Hard Life, Politics

As regular readers know, this year I am dealing with one subject per month, and this month, I've been attempting to engage in politics. My strategy is three-pronged, like mighty Neptune's trident.

• ONE: MEET THE PEOPLE Assess all local candidates who are seeking my vote on May 5th in the UK Election. Record them, write about them, make this coverage public. My personal addition to the mass of information, debate, reports and political propaganda designed to help voters come to a decision in this hotly-contested, now marginal inner-city Borough.


• TWO: PROMOTE GLOBAL COMMUNICATION Like all politics, it's important to make your contribution effective. So Five is now an independent news feed alongside the Guardian, at Bloggers4Labour, and other articles are being syndicated world-wide using Blogger News Network (BNN) under the category "World Politics".


• THREE: EXPLORE INNER TURMOIL Or, who the hell do I actually vote for? Should I vote for the party with the most chance of getting socially progressive policies implemented (Labour) the party with the most progressive social policies (Liberal Democrats) or the socially progressive party whose policies my conscience tells me (yes, you too can wrestle with your conscience!) give us the only chance of saving the planet (Green)?

Why inner turmoil? I hear vast uneasy choruses murmur in booming underground caverns deep beneath us.

I am a traditional Labour voter (albeit with anarchic/situationist tendencies) out-of-love with the democratic process yet determined not to abandon it. The party I voted for over and over again, and who in 1997 replaced the old corrupt Conservative regime have proved to be authoritarian, deaf to the people's wishes, devoid of respect for human rights, hopelessly weak in the face of the US Republican administration's military aggression.

Yet, if I vote against Labour and thus help to allow a right-wing regime to come to power (there is a slim but real chance of this) then I will have to hang my head in shame and leave the country. It is frustrating, this system. What is the point in taking part, if you can't change things for the better without running the risk of having the opposite outcome. Then again, my Mum says, vote for your principles, or nothing will ever change, and maybe she is right.

Athough I have never voted Conservative in my life, because if I did so the lefty bones of which I am constructed will up and leave my body, and anyway in my Borough, they haven't a chance, the Con Candidate Melanie McLean still agreed to an interview when I met her on Monday, and I think she deserves her chance to answer my questions.

I have 13 days to finish this part of the project. Today I am interviewing James Humphreys from the Green Party. James is the last of the three real contenders for my vote. I am still writing my interview with Bridget Fox from Monday.

I am going to interview Mum as well, next week, since she's the one who confused me about politics in the first place.