Leila's blog

Sat, Apr 12, 2008

Tired feet

Since I last blogged I have been super busy with elections and work. I spent today traipsing the streets of Lampeter in support of our candidate Elly Foster, delivering leaflets and meeting people. Lampeter is such a beautiful town and has been the hub of transition town activity in Mid-Wales. For a small town it has a green feel to it, with two organic vegetable / health food shops as well as a wide selection of locally owned and run shops - not a clone town yet. However, the core of its vitality is now under threat; the Post Office has been moved to an out of town store and now the community owned swimming pool may close as a large chunk of its funding has been taken away. Meanwhile our current council is spending a whopping 12-15 million pounds on new offices on a flood plain. What a waste of local tax payers money.
If you live in one of the following places in Ceredigion you can vote Green in either your town or county elections on May 1st: Aberystwyth (North), Lampeter, Llanfair Clygodau, New Quay, and Ystwyth. Wales Green Party are also standing candidates in Cardiff, Swansea, Monmouthshire, Rhondda, and Torfaen.

It would be nice to field more candidates but as politics has become an insult to democracy it is harder to persuade people to stand. Local elections also face greater problem, there is little awareness amongst voters as to what the different tiers of government are responsible for. Furthermore, local government is also severely restricted in what it can do by numerous dictates from Westminster about how they can spend their money. If decentralisation is what Labour and the other large parties are in favour of, they have to be prepared to give spending rights along with responsibilities to councils. Despite this bind, greens have shown across the country what they can achieve at a local level, hopefully I will be elected in my own ward to prove it can be done in Wales too.

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