Local Elections

So it's the local elections and as I haven't been the voting age for two long, this is actually going to be the first time I end up using my vote.

We have been getting various bits of paper shoved through our door, which I had put in a pile so I could read them all and make an informed decision. Unfortunately when our living room was tidied they all ended up in the recycling box, which ended up outside, in the rain. Damn.

So this morning when I remembered that it was election day today, I realised that I have no idea who to vote for. But i thought you know these bits of paper shoved through our door are unlikely to have any real detail anyway, I want to read manifestos. I want detail. I'm sure I will be able to find lots of information online. apparently I was really, really wrong.

Firstly Labour. I did actually find a website on the current labour councillor. unfortunately she is standing down, there isn't actually anything on the current candidate.

Conservative were slightly better I actually found information on the current candidate. About five hundred words worth:
http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=people.person.page&PersonID=136641

The details on the successful campaigns he has run in the past are useful, but nothing much at all on what he intends to do.


Finally the Lib Dems who are probably the bets represented on the web with an entire website for our constituency:
http://sellyoaklibdems.org.uk/index.html

The detail on the candidate is minimal though, I know eh cycles, but that doesn't really inform my voting opinion. I have also not been able to find a campaign manifesto, or what I will do if I am elected page.

So being able to make an informed decision based on an understanding of the candidates aims and policies is not something I can do. Fantastic. Seriously I think I got more detailed information in our Guild Elections. Although They do have e-mail addresses. I really wish I had though about this earlier, because I have plenty of questions.

Something which has really annoyed me though is that nowhere in nay of the little information about what they are planning to do (why are going to make Selly Oak Greener type promises)do they seem to acknowledge students. Students will make up a sizable amount of the Voting population for the constituency and yet from all the websites you woudl think we don't exist. Do they think we won't vote? Or that we are just not worth campaigning to.

I mean for example all they need is a sentence saying something like and we will support the community warden scheme set up by the guild and i would be happy. this scheme is something run by students in our area working to do many similar things to the concillors policies. As it runs by students and is campaigning for what we want in the area you woudl have thought the councillors might have pay some attention to it but obviously not.

One of the main things that our guild scheme is trying to do is build connections between students and local residents. Students get a lot of bad press as residents. Admittedly there are students that by the way they live deserve this but not all students. In Selly Oak it feels like we are completely separate form the local community. The community warden scheme run by our guild is about students trying to change this. But none of the local councilors have said anything about stduent integration. Instead it also seems like they are making it worse, by not involving us in their campaign past putting their flyer's through our doors.