Town councillor's General Election tip

Town councillor Phil Thane has asked llanblogger to publish the following piece related to the General Election:

Amid all the media frenzy and political point scoring it's often hard to find out who your election candidates really are. You may have a handful of glossy leaflets pushed through your letter box, but they are designed to push the party line not tell you anything about the person.

You may have watched the TV debates and come away wondering what it was all about when only the people in their constituencies can vote for them and no matter how much you like Nicola Sturgeon she isn't standing in Clwyd South. So where do you get a simple guide to who you can vote for?

The answer could be the Democracy Club website. The Democracy Club describes itself as,

'...a group of volunteers that aims to increase the quantity, quality and accessibility of information on election candidates, politicians and democratic processes...'

One of their ideas for improving the quality of information is to ask each candidate to post a simple CV. After all they are applying for a job and we are the interview panel. A CV is the minimum requirement for most job applications and follows a well know format. No spin, no party line, just the facts about who this person is and what they've done with their lives until now.

Clwyd South Candidates

You can see all the CVs submitted by our candidates here: http://bit.ly/1EsNU7y

Unless there's been a sudden rush, there's just one. When we first checked there were none at all so we clicked the button that sends a polite request to all the candidates in the constituency. Only one replied and only one uploaded his CV. You'll have to check to find out who it was, and maybe while you're there you could try reminding the others.

National Statistics

I spoke to Francis Irving one of the Democracy Club organiswers to see how Clwyd South compares with the national (UK) figures. So far only about 12% of candidates have uploaded a CV, so Clwyd South with one out of six is ahead of the curve. The breakdown by party is:

Liberal Democrats 115
Green Party 109
Labour Party 61
UK Independence Party (UKIP) 52
Conservative Party 38
Plaid Cymru 1

For more about Democracy Club go to www.democracyclub.org.uk