Polling day tomorrow.

[Stan_Lite]

Right. As we all know it's polling day tomorrow for the Scottish parliament, the Welsh assembly and local elections across the country.

I wasn't expecting to be here and although I arranged to have a proxy vote, I don't know anybody in Peterhead well enough to ask them to vote for me so I haven't been following the election campaign.

I have since found out that I will be here until Sunday so I now have to decide who gets my vote (not voting is not an option - if I'm physically able to vote I do). Since I haven't been following things, I'm struggling to decide (things were so much easier when the Labour party were actually socialist ).

As I haven't been following things, I decided a bit of research was required in order to make an informed choice. The method I decided upon was to download summaries of the parties involved from the BBC website, print them off and study them to see which party was more in tune with my thinking.

I read through the summaries and ticked policies I agreed with and made comments beside those I either didn't agree with or was unsure about. The results were somewhat confusing.

Here is a breakdown of my findings:

Scottish Labour:
Very few ticks, mostly in the "health" section of their manifesto. Sadly, the most common comment written beside their policies was "Pointless" - so many of their policies are, in my opinion, "non-policies". They appear to have been added to pad out a weak and poorly thought out manifesto.
Summary - highly unlikely they will be getting my vote.

SNP:
Slightly more ticks and fewer "pointless" comments, I agree with most of their policies on education. The major problem with the SNP is that I disagree with their core policy and the main reason for their existence in the first place - Scottish independence. I think independence for Scotland would be fiscal and social suicide - we would alienate ourselves from our neighbours and without the union, our world/European position would be severely weakened. I disagree with independence but would welcome more devolved power for the Scottish parliament and similar powers for other parts of the UK with each individual area being disallowed from voting on matters in Westminster which do not directly affect them.
Summary - a reasonable possibility. Hopefully my fellow "canny" Scots will think along the same lines as me, i.e. that the SNP may make a decent administration but independence is not the way forward and would vote NO in the promised referendum.

Scottish Tories:
As you would expect, very few ticks and not much agreement with many of their policies - they fared reasonably well with their transport policies but not very well elsewhere. One of their most unpalatable policies is to devolve some of the powers of the Scottish Parliament to local authorities "to better meet the needs of local areas". I am all in favour of devolving more responsibilities to local authorities but my natural suspicion of the Tories suggests to me that this is a smokescreen to begin disbanding the Scottish parliament altogether :undecided:
Summary - not much chance Annabel.

Scottish Lib-Dem:
Not as good as I expected. I consider myself to be a bit of a liberal but my ingrained socialist tendencies are obviously still strong. They got few ticks but also quite a few unworkable/unachievable comments. They also got the only "farcical" comment for their policy to generate 100% of electricity from renewable sources - totally impossible in my opinion and as such, naiive in the extreme.
Summary - possible but not likely.

Scots Greens:
Pretty much as expected, tree hugging hippies with tunnel vision, although I liked some of their economical and educational policies. the main problem with the Greens in my opinion, is their single mindedness and their tendency towards extreme liberalism. I think the Greens need to mature somewhat before they present a realistic challenge to the main parties in Scotland.
Summary - Not a viable option yet.

SSP:
As a lifelong socialist, these guys should appeal to me but some of their policies are just absolutely ridiculous and completely unworkable. The worst of which being to "raise "hundreds of millions" extra through higher corporation tax" - coupled with their desire for independence, this would mean bankruptcy for Scotland and as such, they are well down the list. Also, most of their policies would require a great deal of money to implement (i.e. free public transport throughout Scotland) but the only means of paying for these schemes seems to be to tax business which is not the way to attract investors in a (newly independent Scotland as they would have it).
Summary - no chance (too militant - maybe when I was 19 and militant (but immature) myself, I would have voted for them - but not now that I have grown up and realise that the socialist Utopia I once dreamed of was a pipe dream).

Solidarity:
Party scraped together by Tommy Sheridan to wind up the SSP after they kicked him out - barely worth mentioning.
Summary - **** off Sheridan.

Conclusions:

It would appear, due to my inability to make a clear choice due to being unclear about the policies of the individual parties, that I am a lot less political than I was in my youth. This disturbs me as I used to be proud of my knowledge of issues which were important. Apparently, I really should try to keep abreast of things that matter. To become disinterested in the politics of one's country is to devolve one's ability to shape the political process to those who offer the best sweeteners - if one simply votes for the party which offers the best tax cuts or makes the best promises regarding education or health without regard for the wider implications, one has no right to complain when things go wrong.

In all probability, I will probably vote for the SNP in the hope that the Scottish electorate will vote a resounding no in the independence referendum if they win.

Even if the SNP win, the Lib-Lab pact which has governed for the last 8 years will probably remain intact and will still be strong enough to shape policy for the next term, rendering a majority vote for the SNP little more than a protest vote and a kick up the arse for Scottish Labour.

