For some reason, despite many friends receiving their postal votes for the upcoming London elections this morning, I only got the big bulky guide of how to vote, and not my postal voting slip. Gah!
I have no idea about how the London Assembley elections work (or even the Assembly itself!!), and after reading their guide, I am still pretty much non-the-wiser! I don’t know if I should just vote Labour as I usually agree with all their principals, or else not vote in the Assemblies so as not to risk diluting the vote with ignorance… hmm! I think I will research my Labour candidate further and probably vote for her unless she’s said anything too objectionable.
Back on the subject of the more exciting London Mayoral Elections, I must confess that the pamphlet and the idea of the supplimentary voting system were mucho confusing at 8:30am…especially for a northerner where we all vote Labour anyways. Two votes?! Argh, my eyes are bleeding!
Still, at least the postie got the right door for once! Plus I like the way that London brands it’s election process as “London Elects” – I think that puts a good spin on it and makes it more accessible to those who perhaps would not vote otherwise.
I have just read said booklet properly, and wasn’t particularly impressed with the bulk of my options, though I do understand the SV voting methodology much better now.
Having said that, my first impressions are that it may have changed who’s getting my first and second votes, which I wasn’t expecting it to do!
The BNP’s pitch made me laugh out loud… “I will make sure that people like you – the real Londoners are put first”… (he bolded the Londoners bit) technically I’m Mancunian but I’m still eligable to vote… the buffoon!
Their supporting quotes are laughable too.. one ‘student’ is blatantly referencing Irish elections; “I’m voting BNP because I’m Irish and the BNP are the only party that cares about the indigenous people of these islands”
According to ‘Housewife’ “only the BNP have policies which keep our children safe”… incredibly short-sighted!
The Christian Voice proposal was pure bumf, no substance to it at all, and Brian Paddick’s pitch was rather self-obsessed I thought. I’m sick of his people constantly spamming me telling me how wonderful Brian is and how he once saved the world with his little pinkie whilst having a cup of tea, practicing yoga and reading GT – the Lib Dems always seem to go OTT with the party info crap, wherever I’ve voted in the past! Ken’s pitch came across as arrogant and self-assured I thought… one page is a big picture of him, (btw, the cost of inclusion in the booklet was 10K for 2 pages) and the formatting on the other page setting out his proposals hardly make for stimulating/eye-catching or interesting reading – it was pretty much just “tube”, “tube”, “oyster”, “travel”.
Bo-Jo isn’t even getting a mention on my blog. Lets just say I take a very dim view to him and cannot believe that he is being taken seriously by nearly a third of the voting public!
Actually, I want to mock him, so I will concede to post the below;
The Green Party put in a good proposal, and I’d never really considered them before.
Current thoughts are Sián Berry (of The Green Party) for first preference vote, and then Ken Livingston for the more realistic second preference vote
Gari Wellingham 
I’m not sure whether to give Greens or Lib Dems my first vote. I prefer Greens but would rather have Brian in than either Ken or Boris. My second vote will be for Labour just as that’ll help ensure no BLOODY Boris!
For assembly member it’ll be Greens, they’ve got a decent record there :-p
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I think you’ve got sound reasoning there. I’ve yet to meet a Boris fanatic, but there must be a good number of them out there. I’d love to know what they think Boris has in his policies that is seriously achievable and surely having half of London mocking the mayor wouldn’t be the way to run a City?! Ken may be seen by some as discredited by a few ‘scandals’ but though I’ve yet top hear of a scandal involving Boris, I think he himself manages to discredit himself on a daily basis!
My prob with the Lib Dems is mainly down to the agressive awarenes campaign that they have (which in fairness, we’d slate them for it if they didn’t do that I guess). That said, I did vote Lib Dem back in Manchester and we did get a Lib Dem councillor.
I still think that this is clearly going to be a two horse race, and so I was happy to vote Green for first choice and it’s obvious that this is going to boil down to Boris vs Ken in the second round. The first round seems simply a polite formality in letting the other parties go.
Sent my postal vote back in today; how exciting!
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