leyton.org

We’ve started to receive flyers for the forthcoming elections here in Scotland. We’re voting for MSP’s, as well as city councillors, here in Glasgow.

The Scottish Conservatives were the first we received for the local elections, and I always make a point of reading what they have to say. Interesting to note that their candidate David Meikle has setup a weblog and a website.

All good to see, although I’m some way off of coming to any sort of decision, much less deciding on what my priorities are for the local, and Scottish parliament elections, beyond deciding that the SNP are clearly in need of some basic economics knowledge (spend, spend, spend) and will receive short shrift from me if they ever ask for my vote. They’re really a party I have a problem with before we even get past their name. That said, a useless factoid for any readers interested is to point out that the SNP is - I understand - the only left-wing nationalist party in Europe.

One useful - non-political - item I did learn from the Conservative flyer is that the local elections will be held using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. This means voters will be much better able to express themselves, and should really result in a better balance, and representation of councillors: All too often the Labour-rosette wearing donkey gets voted in here.

So perhaps that’s my overriding objective: To make sure the council has a full representation of views. I’m also deeply cynical about the two year freeze in council tax we’ve had. Welcome for sure, but leaves me deeply suspicious of the controlling Labour administration simply playing politics. The council tax is already higher than I ever paid in London, and whilst water-rates do get included in the figure we have an eye-watering £2,200 to pay each year: A bitter pill to swallow when I’m very uncertain the council actually does a particularly efficient job (unless it involves putting bollards around a hole in the ground and ignoring it for six weeks; Then they’re very good), and I’m suspicious it’ll go up in the next few years - above inflation - before freezing again before the next election.

I’ll be posting more on both the local council elections in the next few months. Mr Milke can probably expect some comments on his weblog at last; But he certainly deserves credit: I’m hoping the other candidates will do similar and enable us all to put questions to them in a format that’s significantly better than cornering a volunteer who’s just pushing pamphlets through letterboxes and giving them grief.