Once again, a timely,, well-thought out article. As someone slated to run for council elections next year (for the Green Party) I am constantly frustrated at the general public’s lack of awareness regarding the power of local councils and the importance of voting in local elections. I agree with you that this ignorance is deliberately engendered by both local and national politicians. Giving ordinary people access to decision-making and providing transparency? God forbid!
It’s so hard to drown out the noise and just get down to brass tacks with it and get a clear answer on the basic question - what does this mean for me? Naturally that’s going to turn off a lot of people. When you don’t see positive change you don’t believe in it.
I've always been fascinated by how we treat council elections in the UK like they are consistently our equivalent of US midterms, but somehow are left even less informed about what they do, and how they affect our lives than even American citizens are of their off-cycle local governments.
Really useful introduction to a corrective for this Alex, and I can only hope that many will vote as you suggest (being a Green member myself), but also that all those who do vote for whoever it is, end up with a proactive council that can start evolving us back to the times when whoever had control of the council actually mattered, rather than the 4 decades of Thatcherite rot we've seen set into what was once a thriving system of municipal and local government. Maybe then the many may all have more idea of who our actual councillor is beyond the couple of minutes we see them listed on a ballot paper.
Thanks! There are people in my life if you ask them if they’re voting on Thursday they’ll ask me “what does a councillor even do though?”
Perfectly valid question. They should know, but through no fault of their own they don’t.
You then read the news and all you see is Zia Yusuf pissing on about detention centres.
The cognitive start up cost is so high it isn’t worth the effort, because chances are you’ll be re-learning it all again in either 2, 3 or 4 years depending on where you live, assuming you can figure out which ward you live in.
Once again, a timely,, well-thought out article. As someone slated to run for council elections next year (for the Green Party) I am constantly frustrated at the general public’s lack of awareness regarding the power of local councils and the importance of voting in local elections. I agree with you that this ignorance is deliberately engendered by both local and national politicians. Giving ordinary people access to decision-making and providing transparency? God forbid!
It’s so hard to drown out the noise and just get down to brass tacks with it and get a clear answer on the basic question - what does this mean for me? Naturally that’s going to turn off a lot of people. When you don’t see positive change you don’t believe in it.
I've always been fascinated by how we treat council elections in the UK like they are consistently our equivalent of US midterms, but somehow are left even less informed about what they do, and how they affect our lives than even American citizens are of their off-cycle local governments.
Really useful introduction to a corrective for this Alex, and I can only hope that many will vote as you suggest (being a Green member myself), but also that all those who do vote for whoever it is, end up with a proactive council that can start evolving us back to the times when whoever had control of the council actually mattered, rather than the 4 decades of Thatcherite rot we've seen set into what was once a thriving system of municipal and local government. Maybe then the many may all have more idea of who our actual councillor is beyond the couple of minutes we see them listed on a ballot paper.
Thanks! There are people in my life if you ask them if they’re voting on Thursday they’ll ask me “what does a councillor even do though?”
Perfectly valid question. They should know, but through no fault of their own they don’t.
You then read the news and all you see is Zia Yusuf pissing on about detention centres.
The cognitive start up cost is so high it isn’t worth the effort, because chances are you’ll be re-learning it all again in either 2, 3 or 4 years depending on where you live, assuming you can figure out which ward you live in.