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It's easy to adopt such a stance, it's common within an overwhelmingly safe seat such as Wansbeck, but by not voting, even if only out of protest, you are as complicit in the slide down the pan as any other. I'd go so far as to say it is this attitude which contributes heavily to the paucity of electors' voting power in our constituency. It's a self-defeating cycle. Indeed you could wonder exactly how the current method of government can be described as an operating democracy. The party system does rather subvert the democratic principle, with a relatively small elite selecting candidates and deciding policy. The candidates are presented to us, and we vote for the party, not a person. I've joked amongst friends that Harold Shipman* could get elected in Wansbeck as long as he wore the right coloured rosette. I don't see it going away any time soon, because the people who can change the system are exactly those who have done very well out of the current arrangement, and who therefore are unlikely to see any problem with it. * I doubt if even being dead would present much of a bar to his selection

Things will inevitably get worse because that's the way they are already headed. Not only do we have a £850,000,000,000 debt, but we are increasing that debt at nearly £170,000,000,000 a year, and Gordon doesn't plan to stop spending for another four years on the highly mistaken assumption that it will all come right by itself - "the recovery" that you hear mentioned in every other Nu Labour sentence. He's killed off, frightened off (abroad), and taxed to death any source of revenue that would normally bring about such a recovery. Government simply has to stop borrowing one pound in every four it spends, and it needs to face up to that NOW! You don't get out of debt by taking out another credit card at an even higher rate of interest, or putting off the day of reckoning. They've been trying to brainwash people by this constant "Global, Global, Global". It's our debt, and Gordon got us into the mess by not saving during the good times - as we used to - to pay for the downturn. His boast he ended Boom and Bust is correct: it's all Bust from now on. We need a responsible Government who will face up to the disaster and slowly drag us out of it. Not one who constantly blames someone else for their own string of mistakes. Every Labour Government in history has ended in a financial disaster, but never on this massive scale! Whatever their politics it's amazing to me that there are people who can't see through power mad Gordon Brown, who will do or say anything to keep power. By contrast I think Alastair Darling is a pretty honest person who is trying hard to make a difference. But he's a solicitor and not an economist and shouldn't be running the economy. He'd probably make quite a decent Prime Minister if he could get rid of the greasy hangers-on like Milliband, Balls, and Mandleson. Though it was his mistake with Northern Rock (which I pointed out at the time) which started this whole disaster off. But by then Gordon had already planted all the seeds - including (as Malcolm observed at the time) giving away our gold reserves. So, don't blame the next government for the mistakes of this one. It's going to take a very long time to pay off Gordon's debt mountain. If we don't the pound will tumble and the result will be dire for everyone. You can see just a little of what will happen by following what is now happening to Greece. But our problem is already immensely bigger than theirs; it's simply that at present the markets THINK we can get out of it. Once that confidence goes we are really sunk - and that's the way we are going under power-mad Gordon!

http://www2.labour.org.uk/ppc/ian_lavery/898/ Can it be that what our prospective MP thinks about Nu Labour is unprintable? Hell, it's got Labour on the tin, so you're going to vote for it anyway Wansbeck! Why waste effort with policies and all that garbage?

Another statement that I agree with... it seems to me that a lot of folks vote Labour because there familys have voted Labour for years they seem to have ignorred the fact that this party has changed it spots and is no longer the party for the working man/woman and the lies and deciet are tollerated at election time but they forget that AFTER the election and IF the unfortunate happens and they get re-elected all they will do is stick up two fingers at them till the next time there blinkered votes are needed

