The General Election's poor relation

You can't go anywhere these days without someone talking about the general election, or in Copeland, the mayoral election.  And it's right and proper tat we do, because it's a big deal, we get to choose who's going to be in charge for the next four years.

But we need to remember that there are other elections going on next month, and the people putting themselves forward will be making decisions that affect us directly -- of course I'm talking about the parish councils.

Thanks to the Vicar of Dibley, lots of people have a pretty dim view of parish council's, getting the idea that not much ever happens. But actually parish council's have a lot of powers and duties.

Click here for an idea of what parish council's actually do.

Most of the people sitting on parish council's are older adults, which is fine because they have quite a bit of time on their hands, but they're also not in the prime of life anymore...   While young people have loads of energy (usually)

But recruiting people all of the same age makes for a really bad team.  Consider the following:

A team of all young people won't get much done because of lack of funds; a team of all old people won't get much done because of lack of energy; and a team of all adults never happens because we're all to busy to join a team.

But if you combine young and old, you get to make use of the energy of the young combined with the funds and the wisdom of older adults.  It's a win-win situation.

And that brings me to my main point: parish councils are struggling to recruit people to join. Now, you have to be 18 or over to be a voting member of parish councils, but anyone can attend. And that means that anyone can (theoretically) give an opinion about the best way for a parish council to meet its duties and use its powers.

Anyone interested in getting involved in local politics, drop me a line and I'll get in touch with your local parish council and arrange introductions.

In other news

Yamini Karanam, a computer science student from Hyderabad, India, has had an evil twin removed from her head.

She'd suffered with headaches and confusion and no-one seemed to know what to do until her friends raised the $32,000 to get her to LA where a surgeon removed a tumour, complete with hair and teeth. The moral of the story: Friends are awesome.

And an evil twin is no laughing matter.