Friday, May 05, 2006

Labour Labours.

Thank you for all the comments and votes on my post about the local elections. I found it an interesting consultative study!!

The results are now in. Quite surprisingly, given the political atmosphere lately, the Liberal Democrats (who had a possible chance of re-taking the nearly-always Labour council, as they did in 1999) lost two seats, one of which went to Labour (who held control of the council) and the other to the Green Party (who now have two seats).
Overall Sheffield Local Election Results 2006
Labour 44 seats (no change)
Liberal Democrats 35 seats (-1)
Conservatives 2 seats (no change)
Green Party 2 seats (+1)
Independent 1 seat (no change)

I've been looking at the more specific, ward by ward results and the BNP bastards got many hundreds of votes, even coming second in one area. I hear they are even the official opposition now in Barking.

So where do we go from here? I want everyone who has been privileged enough to be elected to use their power and influence well, to make changes for the better for people and the world, and to be generally all-round groovy kinda folks. I guess that's what that whole incurable hippie thing is about. I know, I know, it will all go on before, with a few new faces. But for a chronic depressive, I have a surprising level of optimism going on a lot of the time.

But not enough to actually believe that what I hope for will come true. *SiGH*

[Edited to add - I realise I have contradicted myself with what I said about Labour gaining one Lib Dem seat and Greens another, when the table I copied and pasted said Lib Dem only lost one seat, to the Greens, but that is the different info I have got from the BBC website and the Sheffield City Council site. Time will tell, I guess, which is correct!]

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

:sigh:, indeed.

I think the problem is with the 64% of people who didn't vote. That's a lot of folks not doing the democratic thing for whatever reason. Some good, some bad.

I say voting should be compulsory, but there should be a box marked "none of the above". That would make politicians have to take notice. If they want to increase their share of the votes, they'd have to target the people who are unhappy with all of them. Right now, they're ignored and disenfranchised.

Anonymous said...

I completely agree with that!!!