Local Politics

I think I may start discussing local politics on here a little bit. Personally I'm not expecting an election anytime soon, but the general consensus seems to be that there's one very near on the horizon. If that's the case then local politics suddenly becomes quite interesting. As in my particular area it seems to be shaping up to be a little bit of a conundrum. I was thinking it was just going to be a simple choice between The Brexit Party and Labour. However, that may not quite be the case. So it could be puzzling.

Normally I don't really discuss local politics on here as a) it's a little dull, and b) it's a little close. And by that I mean that things are always more personal when you're in a small goldfish bowl.

With national politics I feel like a little mouse running around at the feet of giants. Unnoticed. Able to express my opinions for the most part knowing that whatever I say won't have too much impact. For instance, the little mock up image of Jeremy Corbyn from the last post.

(...this one)

You could say it's a little bit mean and unfair satirising people like this. However, none of the people depicted will probably ever see this image. They all earn a lot more money than I do. I'll probably never have to bump into them in the street ..and they want to run the actual country, so the huge amount of power they want means they have to accept a huge amount of criticism. Even if it's just in the form of silly images like this.

When it comes to local politics though it's on quite a different scale. The people involved are much less powerful, much less well known, and earn much less money. They're often just completely regular people. In contrast they also receive much less media attention. So even a tiny blog like this may have a much larger voice relative to the topic it's commenting upon.

I'd feel a little bad making an image like the one above if the focus was some local person standing for election and trying to make a difference. That much effort to be critical simply wouldn't be justified. Not even if their political views were completely off the scale, or out of whack with my own.

Plus I may bump into them in the street (!)

So blogging about local politics is a bit like taking a hammer to crack a nut. It's a bit unfair passing judgement on people and effectively doing a paparazzi job on them. Especially when it's so easy to offer criticism when you're sat behind a laptop screen.

So if I do start posting about the local aspects of any upcoming election I'll need to try extra hard to be extra nice and sympathetic. Also from what I've seen of local politics as an observer in the past it seems like it can be very petty. At the last round of local elections back in May that especially seemed to be the case. I could've easily blogged about all that drama, but it's probably sensible to stay well away and observe the battlefield from a safe distance.