Do you think some people didn't know what level of government they were voting for?

[unn]

Yesterday, at a café, I overheard two elderly ladies saying that they voted for Reform in the county council elections as they wanted their heating allowance back and want the Labour government out in Parliament.

How bloody ignorant are these people? The county council has zero responsibility of your pensions and heating allowance. They deal with potholes and local education.

Probably have forgotten that the general election was 10 months ago.

To be fair, it's very unusual to be stuck on a train with two "elderly ladies" playing TikTok videos at full blast on their phones. At least their conversation was entertaining!

Unless you like your councillors- I know a couple that take their work very seriously I think it hard to vote on local issues unless there is one single big issue.
I lived in an area with middle schools and there was a proposal to move to primary then secondary. Lots of campaigning on the issue.

Otherwise the stuff is generic with every party saying they will improve services and references to things that are national issues. Then it makes as much sense to vote on national. The Lib Dems managed to get to coalition because they built up a local base that gets councillors and activists then ready to campaign at General. They can also trade on competence at local level.
im hoping this is where Reform comes unstuck as they have to take decisions now.

Reform of the two issues of social care and SEND that have a huge impact on local government in England is only possible at a national level (not sure about Wales/NI/Scotlamd)

I think those 2 ladies voted reform as they have seen the mess (and personal loss) that both the awful Tory and Labour governments have made, and think reform are the last choice.
It's their right to vote for whoever they wish.

Reform encourage this. I recently stood for election against a reform candidate in a local council by election.

My own campaign material was about issues I would actually be able to help with in my capacity as a parish councillor ( limited to managing the local community center, local planning issues , putting on town events , and using tax payers money more sensibly than has been the case recently.

The reform candidate sent out three separate expensive brochures promising all sorts of stuff that a local councillor has no power over. He had never attended a single council meeting and clearly knew nothing about the role he was hoping to be elected for. I had attended all council meetings for a year before I stood for election.

He promised to make all the roads in one part of town one way ( not within his remit and not actually wanted by residents for fear it would increase speed )

He promised to stop the boats and bring back the winter fuel allowance.

He made up a story that the council were going to charge for parking in the town and that he would put a stop to it ( there has never been a proposal to charge for parking in our town and that again would not be something the town council would be involved in other than to object on behalf of residents if that was what they wanted us to do if it was proposed by the local authority.

I won by a landslide as an independent non political party candidate.

@AngelsWithSilverWings I wonder how many of the new Reform councillors have a clue about what happens at their level of politics and other issues in the area? Probably very few.

Op do you not think that regardless, this sends a message to Labour? And if they get enough of a shock they may well reinstate the fuel allowance?

If they don't like labour of course they won't vote for labour and

@Simonjt being able to read and do maths are two vastly different skill sets.

Being able to comprehend and assimilate information is far far more important than being able to calculate the area of something.
If the reading age is low why is that?. Does that make you thick if the school you attended couldn't help you to learn to read?

Further more people with literacy issues have often come up with highly creative ways to get around this.

@unn unless they have been a councillor before or been in power they won't know, there will be lots of mistakes I imagine

Do you realise that all older people (or "boomers" as you so ignorantly call them) didn't vote for Brexit?

And maybe that is what the problem is - not the older people talking about politics, but the fact that the younger don't. As a 67 year old, believe me, when I was younger you could definitely hear me "talking" about politics. You still can. And not because anyone is "hard of hearing".

One of the things you might hear me talking about is the amount of ageist crap spoken by younger people. Being older does not make us stupid, infirm, or incapable. Just as being younger doesn't make people smart, healthy or capable. You don't agree with people voting Reform? Well it was obvious for ages what was going to happen. So what did you do about it? What are you going to do going forward? Because calling people thick on MumsNet isn't covering yourself in glory or changing anyone's mind.

Yes, I overheard someone a few days ago. Planning on voting for Reform as 'the illegals are taking all the GP appointments and bringing the NHS to its knees. Oh dear...

I also don’t think lots of people understand the powers that Councillors do / don’t have.
A councillor can’t order staff to stop “working from home”, they are not Officers, they aren’t HR, they can’t change work contracts, they can’t sack people, and they have nothing to do with hiring.

Wasted money, more red tape, CT increases. If councils have a good quarter or so retaining their seats or re-elected in a different area, they some idea.

Then expect to pay around £50 to see a GP if Reform become the main governing party in the UK....

This didn’t happen.

😂Oh the irony...

