Herald Express
Here’s the text of my profile in this week’s Herald Express.
You may wonder why I would bother to stand as an Independent in this constituency when there’s already such a wide choice of attractive policies already on offer…right across the spectrum, starting at the right and reaching all the way to the far right! (I exclude the Greens from that statement, everybody loves the Greens).
And you may also wonder why I would pay £500 for a deposit that I can ill afford and I won’t get back, in a seat that I stand absolutely no chance of winning.
Well here’s why. After the last election I had a moment of great clarity. Because when David Cameron took up residence in Downing Street five years ago I realised that for the first time in my life I was older than the Prime Minister. I’ve spoken to other people of my age who experienced the same feelings – when you’re young, politicians are a bit like your teachers or your parents – they’re older so they must be wiser, they must know more about it than you do. But then you get older than them and you realise these people are completely incompetent. They have absolutely no idea what they’re doing.
They are totally out of touch with ordinary people, and favour an agenda geared towards the demands of their millionaire donors and corporate paymasters. They run the country as if it’s a business, and a vote for any of the mainstream parties is merely a vote for a change of management to that business. Politics and the people have never been so disconnected.
Where are the visionaries? Where are the conviction politicians? Who will deliver the ‘sweeping and radical’ changes that are always promised but never delivered? None of the candidates in Central Devon, that’s for sure.
So, in the absence of anyone to vote for I have put myself up for election, at least that way I will have someone to vote for who I can trust and believe in. I won’t win, I won’t even come close. I have no funds whatsoever, so you won’t see any posters bearing my name, or receive any flyers, or see me campaigning door to door. I paid the deposit so I can share a platform with the mainstream parties, to hold them to account for what they have done, and to speak up for the people who’s lives are being ruined by the poverty making policies of the last government, and the one before that, and the one before that, and so on, for more than 30 years.
I’m planting seeds of hope for the future.