A couple of things I have picked up on from what I've seen of the campaigns on the telly have been:

1) The overplaying of our involvement in the Iraq war - this is not a matter which is pertinent to elections to the Scottish parliament. They have no power to determine where the armed forces are deployed, this is a matter for Westminster and as such, this issue has little bearing on Scottish elections.

2) (One of my bugbears) it's the usual "We intend to do everything we can to help 'hard-working' families".
WHAT ABOUT HARD WORKING SINGLE PEOPLE FFS, we pay more tax than married people and get less benefits and concessions yet, due to only having one income, we find it even more difficult to get ourselves onto the property ladder and have little or no chance of obtaining local authority housing, forcing us to rent privately. This decreases our ability to save for a deposit to buy a place of our own. Apparently the average wage in 2006 was around £23,000. This means that a single person earning the average wage would be able to get a mortgage (at 3.5xsalary) of £80,500, even assuming a single person could scrape together a deposit of £20,000, where the **** can you buy a house for £100,500. Let's stop concentrating on "hard working" families and try to help "hard working" citizens. Don't make a subclass of those of us who have had failed marriages or choose not to marry.
/Rant over.

Stan

[Feek]

A very good post, Stan. I'll be voting today the way I always do in locals. The local area has _always_ done better under Labour so it's a foregone conclusion for me.

[Haly]

Interesting post
I'm a bit rattled because I completely forgot to arrange a postal vote back home, so in Swansea I have my voting card but I'm not back there till tomorrow. I also have a voting card in Stafford but I don't want to vote there because I don't think it's right that I can vote here even though I'm leaving the area in a couple of weeks. That's just a personal reason, I'd much rather vote in Swansea, but ah well :/

[semi-pro waster]

Well I've just voted today for the first time ever, I've always had a certain amount of interest in politics but either could never motivate myself to vote or like Haly was in a different part of the country to my vote.

In my local area I've gone with the status quo since the councillors seem to be doing a pretty good job overall and I'm happy to see it continue. It was more difficult with the nationals so I slightly regret not seeing this post before voting but I did have a quick look round the policies of the parties I was interested in and I'm fairly happy with my choices overall as being the best of a pretty dire lot. At least this time I've actually done something to vote.

[Justsomebloke]

Me & frank will be heading up the school to vote shortly.
Not made my mind up yet but thinking of swinging over as our local area is being ripped apart by our current bunch of leeches.
I want to chat to someone off the other side first before i make my final choice.

[Dymetrie]

No polling day in London \o/

*points and laughs at all the kids in London who had to go to school*

[Stan_Lite]

Originally Posted by Pikey

I want to chat to someone off the other side first before i make my final choice.

That's one thing which disappointed me with this campaign. I got the usual leaflets through the door but nobody knocked on the door and I never saw any of the candidates in the street. The one time I actually want to talk to a politician and I can't find one

Stan

[Haly]

As I was in Swansea for most of April, I managed to be around for most of the campaigns.
I was very impressed that both the Conservative Candidate and the labour candidate actually knocked on our door. Granted the Labour candidate must have knocked it than ran away a matter of seconds later because I missed her, but at least she was actually going round.
The conservative one was quite friendly too and actually addressed the points that my Mum discussed with him.
Admittedly, the odds of anyone in my family voting tory are somewhere close to a snowball's chance in hell, but it's nice to know they try hard.

We got a BNP leaflet too which I enjoyed ripping to shreds both metaphorically and physically. I loved the fact they couldn't spell too There were some quite horrific spelling mistakes in the leaflet and it smelt of petrol which was a bit worrying.

If I'd had the chance, I probably would have voted Lib Dem but it was more down to lack of other options than because they seemed good, possibly Labour but it's a tricky one imo.
I'd never vote Tory.
The Labour MP for the area is great, and 'old' labour through and through and has actually replied to letters I've sent him, it's just the party he represents that puts me off him unfortunately.
I'd never vote Plaid Cymru because I'm fairly sure they'd kick me and my family out of the country if they ever got the chance And anything right wing's got no chance from me really.

Pity I didn't get a chance this year, ah well.

[Nutcase]

As usual, the only party actually knocking on doors was lib dem, although I got a labour leaflet throught he door too. Cons may not even exist cos didn't get anything from them, although they were on the voting slip.

Labour have no chance round here, and I hate their current government anyway, so def no vote for them. Conservative seem to spend all their time moaning about the lib dems, and lib dems spend a lot of time out and about getting their photos taken by accident blackspots etc. but do actually appear to get the odd one sorted out, so they got my vote again.

[Tak]

No door knockers but have been getting things through the post for the past couple of months.

Never actually voted this time as what with one thing and another I forgot and the cards that are normally propped up on my diary to remind me are in the stack of everything on my desk.

Going by the results nothing much changed anyway.