it looks like we'll be losing more good councillors across the country tonight." But in some towns which Labour needs to hold at the general election, the party was doing better than it feared.

Labour made a net gain of two in Bristol at the expense of the Liberal Democrats. In Harlow, a super-marginal in Westminster elections, and where the three main parties were neck and neck on the council, Labour and the Tories won a seat each from the Lib Dems.

society.guardian.co.uk...

- It also looks like the public are still unfamiliar with the mix of FPTP and STV voting in Scotland and that this has caused problems.

We've had this mix of voting methods in NI for ages but I guess it takes a little getting used to.

Again, although hardly a great night for Labour it looks like the Scottish results are not the 20point+ lead some expected and it looks like it'll be very close between the SNP and Labour as to who gets the most seats......and then they have to try and form a coalition with others as neither has won overall control.

Interesting night all in all.

The cause of the high number of spoilt ballot papers was thought to be due to the fact that the Scottish parliament elections required voters to put an X in the box, while local council elections, held under a new system called single transferable vote required voters to rank their preferences by 1, 2, 3 etc in the boxes.

In addition, the Holyrood contest had two separate elements - first-past-the-post, and then a top-up regional list, where voters cast a preference for party only, not candidate. In Airdrie and Shotts the number of spoilt papers was 1,536 - while the Labour majority over the SNP was just 1,446.

Dundee West saw 978 rejected papers and 970 in Motherwell and Wishaw.

politics.guardian.co.uk...

Well from what ive heard its been good in some places and bad in others (the mix up in voting) What has been a positive sign is the postal votes as far as I know there has been very little dis-regarded postal votes.

On a more personal note, my grandad was not re-elected as councilor in the Johnston area. However this has turned out to be a good thing as only one Labor candidate got in and considering the population that they now have to run has jumped from 3000 to 10,000(due to the ward being chopped up and glued together again) this one Labor guy has a hell of a lot of work on his hands (serves him right, but thats another story), The SNP took the two others seats btw.

Very interesting to hear people talking about their share of the vote as a way to hid the fact they lost seats and councils. A party could increase its majority in a number of seats, lose seats elsewhere and still claim things are not as bad as they seem.

This would be like a salepeople losing serveral major customers but getting a increased order from one customer, and spining this to his boss.

Certainly will be watching what happens in Scotland. This is the most interested thing to come out of these elections.

Originally posted by Freedom ERP
Very interesting to hear people talking about their share of the vote as a way to hid the fact they lost seats and councils.

- I don't think anybody is trying to "hide" anything.

Of course Labour lost seats and councils, but that is hardly the entire story.

Labour doing better than they did last time (the time after which they went on to win the May 2005 general election) is surely also a relevant point too, right?

Certainly will be watching what happens in Scotland. This is the most interested thing to come out of these elections.

- Yeah interesting stuff, PR elections always produce more complex results......results which themselves take a lot longer to become clear.

It'll be interesting to see who will end up working with whom.
Personally I reckon another Lab/LibDem coalition is the most likely result.

Cooperative politics. I'm all for it.

sminkeypinkey, why can't the representives just say it was bad rather than spining the result.

Why not just tell the truth as it is to the vast majority. This applies to all the parties.

Spin does not help to improve the image of Government and few enough of us bother to vote

I suppose the answer to that is easy - most of us like to present our case in the best and most favourable light possible.
That's all 'spin' really is at heart.

When parties give their take on the events they know others will be telling a different tale & that in all probability if they do not put their own case forward in the best possible light no-one else will do so.
You can hardly blame them (any of them) for that.

You can challenge and dispute it of course.

But it's also bearing in mind that they're not just talking to the wider public - in fact given the regular audience rating for political programming they're probably not talking to too many members of the regular public at all - but they are often sending out messages to the party members around the country watching.
It's important (to them all) to keep their 'foot sloggers' motivated and involved.

Spin in this instance is not so much intended for the general public.

But obviously some is; some is obvious (and usually discounted by those who watch politics) but some is more subtle than that.
Some people see and some they don't - or at least they don't notice themselves noticing it.

It's all just communication; but on the parties' own terms.

Much as I hate to admit it I think it's a necessary evil.
We have to let the parties have their say the way they want to say it - of course we need skilled and decent interviewers to come back at them and seek explaination and specifics etc
(and actually with the modern media today this is where much of my complaint is - where are the decent - taxing - interviewers?).

But the alternative is for the general public only to hear information that has been filtered by some branch of the media doing their own editorialising and I sure as hell don't want that.


[edit on 5-5-2007 by sminkeypinkey]

It'll be interesting to see who will end up working with whom.

Personally I reckon another Lab/LibDem coalition is the most likely result.

The Lib-Dems in scotland have ruled out either forming a coalition with the SNP over - their stance for a referendum on Independance, nor would they be forming a coalition with Labour this time around.

The SNP is getting first chance to form a Gov since they are thelargest party by 1 seat, if that fails then Labour willgive it a go..

Still is going to be interesting to say the least, will this cause conflcit of interests with westminster, we will have to wait and see....

Originally posted by spencerjohnstone will this cause conflcit of interests with westminster, we will have to wait and see....

It doesn't have to, no, if Salmond is willing to compromise.

But I suspect he won't be, will make Westminster out to be the one causing trouble, thus manipulating the people of Scotland down the road of independence because they feel they have no other choice.

He is a snake in the grass - a very shrewd and clever man. Scotland should be wary of him.

If I were Gordon Brown, I'd consider having a proper referendum for Scotland - one that gave the following options:

1) Independence
2) Greater devolution
3) Maintain the status quo
4) Less devolution (bring the Scottish Parliament down to the level of the Welsh Assembly, say)
5) Abolish the Scottish Parliament completely and repeal devolution legislation for Scotland (which might be more popular than you think, considering 25% of people voted against the idea of a Scottish Parliament in the first place)

To be passed into law, one option must achieve a majority of over 50% otherwise the status quo would be maintained, whilst Scotland considers what it really wants. The whole issue of referendums could then be shelved indefinitely until Scotland is ready to make its final choice, and the parties can get on with governing Scotland properly.

That gives them a genuine choice to decide their future, not a false 'yes or no' decision which gives no other options. I don't see how Salmond could possibly object and keep his support.