From: David Quarrie, Lynden Way, Acomb, York.
AS usual after a set of Government mid-term local council elections, the newspapers and the TV political analysts get very excited and carried away about the success and failures of the various political parties.
These latest results showing Labour (primarily Gordon Brown) getting a hammering with only 24 per cent of the vote, the Conservatives doing quite well on 44 per cent, and the Liberal Democrats with a slight glimmer of hope on 25 per cent.
Only 33
per cent of those entitled to vote did so, and many of the Labour voters who switched this time, will switch back come the General Election – no way will most of them vote Tory. They do not support Cameron nor his party, but they do dislike Brown and rightly feel very betrayed. The Tories claim to have at last got their message heard in the North. However, they only won Bury and North Tyneside, so thousands are still deaf to Conservatism.
People claim that they want change, and yet they still vote Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat. Real change is thus impossible, because those three parties are so similar and because the UK is in the EU.
The ordinary working man and woman will still suffer in almost exactly the same way, no matter which of these parties is in the power.
The abolition of the 10p tax rate really hurt 5.4 million low paid people and probably cost Labour many votes, but no party has promised to reinstate it.
From: David Wright, Little Lane, Easingwold, North Yorkshire.
Yes, the local election results and the London mayoral election have shown the dissatisfaction and distrust of the Labour administration and the policies of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
However, one has to view these results with caution for although the Conservatives have come out well, they still have nothing new to appeal to the electorate and we shall simply substitute the current bunch of career politicians who are full of theory and gift-of-the-gab with a similar untried bevy of ex-lawyers and political researchers who have no practical experience or common sense to get the UK out of the mire.
The readers' letters page (Yorkshire Post, May 2), plus the comment column of Bill Carmichael, simply reinforce the view that there is a hell of a lot wrong with our political scene, and one is left with the disturbing view that the local election results were simply protest votes. We deserve more than a continuation of the status quo, but it is up to us, the electorate, to get involved in politics and to campaign for radical new policies and a different political direction.
The full article contains 460 words and appears in n/a newspaper.
