no subject

[taimatsu]

Who'm I going to vote for next election? I know it's erroneous to look at one's vote for a local MP as having lots of effect on who the PM is, but bear with me here, it's not exactly unrelated.

I voted Labour last time. I'm not doing that again, the way things are looking now. If Blair isn't even listening to his own party, let alone the electorate, I'm just not going there (of course, if Blair is ousted befor ht next election,t higns could change, but hmm.)

I'm not green enough to be Green, and anyway the lunacies of local Greens have put me off. I vote Conservative when Lucifer starts a snowball fight. That leaves the Lib Dems. While I know some lovely Liberal Democrats (hi softfruit!) and they are commendably anti-war in stance, I have weird worries about voting for them. Partly my mother votes LD, and subconsciously I spend 99% of my time rebelling against my mother (no, really), not that that should be a factor, but it makes me feel odd. I don't know enough about their policies, and Charles Kennedy, besides sharing my surname (an undeniable point in his favour) seems so, well, ignorable. Yu can just forget he exists. Sorry, who was discussing again?

Anyway, you see my dilemma. I was a fairly convinced Labour voter, but I'm becoming unimpressed with their record on public services, and bemused by things like all these PFI deals (isn't that, like, nearly privatisation? And isn't that what Labour doesn't do?). Tube privatisation makes me worry. Anyway.

More for me than anything else - just a little pondering of political thingummies.

Comments

[bringeroflight.livejournal.com]

I vote Conservative when Lucifer starts a snowball fight.

You give them that chance?

I have very few "never"s. That's one of them. :-)

[diffrentcolours]

http://www.libdems.org.uk makes their position on most things clear.

Hell, I'm for them if only because they're the only sensible libertarian choice. I joined the other day, I shoudl get the card in the post any day now :)

I spy with my little eye, something beginning with 'c'

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

> sensible libertarian

'C'ontradiction in terms.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Lib Dems; well, could they be any worse?

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

I chose to vote Lib Dem after deciding voting labour in the last general election was a big mistake. I picked them because they have sensible policies on things like education and foxhunting and are also more interested in said policies than in joining in the Tory/Labour four-yearly mudslinging match.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

The last time Parliament debate hunting with dogs, three liberal democrat MPs spoke.

Norman Baker argued for a complete ban.
Alan Beith supported hunting.
Lembit Opik supported licensed hunts.

Just curious, umm, what's the policy?

> more interested in said policies than in
> joining in the Tory/Labour four-yearly
> mudslinging match.

'hmm'.

[ixwin.livejournal.com]

Yup, Lib Dems for me too.

Charles Kennedy may not be the most exciting person in the world but whenever I've heard him (or indeed, most other Lib Dem politicians) being interviewed he comes across so much better than the point-scory, soundbitey, antagonistic approach adopted by either Labour or Conservative politicians. He actually answers questions for one thing - and isn't afraid to say "I don't know".

And he's hardly more of a non-entity than IDS.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Token Labour Party member #1 reporting for duty, though tired and bored, having been explaining local government to people who already understand anyway for 5 hours today.

I'm hardly going to persuade you though, since I think we're in the process of doing a brave and selfless thing.

Soon a dictator will have been displaced. A mass-murderer of around a million Iraqis will have been removed from the means of perpetrating his crimes. The people who use their citizens' money to bankroll the suicide-bombing Jew-hating 'Arab Liberation Front' will be gone. A people will have been freed, and another nation will be on the way to taking its rightful place in the world family of democracies.

> unimpressed with their record on public services

Which ones?

> PFI deals (isn't that, like, nearly privatisation?)

No, it's like renting a house if you can't afford to buy one. Or, more specifically, it's like persuading someone to build you a flat you don't have the skills or experience to build and manage, in exchange for a promise that you'll rent it for a certain length of time afterwards.

I have a problem with quite a lot of PFI because it often just isn't very good value for money in practice, but I can't work myself up to care a great deal about it in theory.

> That leaves the Lib Dems

Who, in Oxfordshire, are in coalition with the Tories, so be careful what you do in the County Council elections (they'll probably be on the same day as the General Election, the way things have been going these last few times).

And who, while I'm here, opposed a national minimum wage, opposed the New Deal, and so on.

> I don't know enough about their policies

They rely on that, nationally, but I suspect to the extent they have coherent policies you'd quite like them. I assumed you'd be a liberal away from my good influence. Go for it, it'll make you feel better, and you'll never have to deal with being disappointed in practice, because they'll never form a government.

I bet in 1906 they said Labour'd never form a government....

[softfruit.livejournal.com]

*resists urge to lay into Labour's record and correct some flagrant spin from our right wing companion there, as this is in someone else's LJ, and I am coming to this posting a bit late*

However, you will find coalitions of every conceivable hue running councils all over the country, down to the electoral maths of the area, hence the Labour-Tory coalition up here in Stockport for most of the 90s which kept the Lib Dems (though we were the largest party) out of power. You get a hung council, you get negotiations, you get some kind of a pact arrangement - or a minority trying to run things on their own and forever getting outvoted since they are outnumbered by the opposition. 'nuff said.

I'm not sure of the geography of Oxford and which bit you live in, but the West side of the city has a Lib Dem MP, and IIRC in the east it's a Labour MP with Lib Dems as the most likely people to displace them. Council wise it has wobbled between Lib Dem and Labour as the largest party in the last few years, with quite a few Greens at one point though they seem to have fallen back lately. All of this paragraph is from memory, so I may yet sheepishly comment to this saying something like "oh bugger, I was thinking of Cambridge" :oP

Re: 1906, 2003, spot the difference...

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

> our right wing companion there

Yes, that's me, the right-wing one. Are the Lib Dems officially saying they're left of Labour now then, or is that just when they want left-wing votes?

> However, you will find coalitions of every
> conceivable hue running councils all over
> the country

I know. Here, however, it happens that the Liberal Democrats of Oxfordshire have made the decision that the party they would most like to run the Council with are the Tories. It seems fair to imply, therefore, that a vote for the Lib Dems in the local elections is, ex post facto, an endorsement of that decision.

> I'm not sure of the geography of Oxford and which
> bit you live in

Lucy and I both live in working class bits.

> the West side of the city

(the middle class bit)

> has a Lib Dem MP

Yeah, met him. Smug, oily and ineffectual.

> IIRC in the east

(the working class bit)

> it's a Labour MP

Hurrah! A fine one, at that.

> with Lib Dems as the most likely people
> to displace them

If by 'most likely' you mean 'need to more than double their vote', then yes.

> Council wise it has wobbled between Lib
> Dem and Labour as the largest party in the
> last few years, with quite a few Greens at
> one point though they seem to have fallen
> back lately.

You're quite right. We lost it in 2000, the Lib Dems and Greens went into coalition, it was unutterably awful while they did dreadful stuff like tell old people that the Council helping keep the gardens of council houses tidy was 'creating a dependency culture', and as soon as they had a chance, the people of Oxford elected Labour again, in 2002.

We won in some quite surprising places, given that a certain Lib Dem Councillor said we 'only care about people who live on Council estates'.

The Greens fell from 8 to 3, because they prey on disaffected left-wing Labour voters, and that got lots harder to do when they had to face up to running a Council. Some might say 'impossible'.