No excuses

Re: Letter: Local democracy was election’s biggest loser, May 9.

Councillor Miners has a point – so few people voted that even he got voted in – in spite of holding such ludicrous and insulting ideas as frog-marching Peterborough’s citizens to the voting booths! I have to agree with Mr Brown. The thing that annoys me most about politicians is that when a party loses an election, they never say the public made a rational decision – they always say that they did not manage to explain their policies clearly enough to the voters (as if we were all thick). I voted, but I think it is high time politicians acted with a bit more humility and accepted that the electorate are just as intelligent as they are, and if people choose not to vote it is not because they are imbeciles. If we wanted a truly representative council, we should not vote for councillors at all – we should have them chosen at random from the electoral register in the same way as jury service and paid to compensate for the disruption with child care, etc. and just for one or two years. That way there would be no career politicians, no backscratching, no opportunity to do deals to stay in power and no predominance of elderly men suffering with high selfesteem syndrome. It would be ordinary people with common sense like you and me running things.

Mavis Enderby and if most votes are cast for this option, each party has to come to the electorate again with fresh, more populist, policies?

HOLLYGOLULA