Hello people. Hope you are well and enjoying the sunshine. This week we will be meeting at The Quarry pub at 7.30pm. This week the blog has been written by Sue.
Last week we had our local elections and I was asked to write about it for this week’s blog. So thinking about this I wondered what to write should it be statistics and a breakdown of the results or some kind of other fact based research. All great and all very important but what I then thought is where is our voices in all this. I love P!nk and she is not shy in sharing her experiences and opinions, fighting for all, not just the individual. Two of her songs speak to me of politics: ‘Dear Mr President’ and ‘What about Us?’ (links below to listen).
These songs make me think ‘well what about us? What are our individual stories of local and national elections? What are our stories of politics? So here are a few stories I have of my own involvement and experiences of elections and politics.
During my life I have lived under the government of 10 Prime Ministers; 32 years and 45 days (thanks Liz Truss for the 45 days) under a Conservative government and 14 years under a Labour government.
As a child of the 80’s I watched the TV with miner strikes, remembering clearly the violence between strikers and the police. Watching my own dad come in from work, and head back out to union meetings to protect jobs. I am thankful to my dad for teaching me about politics and government. Hearing him still say ‘if you can’t give 15 mins to go vote, you’ve no right to complain’.
At university I had to stop talking about politics with a friend because in their opinion Margaret Thatcher was the best thing since sliced bread. We had to agree that our friendship was more important than politics.
As a community and youth worker over the past 29 years I have seen the decline in funding resources from central government to local councils which result in community centres and youth projects being closed down. And then when young people start getting into trouble and anti-social behaviour the blame is laid at their feet. THEY ARE KIDS! The adults that are meant to be looking after them are struggling working every hour they have, having to use food banks, and make the choice of whether to eat or use electric/gas to heat the house up. Those of us who are trying to help through volunteering and professional work have our hands tied because the government thinks that once the statistics show an improvement to the issues they pull the funding to ensure that work cannot continue and back on the roundabout we all go!
The consequence of our National government reducing funding to local councils means that the services and projects the local councils use to support are now applying for funding that other voluntary projects would apply for making the ‘competition for funding’ harder.
And if you ask my husband, the national elections have put me in hospital once. A combination of David Cameron being elected, me staying up to see the results, a very strong coffee and an early morning resulted in the worst migraine I have ever experienced, including throwing up during work, I ended up being taken to hospital. So thankful to our NHS for being there and whatever it was they gave me allowed me to sleep and was then able to go home.
So to the present day, I feel that over the past few years I have been reliving my childhood but as an adult, watching NHS staff, teachers and other working professions strike under a conservative government.
In the weeks leading up to last week’s election we only had a flyer from the Labour party about their candidates, no other information was posted or so I thought. On voting day I went to open what I thought was my polling card to find that it was a brochure of the candidates standing for the North East Mayor. Why had it not been opened, because it came in the same white envelope as the polling cards. Yet on closer inspection in the bottom right hand corner it says enclosed brochure for voting.
When I was talking to a friend who is part of a political party, they talked about how not all candidates who were standing for this role could be included in the brochure. ‘Oh? Was there too many and not enough room in the pages?’ I asked. No each individual/party had to pay £3000 to be included. Not all parties that stand for election have these types of finances. So, again our election processes come down to who can afford what, the haves and the have nots. In my opinion a theme that seems to resonate with a conservative government, or maybe I’m just biased.
Now I do not hide the fact that I do not agree with the Conservative party but at this time I also see no good alternative to them. The Labour leader is already talking about a ten year plan to turn things around, which is also based on the hope they will be voted in again to complete this plan. Ten years! I’ll be 56! And whoever gets in other than the Conservative will inherit a lot of chaos to sort out, just as the conservatives keep saying they have done from Labour.
Maybe it’s time to hear the stories and the generational impacts those decisions have had for the individual whose lives are affected by the decisions that are made in London and local councils.
Questions:
- Did your school have house teams? If so, what team were you in? And what was the colour?
- What was it like the first time you were old enough to vote?
- What has been your experience of politics and elections?
- What would you say are the good things about our political and electoral systems and what are the bad things?
- What does the Bible say about governments?
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA
Peace Sue
