Elections

Strange Days indeed.  For the first time in my life I had failed to vote.  I had not registered a postal vote and I was to be away from home.  I failed to register a proxy vote in time so my 100% voting record going back to 1966 was broken. It was the Scottish Parliament election plus the much derided referendum on the Alternative Vote which was destined to fail because of its timing and the failure to properly explore all the alternative forms of voting.  It was no more than the offer the Labour Government had made in 2009 but which had been rejected by the Lib Dems. They wanted something more likely to give more proportional representaion than the alternative vote so they accepted the same deal 2 years later when they were at the nadir of their unpopularity. As an example of political mismanagement by the Lib Dems it does not auger well and explains perhaps why they are failing to moderate the public spending cuts. 

Although I knew the candidates for SNP, Conservative, Lib Dem and Labour and respected them all for different reasons, I could not get excited by this election.  Events of recent years make me despair of politicians ever taking decisions which are holistic and in the long term interest of the population and the economy.  Governance has become too complex and when ill considered and populist manifesto promises are married to short term public expenditure forecasts the outcome is seldom optimal.  The Scottish Parliament has been far too focused on creating unsustainable institutions and agencies which are in hock to the Parliament.  It has failed to deliver the parity of esteem between local and national government that was promised and localism or place management or whatever you call local democracy nowadays has been much diminished.  No reason for not voting but the internecine warfare between political parties is a self destructive force that is damaging the good governance of all our levels of government.