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Final Thoughts At The End Of The Olympics

Posted on 6:16pm Sunday 19th August 2012

A reflection on being a Games Maker at these historic games.

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Athletics At The Olympic Stadium

Posted on 6:13pm Sunday 19th August 2012

Sunita watches Usain Bolt in the mens 100M finals.

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Wycombe from A-Z: Q is for Queen Victoria Road

Posted on 1:01am Sunday 19th August 2012

This week my A to Z of High Wycombe has reached the letter Q.

Click on the link above to read more.

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How the voting system really works

Posted on 11:46am Friday 17th August 2012

The way to explain how an election is won is to think of a mainstream political party as a Brand or as a professional Army. From a marketing point of view the top x3 political parties (i.e. Labour, Conservatives and the Lib-Dems) are the only parties that are likely to form a Government by themselves or as we’ve seen more recently as a Coalition. They have had many years in building up those brands (the longest being the Conservatives) and from time to time they do actually go through a branding exercise to re-invent themselves and appeal to their target audience. They also operate in the same way that a professional Army would, in that they need loyal foot soldiers to knock on doors, make phone calls and deliver leaflets in order to reach out to people that are likely to go out and vote for their selected candidates from the party. There is a hierarchy and a form of Officers that are tasked in keeping everything running smoothly. Those at the very top of the food chain are the ones with the power and who pass down the instructions, etc Within an area (i.e. lets give an example of Wycombe) you would have small ‘branches’ that meet up and get together to target elections in their part of the world and in the case of General Elections they do their bit for the local candidate standing to become an MP. If you are traditionally a Labour or Conservative voting person, they want to get your information onto their database so they know that come election time, they will knock on your door or try to phone you to ask for your continued support and vote for Joe Blogs the selected party member for this area (i.e. whether in District, County or General Elections, etc). Also to note is when someone knocks on your door and asks who you normally vote for – this information is fed back to the central database and your details are logged as a Labour or Tory voter, etc They know where you live and also if you went out to vote (i.e. do you ever wonder why people stand outside the election booths asking for your voter number?) they then take that information and tick it off their database to count you as another vote for their party candidates (i.e. as most of us don’t change our allegiance to other political parties in the main – although when it does come to local elections we do tend to shop around for the right person for the job!) Before it comes to the time whereby the votes have been counted, the party branches would already have a fairly good idea to whether their man/woman won or not. It is shocking but a lot of people do not bother to vote (for their own reasons) the main reason is that they are angry at the main voting and political system and do not want to get involved in it. This is good news for the political parties as it means that they don’t really care if only a handful of people for that area vote – as long as they get their candidates in – that in their mind is their only worry! Once that a new Cllr is elected (or re-elected) then they are made to pay their first months allowance to contribute to their election costs (i.e. for paying for leaflets to be printed, etc) In regards to Asian (i.e. Pakistani/Kashmiri) Cllrs – they tend to have to spend out a lot of their own money as it’s a cultural thing in how they connect to the heads of families, etc and it normally involves food and sit down meals, etc In Wycombe as an example there are x2 main families/branches of families that come from the same village in Kashmir but one of them votes for the Labour Party and the other for the Conservatives. So the parties are very well organised, they have a free army of volunteers that knock on doors and deliver leaflets, etc and this is why there are no current standing Independent Cllrs for Bucks County Council and a very small percentage of Independent MP’s in Westminster (the majority of them have fallen out with their party and have been stripped of their allegiance and taken the whip away from them). This is another reason why I’ve decided not to be a member of a political party ( I have been asked by all of them). As I do not believe that the system is in the favour of the voter and only the parties. Ironically its them ( i.e. the parties) that hold the power to how the system is set up and they don’t want it to change other than the Lib-Dems to some degree. They do not want to give up the Status Quo as it would mean that they would lose their power. I think that it was Jeremy Clarkson who said that the UK Caravan Club now has more members than the x3 main political parties all combined! The membership is gradually declining as more and more are getting fed up of not being listened to, their own political views falling further away from the parties and also fed up with the way that MP’s are (i.e. think duck ponds and moat cleaning, etc) – most of the ruling political elite are so far removed from normal people that you often wonder if any of them know what a hard day’s work is and if they ever go through the general hardships that we all do? I personally believe that we should have an elected House of Lords but only the Lib-Dems want it – the Tories and the Labour party are blocking it. We generally do not riot as a nation (except last summer!) – we quietly write letters of complaint and we whinge to our friends. But there is another thing that we can start doing… We can be careful on who we do vote for and not necessarily look at voting for the same party as we’ve always done. Finally I want to share one more thing that made my blood boil. Come the time when Paul Goodman decided to stand down as the MP for Wycombe – I witnessed the most shameful power play within the Conservative Party that was the nail on the coffin for me continuing to be a member. There were people that had friends high up the political ladder that they almost bragged that they had been offered seats in winnable area’s and in fact I can tell you for a fact that all Conservative candidates sitting in safe Tory seats were hand selected by the top brass (i.e. Eric Pickle, David Cameron, etc) and the local grassroots members of the party where allowed to vote for the right candidate that they wanted for their town – but it was a case of ‘pick a card, any card as long as it’s one of these 5 or so!’ i.e. SOUND MEN/WOMEN. All local party members were not allowed to stand.

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