Just back from my 2 minute walk to my Polling Station, the nearby St John's Community Centre. Here the Returning Office was loudly proclaiming that it was not St John's it was the council's they had a 25 year lease (about 10 years ago) from the diocese and had wanted to drop the St John's so people wouldn't think it was the church hall - even though it still is and the church has several people on the committee. My retiring (and standing) local councillor who opposed (though obviously could not vote against) our planning application stood at the door sporting a jacket over his usual teeshirt and jogging bottoms. Obviously election day is the time for dressing up. Having removed a fly poster from our noticeboard then dodged litter and dog mess to get to the poll, it will interesting to see if any of the candidates, if elected, come good on their promises to clean the streets and address vandalism.
Whenever elections come around, I remember my Dad's one and only very stern instruction on politics - that we must vote, that people died to get us the vote. It was not an option and there was always a vague sense he might return to haunt me if I didn't! He was right of course, and now, as I look back, I realise that, even if I don't share his politics, he worked hard for what he believed in. He and his brother must have been an odd pair, one a soldier in north Africa, the other a consientious objector; one a Conservative, one a Socialist, yet both at different times served on local councils (my Dad was very much into getting road signs put up on hazardous bits of road - there are still a few signs in North Bucks he is responsible for! My uncle was at one point a big wig in a council in Bromsgrove). It is perhaps as well they lived in different counties as in later years it might have been confusing to have them door knocking for opposing parties!
Thinking about these two ill matched, yet ultimately similar, brothers makes me a little less gruff in my attitude to my, likely to be re-elected, local councillor. I might not share his politics, I might not like his opinions, but at least he is prepared to work for what he believes in.
In our Lent studies, one of the threads was about polititians, and Wendy Craig, I think it was, observed that they have a very difficult job, and one they enter because they want to make things better. She, rightly, reminded us that we should pray for, not about, them. So, having fulfilled my responsibilities as a UK citizen, and exercised my right to express my preferences, I can do no other than heed her advice. By this time tomorrow we will have a new local council, new committees will convened and who knows, we might even get our planning application through next time!