Local Elections 2008 · Issue 867

May 1 marks another year of local elections and your chance to vote for change in Cathays, so if you are fed up with parking permits, refuse collections, petty crime, uneven pavements or rubbish landlords then pop down to your polling station and put a cr

Why Students Should Vote…

You may have discovered pieces of cardboard dropping through your letterbox, which aren’t the usual student deals on take-away pizzas, Chinese or Indian cuisines.

These bits of card are in fact your polling cards for the local elections, so before you throw them away or leave them to rot under the pile of junk mail every household builds up, take some time out to read gair rhydd’s guide to voting this May 1st

In Wales there are =22 Country Council Chambers up for contest and there is a huge number of candidates to choose from this year: 3,260 in total with 1,264 seats available for the successful candidates to fill.

Luckily for students living in Cathays we only have 18 candidates vying for the four seats in County Hall allocated for the area. Cathays is currently a Lib Dem stronghold, as is Cardiff Council more generally, controlling three out of the four seats.

The make-up of the Council sees the Lib Dems with 32 seats, Labour on 27, Conservatives 10 and Plaid with the remaining four.

Enough of statistics; you, the reader will be asking why should students vote on May 1st? In the first year you are all tucked up in the hubs of Talybont, Uni Hall or the equivalent; complete with car parking facilities, security guards, flat roads and refuse collections every week.

However, when you choose your first flat with your friends, most often in Cathays, you will begin to realise that Cardiff has some cracks appearing when the sheen of University accommodation rubs off.

Council elections, it can argued, are more important than general elections because the everyday running of towns and villages are left to County Councils.

So if you have a problem or wish to change your area for the better, your best bet is to vote for change by listening to what candidates in your area are saying they will do for you.

Their policies won’t be overtly political or highbrow; they will focus on your local issues, which affect your day-to-day routine.

The Council has powers over education, transport, refuse, housing, council tax, planning, roads and social services.

Not all may apply to the tax dodging student, but personally I know car parking, road and pavement surfacing, rubbish refuse and crime are constant annoyances in my life in Cathays. So I would be interested if one candidate could understand and articulate my issues and hopefully do something about them.

In Cathays we also have three students running for Council so this is an indication that we don’t just have to vote and merely look on from the sidelines – nothing is stopping you getting involved in your local community.

A brief background to the local elections

May 1 holds political history for Labour, as it is Labour Day and coincidently the day Tony Blair (remember him?) came to power in 1997 promising Cool Britannia.

However, fast forward 11 years to 2008 and this May 1 may prove to be something of a dark page in Labour’s history.

They only control seven of the 22 Council Chambers throughout Wales, and its power base is crumbling in the former Labour stronghold that is the Welsh heartland.

It would therefore only take a few lost seats in certain councils for them to relinquish power in local issues.

The Conservatives need to build on the large number of seats they gained last year, and by current poll ratings are on for gains in England, but not Wales.

However, turning ratings into actual voters is the biggest concern for any political party and the Tories must garner as much support as possible in order to show the public that they are worthy of governing the nation again – at least at a local level.

The Liberal Democrats have very strong support in local councils, providing voters with a viable alternative to Labour and the Tories. General consensus seems to suggest that they have rewarded voters with a competent handling of local issues.

This couldn’t be more prevalent in Cardiff where they control the largest proportion of seats and have done for a long duration.

The major concern is that most councils will have no overall majorities and it won’t be for a few weeks afterwards for the candidates elected to broker deals and coalitions on numerous issues, which sadly leaves the voters somewhat rudderless as our problems will continue to persist for the weeks to come.

Age is also an issue for the council’s image this time around, having been accused of being an old gentleman’s meeting club. In 2004 Labour offered something called a ‘Golden Good-bye’, where long serving members would be encouraged to step down to let other demographics fill the role, be they women, minorities or younger people.

Their reasons for doing so were primarily the fact that the average age of councillors was 61, with 40% over the age of 65.

Only 79 members took up this offer, which cost the taxpayer £1.6m.

The problem lies in the fact that four years later the average age is still 61, with only 10% of councillors under the age of 44 and 3.3% are under 35.

However, in gender terms the balance is slowly becoming more representative of the general population, as 22% of women hold council seats, which is up by 2%.

The problem is that if the current trend stayed the same it would take almost 70 years for women to be equally represented at this level.

In less social engineering terms, both the Lib Dems and the Tories are fielding 18-year-old candidates and there are 14 examples of married couples standing for election – and, notably, one pairing aren’t standing under the same political stripes (I don’t think many would want to live under that roof come elections time).

There are also incidences of families sending out different generations to compete for your vote. The Conservative supporting family, for example, has three generations’ worth in political wards throughout Cardiff.

So local politics has lots to offer the voters and gair rhydd urges you to go out and vote come May 1st.

TH