Important local elections are due, but how many will bother to vote?
Former Labour Cabinet minister Andy Burnham arrives at Golborne Community Primary school with his daughters Annie (left) and Rosie after casting his vote in the Greater Manchester mayoral election in 2017.
Voting will take place on May 6 to elect or re-elect some 5,000 councillors to 145 English councils, along with 13 mayors and 30 police and crime commissioners. These are the officials who bring the powers of government closest to the general public.
They decide how much tax we should pay for local services, including how many policemen patrol our streets; they provide the teams that empty our garbage bins, decide where we can park our cars and for how much; they inspect shops and cafes for cleanliness, license taxis and pub drinking times, approve or refuse building plans, control street markets and provide public toilets.
Can’t be bothered
Councils impact daily on our lives in dozens of important ways we scarcely notice or take for granted.
Yet when those elections take place next month, it is likely that only about one in three people will bother to vote.
At the 2018 round of local government elections, the turnout was 34.7 per cent, one percentage point down from 35.7 per cent in 2014.
Individual areas can be much worse.
In 2018, Hartlepool in northeast England reported a turnout of only 24 per cent.
In 2019 in Hull, the ward of Marfleet had one of the lowest turnouts in England, with just 12.7 per cent of eligible voters casting their ballots.
Pauline French is chair of the local residents association and has lived in Marfleet for 40 years. She said, “I vote, but my husband and my son don’t. They can’t be bothered. They think if they vote, they won’t be heard.”
That is one of several reasons adduced for the apathy of voters.
Others include the belief that nothing will change, a feeling of disillusion with national and local politics and a perceived sameness among candidates, a feeling that “no single party sticks out”.
According to some experts, many people don’t vote because they feel they don’t know enough about politics or the election process – and this could be down to our education system.
The majority of schools teach politics only as an opt-in subject, if they offer it at all.
Consequently many students leave school at 18 with little or no knowledge of our political system and thus feel ill-equipped to engage with politics.
One reason often advanced for not voting is lack of trust in the political parties.
U-turns, broken manifesto promises and contradictions between plans and reality are quoted by disenchanted non-voters.
No canvassing
I can vouch for that. I had a problem with collection of garbage bins and emailed my ward councillor for help. No response.
Pauline French pointed out that lack of engagement in the political process goes both ways.
“We don’t see any candidates,” she said. “There is no canvassing. If you get a leaflet pushed through the door, there’s a lot of people who can’t read or can’t read English. They look at it and throw it away.”
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Millions of British people have become “accidental savers” during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Working from home instead of travelling to the office eliminated bus and train fares, while the lengthy closure of restaurants and pubs put an end to eating out.
Travel restrictions resulted in the widespread cancellation of holidays and their expense.
A report by the financial consultancy LCP estimated some six million people who kept their jobs could have boosted their bank balances by thousands of pounds.
Many more, however, are likely to have suffered serious financial losses from redundancy or reduced wages on furlough, while having children at home increased energy costs and food bills.
The Office for National Statistics reported that over nine million people borrowed more than they usually would by December 2020.
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Dennis Fawsitt buys tickets in the EuroMillions lottery every week, always betting on the same numbers, those of family birthdays.
Last time out, however, Dennis, who is 80, forgot his glasses and couldn’t see the numbers, so he went for a Lucky Dip instead. This provides a randomly generated set of numbers.
“It was one of my best decisions ever,” he said, upon receiving the winner’s prize of £116,124.
* * *
Needing £2,000 for repairs to the church roof, a minister asked if his organist knew any inspirational music to get the congregation into a giving mood on Sunday.
“I’ll think of something,” the organist said.
Come Sunday, the minister made his appeal, concluding, “If any of you would be good enough to pledge a hundred pounds, please stand up.”
At that point, the organist started playing the National Anthem.
* * *
A patient complained to the doctor that he had pain everywhere.
He prodded himself in his arm, leg and torso and said every time he did that, he felt pain.
The doctor sighed.
“You’ve got a broken finger,” he said.
