So the dust has settled, and since I last posted on these pages we have a new MP, Rachael Maskell, and a shaken-up and changed local council.

The local council results were interesting and thought-provoking. Perhaps they always are, if you’re sufficiently engaged, but it’s the first local election where I found myself scrutinising the numbers and caring about what happened to particular people.

If you’re interested, and I hope you are, I’ve put together a survey with a few questions on how we voted, and why. It’s on this link and I’d really appreciate your thoughts.

In some ways I’ve been feeling optimistic about the new council, because of new members like Keith Myers and Johnny Hayes. On the other hand it seems sad that the council has lost some experienced councillors who were Labour but stood as Independents this year.

The ‘Independent’ stance was of particular interest in my own ward of Clifton, as our two Labour councillors left Labour rather dramatically, last autumn, and stood as ‘Independent Labour’. And, like Brian Watson in Guildhall, who stood as an Independent, they didn’t get re-elected.

Is it perhaps that most of us have not much of an idea who our councillors actually are, and vote instead for the party we’ve always voted for? This was I confess my approach in the past.

Or is it all to do with effective campaigning? In Clifton, the Labour candidates campaigned vigorously and consistently, were out knocking on doors and talking to people, and approaching that in more thoughtful ways, like leafleting in advance of a visit with a card to put in the window if you wanted them to call. In contrast, from the Independent Labour candidates we had one leaflet through the door. They may have been out and about in other streets in Clifton, but it seems that whatever it was they did it wasn’t enough, as neither of them were re-elected.

Not impossible to get a seat as an Independent, as Johnny Hayes was successful in Micklegate.

I’m sad that Brian Watson wasn’t re-elected to the council. He was very helpful some years ago when I had concerns about the RCAF hostel buildings behind the art gallery (since demolished), and was apparently the only person who stood up for the Burnholme club building (since demolished) at the meeting to decide its fate. (“I feel the money could have been raised to refurbish the building and we are going to lose something which is iconic in that part of York” – Press website)

I hope Dave Taylor will continue to defend our heritage assets, including the ‘ugly’ ‘eyesore’ bits like the old Airspeed factory, as he has, and that other people will do the same. I’m hoping that Danny Myers, here in Clifton ward, will be one of them.

But enough of my hopes. It’s dangerous to hope too much, it can lead to disappointment.

In fact it already has. While I’ve been writing this page. Which was going to end with a note that I’m sad that Daf Williams is no longer council leader. He always sounded thoughtful and measured and I appreciated this approach. I then wrote that I hope all members of the new council will be similarly thoughtful and careful. But the new Conservative and LibDem coalition, launching into action, have already caused upset in referring to the Arts Barge project as one of the ‘vanity projects’ the previous administration was often criticised for. Visit oneandother.com for an excellent article by Marcia Mackey, written in response.

The post How we voted, and our new local council appeared first on York Stories.

As previously mentioned, it seems important to write about the forthcoming elections. In particular, about the election of a new MP for York Central. We already know that it won’t be Hugh Bayley, as he’s standing down after many years as our (Labour) MP. And this, I realised some months back, has left me with quite a quandary. Perhaps I’m not alone in this. In fact I know I’m not, from talking to friends about it.

The consequence of a long period of thought on all of this is that I think I won’t be voting Labour in York Central. This might not seem particularly shocking news, but I’m quite troubled by it, as I’ve voted Labour in every general election since I was first old enough to vote, in 1987.

It all seemed very simple then. It isn’t now.

One of the questions I’ve been pondering recently, thinking about the forthcoming election, is whether it would seem simple now, if I was 19 now, if one of the political parties would speak to me so clearly and seem like an obvious choice.

But I’m not 19, I’m in my forties, and I’ve seen and lived through Conservative governments and Labour governments and the present government. And have seen Prime Ministers come and go, and somehow they seem less and less interesting, and more and more often I find myself turning off the radio when the Prime Ministers and party leaders are speaking. The adversarial bickering on party lines becomes more and more tedious. And many other aspects seem baffling and alienating. For example …

I was baffled and troubled when I heard that York’s Labour candidate was to be selected from an all-women shortlist. It has felt difficult to admit that, as I am a woman myself, and – it seems important to point out my feminist credentials/feminist awareness – have a shelf full of books on feminism and gender studies, including a copy of The Female Eunuch bought when I was fifteen. But that was thirty years ago, and things have changed a lot. Dividing things on gender seems odd, these days. A bit 1980s/1990s. When I look around I see many powerful and influential women, and I’m not convinced we ladies needed this ‘assistance’. It seemed really strange to me, in 2015, to force an all-women shortlist here in York for the candidate to replace Hugh Bayley.

And with all other things considered too? I’m certainly not an expert but I would imagine that the Labour vote will decrease dramatically anyway because many voted for Hugh Bayley in particular, as a local MP with a long track record of serving the city in that role? So to then limit the choice of his potential successor by removing half the population from consideration based merely on gender – I found it totally baffling.

So the selection process brought in Rachael Maskell, someone most of us had absolutely no knowledge of, and Labour voters like me are expected to vote for her. We’re expected to vote for her presumably because of a) a devotion to the Labour Party and its principles b) because she’s passionate about saving the NHS. And she certainly is passionate about the NHS, I’ve seen her speak about it, and she’s very impressive.

