Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Disenfranchised pro-war voter

Either I'm getting old, or my newly-drawn constituency of Glasgow North West is considered a safe Labour seat because all the other candidates seem to have an average age of about 14, if the campaign literature is anything to go by.

Looking at the stats - and my prospective MP's voting record, two points occur to me. One is that while elsewhere in the country, this election is between Labour and Conservative - in this constituency it certainly isn't, what with it being 233 on the Tories' hitlist. The other is that while voters elsewhere in the country maybe using this election as a referendum on Iraq, for me - even if I thought it desirable - this isn't possible: reversing what seems to be a national trend, I'm the only person I know who is more likely to vote Labour because of Iraq but according to my prospective MP's voting record, he abstained on three Iraq votes in Parliament and on the fourth occasion, he voted with the rebels - leaving me as a supporter of the war (if I were inclined to vote on a single-issue basis, which I'm not) effectively disenfranchised, given the position of the other parties on this issue.

One other thing I noticed was that the Tory candidate, on his flyer, vows to "keep Accident and Emergency at Gartnavel Hospital". Hmmm, problem with that is there's never been A & E at Gartnavel (or at least, not since I moved to the city and that was 25 years ago); how does he propose to keep something that's never been there?

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