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The Barrie Hudson Column
Barrie Hudson is a known quantity when it comes to writing words. Sometimes he even spells them correctly. In fact he has been writing words in the Swindon area for more than two decades. First of all for the Swindon Advertiser and then for Swindon Link and now for The Ink. Here are some of his words…
The only way to keep the political class on its toes is to remind it of its place in the master-servant relationship
I hope everybody eligible to vote in the elections this week does so.
If I had my way, everybody over the age of 18 would be obliged by law to cast a vote at every election, whether local or national.
There would be fines, strictly scaled according to income, for anybody who failed to do so for any reason other than a health issue or belonging to a faith which forbade voting.
However, under my new system every ballot paper would have a very special extra box at the bottom of the column of boxes where we put our cross to choose our favourite candidate. It would be a red box, and next to it voters would find not the name of a candidate but rather the following words, also in red so as to be unmissable:
"I do not believe that any of the above candidates is in any way a fit, proper or worthy person to represent me."
Were a majority of people in the ward or constituency to place their cross in the red box, two things would happen. Firstly, the election would be rerun with a completely new set of candidates. Secondly, the candidates in the previous election would be disqualified from standing in the new election or in any other election for the next 10 years, whether as a prospective MP, borough councillor, district councillor, county councillor, parish councillor, mayor, Police and Crime Commissioner, Ceremonial Pigeon Catcher, Grand Esteemed and Ancient Keeper of Ye Civic Ceremonial Underpants or whatever.
I reckon my system would lead to a political landscape peopled only by those the electorate deemed the very best; the most honest; the most reliable; the kindest; the most decent; the wisest; the most incorruptible; the most likely to make their first priority the needs and yearnings of those who elected them rather than some grubby and remote party machine; the least likely to grovel and cringe like self-serving, beaten dogs when leaders order them to go against the will of those who elected them; the least likely to be in it for whatever they can greedily trowel from the public purse; the least likely to solicit gifts from the stinking pockets of filthy, corrupt donors in exchange for nasty little favours; the least likely to spend hours engaged in narcissistic social media slanging matches or on panel shows or worthless reality TV outings instead of doing the job for which we are forced to pay them handsomely; the least likely to have personal morals so horrible that any self-respecting alleycat would sue for defamation on being mentioned in the same breath.
I suspect, for various reasons, that I have about as much chance of seeing my system put in place as I have of seeing the sunset should I sprinkle caustic soda on my cornflakes one morning in lieu of Tate & Lyle's finest granulated.
The next set of local elections, as you're no doubt aware, is on Thursday. Last time around, a year ago, the turnout in Swindon was 35 percent, which was three points ahead of the national turnout.