[jaysay]

Originally Posted by Ken Moss

I'm a bit of a new boy myself to these forums and thanks for the compliments. I can fully understand your disillusionment and it's part of the reason I've got involved with local politics to start with.

However, what I'm saying is that you should vote simply because you have the power to influence the political setup. If, for example, you feel particularly strongly that Brussels or Strasbourg are having far too much influence in the running of Great Britain and that the government (whoever they might be at the time) are allowing it to happen but you don't feel that the opposition party will do anything about it either, then vote for UKIP or another party just to show that the main parties are not doing the job you want.

It might not be that you particularly want UKIP (purely as an example) in power and feel it is an unlikely eventuality in any case but if fringe parties gain uncomfortably large support then the main parties would be foolish to ignore the views of the people on those issues.

I am representing Labour in Rishton on May 6th and I would hope that people would vote for me because they believe I have the best interests of the village at heart rather than simply seeing a red badge. I am fortunate to have a very good support network headed by Graham Jones and I am already working with several community groups and the Rishton Labour councillor, Harry Grayson, to fix things in the town.

I personally am disenchanted with faceless councillors who only pop up for a photo shoot instead of those that listen to residents. Graham and Harry are very hands-on with the voters and do take on board what is said to them.

At a local level, it really doesn't take much of an effort to make small changes if you really want to. You don't even need to be a politician but it does require a listening ear which is where we both agree and I admit that this is where my argument stumbles if you don't know your local candidates.

Graham's philosophy is that every voter should see the candidates that they are being asked to vote for, which I firmly agree with since I don't think I would vote for someone on blind faith either.

Blind faith, I always thought that was the first article in the Labour Party constitution