Education for Citizenship

I am from a village called Glenfield in Leicestershire. Glenfield is located to the West of the city centre and has a population of approximately 10,000 people (Leicester County Council, 2006). Glenfield’s local council is the Leicester County Council. The local MP for my constituency is the Labour MP Patricia Hewitt. As shown on the map, the Labour and the Conservative party both are responsible for 5 constituencies each. It clear that Conservative dominate as conservative is accountable for the larger districts.

I understand that this year the general election is to take place. There are many opinions on those who do not take part. Some people may see the ‘non-voters’ as people who do not care about the way in which the country or their district is run. Others may possibly just see the ‘non-voters’ as lazy.

I personally do not have an opinion on the ‘non-voters’ as this is my first year where I can legally vote and I am choosing to not take part. There are several reasons why, first of all I do not feel educated enough to make a precise decision on which political party I am in favour of as I am not fully aware of each party’s aims and visions. From what I do understand, each party seems to flaunt themselves in an over-exaggerated way to win votes. They make many promises to us that they are going to improve many things for example reduce tax, provide more money for education, create more jobs and so on. When it comes down to it, I personally feel these parties do not stick to their word 100% of the time.

Years ago, there were clear distinctions between the 3 main political parties but now a lot of their policies are very similar and people often vote for the ‘person’ they like rather than the party.

‘Voter turnout has declined in recent years due to apathy – where voters are not motivated to vote for any political party’ (Tutor2u, n.d). Tutor2u (n.d) explains how this may have been caused by false belief or people thinking there is little difference between one party to another. Tutor2u (n.d) also explains how people feel that politicians do not always listen and that one vote will make little difference to the outcome of who wins the election. I can agree with all the points the mentioned therefore I do not blame people for not taking part in the elections!

References

• Leicestershire County Council (2006) Leicestershire Small Area Population and Household Estimates 2001-2004 . http://www.leics.gov.uk/search.htm?qt=population+of+glenfield&col=all&flag= (16.03.10)

• Tutor2u (n.d) Voting Behaviour. http://tutor2u.net/sociology/power-voting-behaviour.html (16.03.10)