Yay it's time to do your democratic duty again!

That's right it's local election time so today (Thursday) people up and down the UK will be going to the polls to select their local councillors. Due to falling house prices, rising gas and petrol prices, rising food prices and the debacle of the 10p tax rate the ruling Labour party are expected to get an absolute spanking.

Now much as I love the current government I can only see defeating them at the local elections as something of a futile protest because local councillors are without doubt the lowest rung of the political food chain with little or no influence on national policy. In fact because of the way the party political system works they probably have even less influence on Gordon Brown they you do.

What they do have though is a great deal of power over all the niggly little things that you hardly notice but actually make quite a difference to your everyday lives. For example they will decide how much you pay for your parking permit, they will decide how often your rubbish will be collected, they can decide how long your local library can stay open and they get to decide whether or not there's a zebra crossing outside your kids school. The other thing you have to remember about local councillors is that they are actually really accessible and easy to get hold of. For just one or two evenings a month you can actually get to know these people and influence the decisions they make.

For these reasons I think that when choosing who to vote for you need to forget all that tory this, labour that party political nonsense and just look at the candidates themselves and pick the individual who most reflects your point of view and is most likely to be able to get the job done.


Here in London we don't have to bother with local elections because we have the much vaunted "Race for London Mayor" which is apparently the most powerful, directly elected political position in the UK. I know that sounds elitist but that is the system we have to deal with. i will however be using the same principles to decide who to vote for as i would do if it was and ordinary council election.

For the post of London Mayor there are actually ten candidates but as I can only remember the names of four of them off the top of my head I think it's fair to say at this point that the other six are not going to win. The four main candidates are;

Boris Johnson(conservative) - Perhaps the best know of all the candidates Boris has enjoyed a very high profile by playing the fool on TV chat shows. This persona however did lead hims to describe all black voters as "flag waving picanies with watermelon smiles" and he was once forced to apologise to the entire population of Papua New Guinea after calling them all cannibals. However my brother, being another Welcome trust development program, has come up a bit soft in the head and subscribes to The Spectator magazine. This means I often got to read Boris's editorials when he ran the magazine and I can testify that behind that bumbling exterior there is a razor sharp and often vicious conservative mind.

Winston McKenzie (independent) - A former boxer who lives in my area and odes quite a bit of work with local charities. Although I don't know that much about his policies his former profession and his proximity to me means that I really, really want him to do well.

Ken Livingstone (labour) - Of the three main candidate Livingstone is probably the one I know the least about which is odd because he's actually been doing the job for the last eight years. aside form a rather unpleasant and obvious hate campaign the Evening Standard have been running against him he hasn't done much wrong with his plans to develop east London, his work on the cross rail network and his attempts to bring tube maintainers back under London Underground control from metronet. He also introduced the Congestion Charge which although not broadly popular has been so successful that other major world cities are int he process of copying it. Also I that despite being the Labour candidate Gordon Brown fucking hates him.

Brian Paddick (liberal democrat) - This is the candidate I probably have the most respect for because I've actually worked under his command when I was doing security for the 2001 Ashes 5th test. In the run up to the match everyone thought they were going to be in for an easy ride because although it was an international event cricket fans are rarely that rowdy and it also fell in that blissfully peaceful period right after the IRA declared a ceasefire and just before Sept 11th happened. Four days before the start of the match thought the Real IRA started a mainland bombing campaign and everyone suddenly realised that at least 5 of the VIP guest were on the IRA's assination list and no-one was prepared for the type of security operation that would now be required. This led to rather a panicked and chaotic start to the event and while it was a very large operation involving MI5, Special Branch, the Anti-terrorist Branch, regular police, the army and several private security agencies Paddick was the man in charge meaning that if the shit fell it was on his head that it would land. Needless to say nothing went wrong and Paddick handled that challenges well and I have alot of respect for him for that.
He has been attacked by certain quarters for lacking the ideological vision of other candidates but to be perfectly honest that is exactly what I want from a Mayor, someone who will listen to the people telling him what they want done and then goes out and does it with the minimum of fuss.

For those reason i will probably be voting for Paddick for mayor and the greens for the London assembly but that said Boris Johnson has promised to hold a referendum on the smoking ban if elected and quite frankly we can overcome many failures of government but we must be allowed to smoke in pubs.