The headline piece in the week’s local free newspaper, the Yellow Advertiser is very different in tone to its usual pro-Labour stance. Why should this be, I wonder? Perhaps they have seen, with misgiving, that a total monopoly by one political party of both the parliamentary seats and the council isn’t really a good idea for democracy. They have covered the reason for the local council by-election in a refreshingly fair and sensible way in my view:
“Tax payers made to pay after local Labour Party blunder….”
The cost of re-running the by-election because lollipop lady Louise Couling should not have stood came to about £10 000. Apparently, this could have paid for…….
A teaching assistant for a year
Three lollipop ladies for a year
55 dog waste bins
Free swimming for 5000 pensioners
10 000 free parking hours for shoppers in the borough
20 000 cups of tea for pensioners
2000 books for the borough’s libraries
Well done at last to the Yellow Advertiser! But it’s a case of too little, too late! If they had given the BNP even half the coverage they gave to Labour, maybe there would be at least someone elected to the council who could at least challenge the crack-pot ideas that Labour want to implement.
As it is, we are all the losers, every one of us, Labour and non-Labour as well as BNP Because the way that democracy is supposed to work is that ideas are raised, debated and then voted on. But how can you have a debate when all the participants are on the same side? It’s like having a football match with only one team playing.
The BNP still have a presence in Barking and Dagenham. Now we need to look forward. Because this totalitarian set up isn’t fair. And that means that the voters will soon get fed up with it.
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