Should Voting be Compulsory?

I saw this retweet by Grant Shapps MP, this morning

 “@grantshapps: RT @MarkBean3 Make voting compulsory NOW! > Disagree. For us politicians to provide compelling enough reasons to vote. Compulsion not one.”

I wonder who Mr Bean thinks doesn't vote at local and general elections?  Well would it come as a surprise for him to learn that normally those who don't vote are the poor and the disenfranchised.  

For me, the 2012 local elections saw me for the first time since I became eligible, not voting, although I did attend the polling station and placed my unmarked ballot in the box.

Just what sanctions would Mr Bean propose be put in place for people who didn't vote and if it was compulsory, but voting is secret, would I have been sanctioned as I turned out and placed my ballot in the box.  I Could have easily put two crosses on it before depositing it in the box, this of course would have invalidated my vote, but I still attended and registered my disquiet at the political system by causing my ballot to be deliberately discounted, just the same as not voting, but I assume no sanction could be levelled at me as it is a secret vote!

I note Mr Shapps, as an MP, has disagreed with Mr Bean, quite right, as there is just no valid sanction you could impose on people for choosing not to vote.

People can still, even if they haven't voted register their disquiet at the iniquitous system that they feel that is imposed on them by engaging with the elected members of local councils and or Parliament, whether they voted for them or not, just as someone who supports one party who lost the election, will still have to engage with the Councillor or MP from the opposing party who won. To say that you could not engage with that elected member because your candidate didn't win would be the same thing as saying that someone who didn't vote couldn't write or engage with their councillor or MP, it just doesn't work like that.

There always has been and always will be people, through economic or for Socio economic reasons, or poor educational abilities who will never vote, but they still remain a part of the 'big society' and are exercising their right to vote or not as they choose.

Personally, setting aside my decision to protest last Thursday, I wish every one would vote.  I wish someone would come along with the charisma and personality, with well thought out policies and plans that would make our society more inclusive than it is and will remain while the same tired, corrupt politicians from the current crop of Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, continue to be our only options......

Social Housing Sell Off - Conservatives Never learn from Past Mistakes

I heard a snippet on the news this morning as I passed a radio that Government are saying that council house tenants may get up to £70k knocked off the cost of their house should they wish to buy it.

Now we all know that the cost of most council houses that form terraced streets are not that large, but have over inflated prices, that the estate agents and BANKS propped up from the 80's and continue to do so today, so there will still be a substantial mortgage left to pay on the property.  Of course another reason for the inflated price of houses in the UK was the last disastrous sell off of council homes, also led by the Conservatives, this time assisted by the LIB Dems, and ignored by Labour, was that Councils were not allowed to use the money to build  more social houses to replace that which was lost.... SHAME ON ALL POLITICIANS FOR THAT DEBACLE OF BAD GOVERNANCE

Of course the Government will argue that SOME COUNCIL HOUSES are too large for some of there occupants and they want to throw them out into single bedroom homes or care homes, just so that their families, sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters can't come for a sleep over, unless they all huddle on the floor of the lounge of the single bed home they want to force the current occupants to move into.....

Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps twitter) Welwyn Hatfield MP and Minister of State for Housing & Local Government. Website here http://www.shapps.com is always harping on about the good that he is doing for housing and local government, well Grant I have news for you, you aren't!  You are doing exactly what your predecessors before you did, you are creating a disaster for the rest of us to clear up, or not, in the not to distant future.

Is it just me?  Every day I see and hear ministers and opposition members of Parliament prattling on about the need to create jobs, and yes there are undoubtedly SOME jobs being created, but more and more jobs are being lost and unless some government brings in a law to restrict the use of labour saving technological advances that science is making every day, more and more jobs will be lost to these technologies with no hope of bringing them back...

If the work place is shrinking and our children are suffering the deprivation of poor and inadequate education to their and our future detriment, for goodness sake we aren't even teaching them how to claim benefits, although many learn that easy lesson from their parents, yet we do tell immigrants, legal and illegal how to do that!

The point is that while we should all aspire to be more in life than we are and to, if we can, be in a position to, buy and own our own homes it is an easy move from home ownership to being thrown out in the street when you fall behind when that manageable mortgage is suddenly no longer mangageable.  I have no statistics to back this up but I would be interested to know if after the first time this sell off occured under a previous Conservative Government what was the average debt level of a council house tenant when they rented their house and what it rose to after they 'bought' their council house and fell into the trap of being in the coveted position of being a 'home owner'.  What is it with we Brits, why are we conned so easily into believing that home ownership IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO?

Did you know that only 39 percent of Germans own their own home, compared 68 percent in the U.K.   . Apparently Spain has the highest rate among advanced industrial nations in Europe at 82 per cent and in France it is around 56 per cent.  So while Spain beats us in this and I have no idea why, and maybe that is another reason to add for their current economic gloom which apparently is worse than ours, unless you are a banker or an MP or a member of the non elected upper house, with the salaries, expenses bonuses and platinum pensions, can you AFFORD TO BUY YOUR OWN HOME.  If I was sitting in a council house paying rent today, I would have to think long and hard about it and the answer would most definitely be a resounding NO.

