Monday, April 19, 2010

33 stand unopposed in Wyre Forest Parish Elections

Kudos to the Shuttle for marking this as part of their Election 2010 special on page 11 of last week's paper. For those who failed to spot it 33 seats for the Parish Council will be appointed without an election by the constituency.

Now it's not the District Council elections it's the completely unsexy Parish council, but it means the people of Chaddesley Corbett, Kidderminster Foreign, Rushock, Stone, and Upper Arley/Arley Village will not be voting in the parish elections.

Why? Because the number of people applying for the position is equal or less to the number of seats. Why is it important? Because these people decide how to spend part of the money collected by Council Tax when you haven't asked them to.

Once again the failures of our election system manifest themselves. You can only vote for someone you can't vote against someone. The only way anyone from one of these parishes could protest against someone standing is to stand themselves, and noticing that someone isn't suitable doesn't automatically make the noticer suitable either.

5 comments:

Tav said...

Parish Governments are the last bastion of local democracy. With their low budgets they rarely get attention of greedy political parties, so the councillors are there for the community. Sadly that is changing.

What is a real tragedy, and the Shuttle do not report this, is all the people of Kidderminster will not get a chance to vote because we don't have a Town Council.

FlipC said...

I agree which is why I thought this news needed a little more spreading around then the bottom of a page most won't look at.

I've always thought it wrong that Kidderminster doesn't have a council of it's own; although I'm more than happy to cut the bureaucracy. It means that it's the District Council that deals with matters that would normally be handled by such and thus may lead to bias from a Council that is expected to represent the District as a whole.

A nice strict parish - town - district - county - national structure means you have people closer to the 'ground' who may have an inkling at least about what you're talking about.

Orphi said...

I remember Darren remarking that The Terminator actually makes quite a good governor because it's not like he needs the moey (i.e., the only reason he's there is because he actually gives a damn). I have no idea if that actually works or not.

It's true that you can only vote for and not against. I've just received two poll cards, and for only the second time in my life, I'm going to actually vote. Not because I have a particular preference between the three main gangs of lying, cheating, minipulative hypocrits, but because I want to make damned sure that we don't end up with somebody like the Burn Niggers & Pakis (BNP) party. In other words, I'm voting not so much to put good people in, but to keep the crazy people out.

My god help us all… o_O

FlipC said...

The simplest solution would be to have a For and Against column. You still get one vote but you have to decide if it more important to you to get someone elected or try to ensure someone doesn't get elected.

It'll never happen we'd end up having the winning MP polling -24 votes ;-)

Orphi said...

Oh irony — winning because fewer people voted against you than against everybody else. o_O