Tomorrow morning I’ll be walking down to the local polling station and I still have no idea who to vote for. The first problem is finding out what the choice is, luckily the Eastleigh council web site at least has a bunch of PDFs listing who’s standing.
It looks like I’ll be able to choose from this motley collection for the European election:
- British National Party
- Christian Party “Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship”
- Conservative Party
- English Democrats
- Jury Team
- Liberal Democrats
- No2EU: Yes to Democracy
- Pro Democracy: Libertas.eu
- Socialist Labour Party
- The Green Party
- The Labour Party
- The Peace Party
- The Roman Party. Ave!
- United Kingdom First
- United Kingdom Independence Party
There’s been barely any discussion about what the MEPs will actually been doing in the European parliament. I don’t need a European election to send a message to Gordon Brown (sorry Gordon, but I have just never been able to take you seriously as PM), and it seems fairly pointless to vote based on whether I think we should be in or out of Europe. I kind of like the idea of a pan-European party improving the system but I don’t know enough about Libertas to guess whether that’s what they’ll actually do. (And it will always be a guess, since I bet a few people were expecting a referendum from Labour.) The Jury Team idea sounds interesting but probably not that constructive in practice. Maybe if the party membership were the party whips, voting throughout the term of the elected MEPs in a kind of ongoing referendum… but I suspect people would get bored of that fairly quickly. The Roman Party is in with a chance of getting my vote if I could find out a bit more about Jean-Louis’ plans. (Not much out there, but I did find this leaflet.)
Possibly even less interesting is the council election, with only the usual suspects lining up:
- Conservative Party
- UK Independence Party
- Labour Party
- Liberal Democrat
Ignoring the Labour Party (who don’t even seem to try here, which is fine by me) and UKIP, the choice between Conservative and Lib Dem is hardly great. The two of them seem to endlessly blame each other for exactly the same local problems and say very little about real solutions. One slight difference is that the Conservatives just turn up at election time, which is I suppose at least efficient.
Oil, gravel, houses and the crematorium NIMBY moaning is just annoying. Hands up anyone in Hedge End who doesn’t live in a house under 40 years old, use a car and isn’t planning to die? No, didn’t think so. As for the tap in the council offices; it’s not for a kitchen sink (which would be a bit extreme), it’s a pretty sensible way to provide drinks for employees. I’d go on but I think I’m well in to ranting territory already. If I vote Conservative, it will be at least partly because they haven’t had the front to tell me that one of the other parties can’t win here. And if I vote Lib Dem, if will be at least partly down to @mpntod – more MPs should be connecting with people like Martin.
On balance though, I’m very likely to be voting Limbo.
That was a political broadcast on behalf of a grumpy old man. We now return to our normal service.
Notes from a small field 
That is massively annoying, isn’t it?
Could they think of a less inspiring or more cynical way to try and get me to vote for them? Ugh.
Very annoying indeed. No one got my vote in the council elections in the end. I hope they count spoilt ballot papers.
I went for the most independent of the independent candidates in the EU elections and voted for The Roman Party. Ave! I think Ray has been promoting the Jury Team for similar reasons but while an interesting idea, it did seem like even more of a lucky dip vote.
Looking forward to a general election now!
I must admit, I looked at the Roman candidate and thought shall I ?
But no. I blogged about the need for more independents 9 months ago, so absolutely right that I support them today.
Not sure I’d say they’re a lucky dip. Candidate profiles are all available on the Jury Team website, so you can discover quite a lot about them. But too late now. Maybe next time…
True, I can discover a lot about them, but I could find out that I really like the candidate at the bottom of the list, while I might disagree strongly with the top candidate. The Jury Team would have to do really well before the candidate I want would get to go to Europe. Just doesn’t seem like a good way to do things, unless I missunderstand the system. I think it would be more useful if independents stood… independently. The Jury Team could still provide support and raise the profile of all the candidates, but not as a traditional party.
Bit late to be commenting on this, so I won\’t say anything special.
All I do have to say is – good effort, James! best rant I\’ve read in a while.
I did feel much better after that rant!
Mind you Rich recently pointed out this little gem which almost got me started again given that every leaflet I get from them has the same thing on.
I actually got talking to someone from the local Labour party at the Tuesday tweetup last night which was interesting given their general lack of interest where I live. He seemed like a genuinely nice bloke but it did remind me why I won’t be voting Labour. The idea that you need an ID card to help the homeless was particularly entertaining… What forms of ID will he need to get one? How are you going to post it to him?
I know, more ranting. I’ll stop now. Must stop paying attention to politics; it’s just too annoying.
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