For what its worth Mr Merlin I agree with you 100%

It's interesting to see the constituencies which (in contravention of the Lord Chnacellor's recommendations) are refusing to count on election night. From the Electoral Commission: Argyll & Bute Berwick Upon Tweed Blyth Valley Broadland Buckingham Cheltenham Copeland Henley Hexham Huntingdon Kenilworth & Southam Lancaster & Fleetwood Morecambe & Lunesdale NE Hampshire Norwich North Oxford West & Abingdon Penrith & the Border Saffron Walden Skipton & Ripon St Ives Torridge & West Devon Wansbeck Wantage Warwick & Leamington Westmorland & Lonsdale Nowhere in Northumberland will begin counting until Friday. I can appreciate the rural constituencies like Berwick should take longer - especially since it contains Holy Island and a lot of scattered settlements, but why should Wansbeck and Blyth Valley take the same time? I hardly imagine it's going to be a close count in either place.

nothing as there would not be a government to speak of if every one votes none of the above! some nut might then take it upon him/her self to take over as a dictator or civilation as we no it would break down and the french would invade! then we would have to say bonjour and eat frogs legs and snails!

I always said the same, but intead of Harold Shipman I used to put the rosette on a chimpanzee.

Mobius, Nothing wrong with what you are saying at all; my problem - in response to cympil and others - is not that I believe our politicians are a whiter than white biunch of honest men who are going to, somehow, turn this mess around, but that not voting because 'it won't make any difference' is actually the thing that is making the biggest difference! Do those proclaiming complete and utter apathy at the thought of voting realise what the turn out was at the last election, i.e. what proportion of people with a vote actually bothered to use it? For the record, it was just over 60% (not as bad as the previous one where it was just under 60%....). That translates as this - and i'm not being facetious in outlining something so simple: out of ten people who can vote only six bother to do so. Think what a difference there may be to the results if that remaining, and they are the 'i'm not bothering to vote because it won't make a difference' crew, actually cast a vote; presumably they are not happy with their lot, as it is primarily they you read on forums such as this spouting off about what a bunch of !*!@# our MP's are (not something i'm going to dispute) and how they are doing a really !*!@# job. If they are not happy with their lot, they have the opportunity to actually do somethign about it; granted, nothing is going to happen overnight, but being utterly complacent and choosing not to vote is not the answer to anything - short or long term. This isn't a minor portion of the population we're talking about, it's 40% of them! The thing is, Cympil, you may come back with your 'I told you so' line as things get worse, but what have you achieved? The pride in knowing that there isn't going to be an instant revolution? We all know that - it doesn't make you special! Further, you will have no right blaming anyone for voting for someone as those who did vote were at least deserving of your help, and you didn't give it! If you have a vote use it, if you don't use it keep it zipped when you don't like what happens at the next t budget; me, I'll be ranting rightfully about the actions of a party that I voted for and didn't keep their promise, or one that i didn't vote for and aim to get rid of.

Like i said, i won`t vote because it wouldn`t make any difference. Because whoever gets in will do what they want anyway, regardless of the promises they make. I`ll not be complaining or ranting on about whoever gets in either. When things get worse and this country slides further down the pan, i`ll just say `I told you so`. Then i`ll blame the people that voted for them for allowing them to do it.

Greedy, dishonest, manipulating!*!@& that's why they're MPs :lol: You also missed out LYING and CHEATING but you're getting there! If you on the dole and are caught cheating you get jailed, if you are an MP and get caught cheating your expenses you get a slap on the wrist and told don't do it again or start wild rumours about swine flu to get the expenses off the front pages, clever are'nt they!

I first met Mr Lavery after leaving school and joined a Y.O.P. (Youth opportunities Programme) at Ashington Technical College. Then I started work at Lynemouth Colliery with said Mr Lavery, then got my mining craft apprenticeship with Mr Lavery, then transferred to Ellington Colliery with Mr Lavery, then went to a Ashington Colliery training centre with Mr Lavery, then spent nearly five years at Ashington Technical College mining department with Mr Lavery. Yes you could say I know Mr Lavery very well! I wouldn't trust him as far as I could kick him!

From the previous interviews i`ve read from this man (arrested 7 times, fined for football hooliganism, fined £1000.00) maybe he could put that on his blank page. Better still, he should just write T.H.U.G. Says it all really.