I’m afraid I don’t think I can vote for her, and I’m sad about this. But it’s not 1987, or 1992, or 1997, or all the other elections I’ve voted in where I’ve put my cross in that box next to Labour. It’s much more complicated now, to me, to many of us.

I had a leaflet through the door, as many people reading this will have, from Rachael Maskell – or rather, from the Labour Party, promoting Rachael Maskell. It included one of those sections that’s supposed to look like a personal message from the candidate. It referred to ‘our great city’.

I don’t want to sound like one of those ‘You’ve got to have been born in York and have family links stretching back 500 years at least to be able to be a proper York person’ commentators, but this phrase was very jarring. As I understand it Rachael Maskell has lived in York for about six months. If I moved to another city and almost immediately tried to lay claim to some kind of understanding of it, to the extent of claiming to represent it, and having a handle on ‘we’ and ‘our’ with its residents, I’d expect the residents to find that a bit weird. And I did.

This city – our great city – has changed so much. In some ways, in some areas, it’s barely recognisable, and many residents don’t feel like they’re part of it any more in the way they used to be. This needs addressing. Cultural shifts and other changes are inevitable, and some of it is good. In other ways I see half the place being left behind. Should our York Central MP have an understanding of place and represent its people? Or should I just be thinking along the Lab/Con lines of old and therefore just vote Labour. Sorry, I can’t. It’s more complicated than that.

Party politics always seemed tedious, and now as I get older it seems even more so. Strange and contrived and stage-managed and essentially dull, all those confrontational adversarial goings-on as part of the election campaign. But I do have faith in our democratic processes, and I’ll always go to the polling station and do my best to make an informed choice. And everything I’ve seen is sending me towards putting my cross in a different box this time. I’m not happy about it but I feel that, all things considered, I’ve been left with no choice.

I saw most of the prospective parliamentary candidates speak at a pub hustings at The Volunteer Arms, near Holgate Bridge, last week. This tended to confirm what I was already thinking, and have been for months, that this time in York Central I would vote for either Nick Love (LibDem) or Jonathan Taylor (Green). Probably Nick Love.

It was an excellent event, well-attended. The Volunteer Arms is a pub I’ve never been to before, a really nice place, I’d recommend a visit one of these fine spring or summer evenings when all this election stress is over.

The post Voting, York Central: a quandary appeared first on York Stories.

For various reasons I’ve not been able to write anything for this site for a few weeks, and somehow we’ve reached early May already, and the elections are looming. It now seems most important to write about that.

Generally I try to avoid the overtly political on these pages, but have occasionally veered that way, because of interesting happenings in local politics, because webcasting of council meetings has enabled greater insight and engagement, particularly when the debate has been focused on places this site focuses on, like King’s Square.

So, in five days we’ll be going to the polling stations to vote for who we want to represent us on the local council, and for a new MP. Or some of us will.

Many of us won’t. This is often assumed to be because of a lack of interest. It’s not quite as simple as that, in my experience.

I’ve had conversations over the years with friends who are interested, and fully aware of the importance of the right to vote, and seriously think about the issues, but find that there’s no one they want to give their vote to. In recent years I’ve got the impression that many of us who are committed to voting, to using that right, would like a ‘None of the above‘ option.

I do have faith in our democratic processes, and I’ll always go to the polling station and do my best to make an informed choice for myself as an individual and for what I think is best for the place where I live and for society in general. I’ve always seen the vote, and voting, as an important and special thing. I remember seeing the phrase ‘REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE ACTS’ on poll cards in the past, and feeling that it reminded us of some of the history and weight of this, this simple act of voting, now so taken for granted.

It seems particularly important to at least be registered to vote, even if you don’t use that right. Earlier this year a friend who has moved home since the last election got the standard letter through the door about who was registered to vote at that address. It had no one listed. My friend didn’t intend to change that, and had put the form into the recycling box, having decided that the whole thing was pointless, that we couldn’t change anything with our votes, that small local actions mattered more.

To me the idea that the house would have no registered voters, that months away from polling day a decision was being taken to not claim that right, well, it didn’t seem right. Debate and discussion followed. And by the end of the evening, accompanied by much laughter at my ‘win’, we went out in the dark to retrieve the registration form from the recycling box on the pavement where it was awaiting collection the next morning.

It is of course too late now to register to vote if you haven’t. But if you have, you may perhaps have been pondering as I have where you’re going to put your crosses this time. I’ve been having quite a quandary about it, and thinking about it for months, as I don’t think I can vote in the way I have in the past. In the next couple of days I think I’ll add another page or two about that, as it seems more important than other things at present. Elections don’t happen that often.

I might write about other things too, it being May and all, and everything being all lovely out there in the springtime streets. This partly depends on my recovery from various repetitive strain injuries affecting my ability to type, on whether an intermittently malfunctioning keyboard decides to malfunction again, on other work commitments, and the need to sometimes get away from the screen and cycle giddily about now it’s lighter for longer. If you fancy some giddy cycling, or just some interesting reading, and have missed my words, you could always buy my book …

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