Parties are supposed to be fighting for us (From Worcester News)

Parties are supposed to be fighting for us

9:45am Thursday 19th July 2012 in Read

SIR – The result of your recent website poll asking “Do you trust politicians to investigate the banking industry thoroughly?”

concluded (the last time I checked) that only seven per cent would and the other 93 per cent would not. This is utterly ridiculous and can only be put down to the growing irrelevance of our parliamentary democracy.

If the poll is in any way representative, it implies that people have voted in their thousands for candidates they don’t trust, and sent them to Parliament to govern us.

Parliament had to fight a civil war under Oliver Cromwell to establish itself, and the universal franchise was won in the last century after many years of struggle.

It is supposed to be the voice of the people and defender of our rights and liberties. Yet, 93 per cent of the only body that we, the people, decide who should belong to it, is cast aside as untrustworthy.

The cause has to lie with the political parties and the conservatism of voters who go on voting for the main parties without any thought to the quality of their candidates or with any confidence in them to make a difference.

The main parties have ceased to be anything other than electoral competitors, stripped of any idealism and inhabited mostly by rootless careerists with little experience of the world of work. All this spells decline.

People need to think harder about who or what they are voting for.

PETER NIELSEN

Worcester