A councillor can't do those things. Councillors collectively absolutely can do those sorts of things. Officers carry out the policies and strategies of the Council, which expresses the wishes and requirements of the collective councillors. HR support the implementation of the policies and strategies as laid down by the Council. Employers very definitely can change work contracts provided they do so lawfully (which is easy enough); however I am very certain that you will find that working from home is often permissive and not contractual in many councils, in other words people have been allowed to do so and that permission can be revoked. Councillors can and do sack people - in fact in all circumstances it is technically the Councillors (who are the employers in their role as "the Council") who both hire and fire, with officers having delegated powers in almost all circumstances (the most senior officers all being hired/fired directly by councillors acting on behalf of the council).

See, it's true that lots of people don't understand the powers of Councillors. Including the ones that think they do. I retired from a senior council role last year - I was hired directly by councillors....

Another ageist post. I think you'll find that geography had a great deal to do with the Brexit vote and most subsequent votes. People like me born during the post-war Baby Boom and now living in London were extremely unlikely to vote for Brexit and aren't voting for Reform now.

Ignorance about elections is absolutely rife. I still marvel at the people who voted in the Brexit referendum but apparently had never voted before because they were horrified to see that you are given a pencil to mark your vote on the ballot paper. They were convinced this was a plot so that the people counting the votes could rub out the Leave votes and replace them with Remain votes and were recommending that people should take their own pens to foil this dastardly plot.

Christ on a bike!

Are we allowed to call the thick and racist ones thick and racist?

Literacy and numeracy are both important. Other countries manage to teach both and don't have this cultural divide where it's shameful to be illiterate but totally acceptable and normal to be 'no good at maths'. Even if you rarely use the specific techniques you learn in school maths, it teaches logical thinking, which is extremely important.

That's absolutely shocking, Simon, and I'm sorry that happened to you. Were there any official consequences?

Around the same time, a friend told me that another friend of hers, an anaesthetist of Asian heritage, was preparing to anaesthetise a patient before an operation. The patient looked at her and said 'I thought we just voted to get all of you lot out!' Well, good luck to all the anti-immigration people and racists when they need healthcare, social care or any of the other services which indigenous British people don't seem to want to do in sufficient numbers.

My friend worked at a supermarket at the time of the Brexit referendum. A day or two after the result, a customer asked an Asian colleague of my friend, when’s she going home. @Simonjt experienced something similar.

As mentioned in a pp, the city where I live has an Asian community for 70 years, well before UK entered the EEC.

The colleague was in tears as her grandparents were born in the UK. The customer who made the colleague upset was elderly and from what my friend can remember, born and bread in the city. Probably forgotten about the Asians entering the city in the 1950s. The customer was asked to leave. Unsure if was banned or not.

It’s because reform voters believe any old shit they are told and have very little critical thinking. You only have to spend two minutes on social media to see this play out. Not knowing the basics, like the difference between an asylum seeker and an illegal immigrant. Thinking illegal immigrants/asylum seekers can claim ‘millions’ in benefits, have an absolutely abysmal understanding of British history, thinking that the Second World War was about stopping immigration and ‘are grand parents wud be turning in there graves’ when it wasn’t about that, it was fighting against fascism. Not understanding that, just like Brexit, people are being manipulated to vote against their own interests.

Minority groups will suffer. The disabled, the poor, and anybody who isn’t white. Just yesterday Farage was gleeful about councils are spending too much money on DEI, spending too much money on ergonomic chairs, for example, to help disabled employees - far too woke. Add to that insurance based healthcare and removal from the ECHR. People are sleepwalking into a dystopia. His language is straight out of the Trump playbook and people can’t see it.

I wish people would stop with the Brexiteers are idiots stuff. What about D Cameron and the Tories who decided it was a good idea to hold a referendum - I mean the public were hardly clammering for one - it was solely to appease some whingeing Tories who didn't like the EU.
D Cameron and all the rest of the cabinet (in fact all of the MPs whatever party) did absolutely nothing to advise voters - to point out what they might lose, what they might or might not win by leaving - I mean you couldn't make it up - what absolute idiocy.
And Cameron flounces off to some highly paid job in whatever and then to make matters worse the MPs, many Labour, fight over negotiating with the EU because some of them wanted a revote so we ended up with crap rules and Bojo - maybe start blaming the idiots in Parliament and not an illinformed electorate.
PLUS the hundreds of MPs SHOULD have had a teeny inkling of what their electorate believed or wanted but unfortunately in their London bubble they knew f all.

You come across as being nasty and judgemental.