Voters need to think carefully where they put their crosses

Published: 4:16 PM April 30, 2015 Updated: 11:29 AM November 1, 2020

Ballot box - Credit: Archant

Thursday will be polling day. We shall each be responsible then for the consequences of the choices we make, particularly between those offering to represent us at parliamentary level.

Despite the promises of five years ago, the deficit still looms large; despite the so-called success of the long-term economic plan, the recovery has been weak and is losing momentum; despite the much-lauded increase in the numbers in work, productivity/GDP is falling (perhaps because many have, in desperation, become self-employed or take short-term, part-time or zero-hours contracts). Since the last general election, the mega-rich have doubled their wealth, the average hard-working family is no better off and its benefits are threatened and the poor (whether deserving or not) have been pushed yet further into poverty, homelessness and despair.

A vote for five more years of the same will be a vote for returning to the 1930s and beyond to a society irreparably broken by ideology and polarised between the haves and the growing number of have-nots (of whom one might, but for the grace of God, be in danger of becoming); and our local authority representatives, already functionally enfeebled, will be even more cash-strapped than they are now. So readers should be careful where they put their crosses.

TERRY BELCHER