Original Date 26th May 2017
One thing I used to do when I was the Member of Parliament for Yardley was to call together meetings of all of the religious organisations in Yardley as a Yardley multi-faith group. In many ways it is the creation of informal links between people that makes communication easier even if there is no formal decision making power.
Obviously this is something I would intend to do again if the people of Yardley ask me to take on the responsibility of representing them in parliament.
It highlights the sort of thing that politicians can do which arises from a leadership role within communities rather than any constitutional position.
I have already written in an earlier blog post about the principles of resolving conflict. It can be summarised as "murdering innocents is wrong".
A number of local mosques have issued statements following the atrocity in Manchester and I think it is worth quoting from parts of them.
One said that the mosque "Unequivoc…
Comments
Local government doesn't seem to attract the 'brightest and the best' in any circumstances but this campaign was particularly mediocre- inappropriately personal and nasty.
Plaid Cymru and Labour canvassers seemed to find it hilarious that anyone would 'waste' a vote on a candidate that they actually wanted to vote for, in preference to tactical voting.
We desperately need PR to raise the quality of the discussion over the heads of these arrogant bullying rat-bags who take the electorate for granted.