Next year we know that because of the way the electoral cycle works there will not be normal local elections in May. There will however be elections to the European Parliament which are scheduled to be held across Europe in June.
In the North West we had three Conservative MEP’s elected at the last elections held in 2004 Den Dover, Sir Robert Atkins and David Sumberg – the former Member of Parliament for Bury South. David has since announced that he will not be seeking re-election. Since then their numbers have been increased by the defection of Liberal Democrat MEP Saj Karim to the Conservatives.
As the election of Members of the European Parliament is on a proportional representation basis there has to be a list of Candidates drawn up by each political party with sufficient names on it so as to fill all the seats available in that region. The higher up the list a Candidate is the more likely that Candidate is to be elected. Here in Bury North we are part of the North West Region. Each Party has their own procedure for drawing up these lists and in the Conservative Party all Party Members in the North West will be asked to vote on the order they want the Candidates to appear on the list.
It is indeed a most complicated procedure and I for one am not at all in favour of the Proportional Represention ( “PR” ) system of voting in elections. I remember years ago when there were no PR elections the Liberal Democrats who were and indeed still are of using this system argued that PR would result in more people voting. Now that we have PR elections not just for European Elections but in Scotland and Wales for their Regional Parliament and Assembly elections we can see that PR does not in any way improve turn out in elections and as far as I can see it only serves to confuse voters and further alienate them from the political process.
David Nuttall 
Dear Sir,
There was a meeting at the Met Studio Theatre in Bury on Saturday 29th March. The Meeting was a Debate about the Lisbon Treaty. It was attended by Gary Titley MEP, and representatives from UKIP, one from the LibDems and chaired by David Chaytor. No Conservative representative! A magnificent occasion to put the Tory viewpoint was lost by non-attendance, very disapointing. There were upwards of one hundred people in attendance, all aged between 50 and 70 with a variety of concerns, all of which in my opinion were glossed over with pontification and bluster. This was a missed opportunity. It was particularly interesting that all the speakers agreed that the Treaty was 98% old Constitution. The main themes from the audience were:
1) We want a referendum.Why a broken promise from all three parties?
2) Why is the UK America’s lackey? (Euro Army?)
4) Who governs the UK, Parliament or Brussels?
5) Totally in or out of Europe? (LibDEm standpoint.)
6) Loss of Sovereignty.(Too much signed over.)
7) Would it be isolationism on the part of the UK to be out of the EU totally.
On this point Labour(Chaytor) compared the UK, in this scenario, to Northern Ireland(past), Burma and North Korea!!!
This indicates this fellows level of thinking.