Why, when so many people are unemployed? Why, when factories requiring thousand of shift workers are not being planned? Why, when so many people, like the country, are in debt? 

WHY, ARE THE GOVERNMENT TRYING TO CON PEOPLE INTO BUYING HOMES THAT THEY MAY NOT BE IN A POSITION TO MAINTAIN THE PAYMENTS FOR, WHY?

related posts:  It's all about delivery - response to a Grant Shapps speach

                      

Its all about delivery - A response to a Speech by Grant Shapps MP

I have just read the draft speech given by (The Rt Hon) Grant Shapps MP, Minister of State, Minister for Housing and Local Government.

The reason for the brackets above is that I just can’t bring myself to call any of these people honourable and reading his speech, it is no wonder. 

He does have some good ideas and he is driving these ideas through but just read the speech and see and judge for yourself. It is his opening remarks that make him as honourable as a Middle Eastern dictator and shows you that it is a game of ping pong with our lives between the political parties that makes them all dishonourable; this is what he says.

“Are you a veteran if you've done the same job for five years?
Normally the answer would be no - unless of course you cover the Government's housing portfolio like I do.
During this time I've seen a total of eight - yes eight - opposing Housing Ministers come and go.
But does this matter?
Well yes if you care about the state of housing in this country.
An endless reshuffling of the ministerial pack meant an endless reshuffling of ideas and initiatives.
But this conveyer belt of policies didn't deliver - and we all watched in horror as the housing sector entered its darkest hours since the 1920s.”

So, it was Labours inadequacies in power that caused the housing problem that we find ourselves in today, according to those few sentences.

They do say that it is always the ‘winners’ that write ‘history’ and once again here we have politicians who won the last election re-writing our recent social history.

Let’s be clear about this, Labour did nothing to bring any amelioration to the housing situation we face in the UK today, BUT, they did not create the problem in the first place.  It was the Conservatives and Maggie Thatcher, that brought social housing to it’s knees.

The Conservative policy of ‘right to buy’ without allowing or enforcing a replacement policy was short sighted and I would say almost criminal in its ineptitude, and not once will any Conservative admit to this simple glaring fact, will you Mr Shapps?

He goes on to say that he wants people to be able to buy their first home and that restrictions on rights to buy are to be lifted......

I really don’t know what planet these politicians have been dropped off from, and it is worldwide epidemic.

Republican White House frontrunner Mitt Romney this week commented, "I'm not concerned about the very poor.” 

And this is one of the problems with politicians.  They are in politics for the power trip and the money they can make from all of their little associate directorships and speaking engagements, we are beneath them, nothing more than a contemptible inconvenience that they have to contend with as they claw their way to the top.

Mr Shapps goes on to state that:

“And because we want to help everyone achieve their aspirations, to feel the pride of ownership - we're scrapping the miserly restrictions on the level of discounts under Right to Buy.
Up to 100,000 tenants will have the opportunity to buy their own home.
It's great news for every hardworking family who have done well for themselves and want to get on.”

But, he does also state;

 “So this will be a one-out, one-in policy. In other words a new home built for every home sold.”  

But, I will only believe that if I see it happening. The other problem I have with this is, 'that a new home built for every one sold',  is that we have a desperate housing shortage in this country because of the neglect of ALL political parties since the 'Right to Buy' scheme was introduced by the Conservatives and instead of building affordable homes that people without jobs or who are in low paid work can't afford , and who are in all probability, living in overcrowded run down social housing, they should be building more social housing homes and not concentrating on a one for one policy that will do nothing to ameliorate the current problems.


But I fear that they are still making a mistake with this and their ‘affordable houses’ policy.  Houses or homes are only affordable if people can pay for them.  To pay for them they have to have jobs (and to try and keep them). But again I have a problem with this. 

Unemployment is rising. Manufacturing jobs across the world are being ‘destroyed’ by technology.  Where once you needed an army of workers to manufacture a car you now need a handful. Where once you needed factories with tens of hundreds of shift workers to produce clothing and textiles, all you need now is a poor third world country with cheap child labour and their government who receive millions of pounds in British Taxpayers aid, or as the forked tongue politicians now like to call it, Overseas Development, to maintain their vast armies and their nuclear weapons.

Where are these jobs coming from that people in this country can have to earn a wage to pay for affordable housing? Social housing is what is needed and it is needed now without all the fancy bells and ribbons that Mr Shapps is offering in his speech. 

And I would suggest that the UK's Housing Sector entered it's darkest hour under Conservative policies and was just left to fester by a labour government who turned out to be nothing more than capitalists hiding under a veneer of socialism......