Politics Round-up: Election special

Did you vote then, eh? Did you? Did you?!

If you did take time out last week to cast your vote in local elections then you’re in a minority, as turn-out around the country was fairly pitiful.

A guest post over at Burdz Eye View suggests that the way to combat poor voter turnout in UK elections is to make voting compulsory, as it is in Australia, but Jax at Making It Up firmly believes that the right to vote is also a right to not vote.

Mute Swann ponders whether lack of political engagement is due to the fact that the system is broken, a view that seems to be shared by Felicity Fox, who writes a wonderful politics-as-fairytale post.

The good news is that the elections for London Mayor seemed to get you all a little more excited than local council elections. Chez Mummy makes the point that the Mayor makes decisions that affect people living outside the city too. Big Fashionista just thinks we should have all have voted for her, and sets out her alternative manifesto. New Mum Online fell back in love with Twitter after some polite and informed discussion as the results were coming in, but unfortunately Miss Cisco wasn’t quite so impressed when she saw a local councillor tweeting their support for the EDL.

There were lots of lovely feminist posts this month.

*Cheers wildly and waves pompoms, before wondering if pompoms are an instrument of patriarchal oppression*.

Ellen at In A Bundance was getting a bit worked up about housework and body hair. Sarah Ditum writes a lovely personal post about her own reasons for being a feminist, and Joanne Leonard pleads with us all to stop fighting about our wombs.

As ever, there are a handful of brilliant posts that don’t quite fit into any one theme, but are still very much worth your time and attention. Mother.ie writes very movingly about the campaign currently taking place in Ireland to legalise abortions for medical reasons. This Lemonade Life has not just one but two excellent posts about life as a single parent under the current Government, and Patch of Puddles has a very personal post about the politics of disciplining your children, in particular ‘the smacking thing’

A Mummy Too has a great post about the challenges of life as a working parent, and if that interests you, you might also want to take a look at Gaby Hinsliff’s post about the phrase ‘part-timer’. In a move that is going to make finding that work-life balance even harder, it seems that the Government are thinking about messing around with our maternity leave. That decision is not going down at all well with parent bloggers. These posts were all written before the Queen’s Speech, so there will no doubt be some further updates next month, but Ghost Writer Mummy, Mother Wife Me, Nearly Everything But and Not Even A Bag of Sugar all had something to say about the reduction in maternity leave to 18 weeks. I hope David Cameron is listening…

Finally, to cheer you up after all that heavy stuff, you can head over to Adventures of a Middle Aged Matron to take her unofficial UK citizenship test. If you don’t pass the test then you’d better pack your bags and head for the airport… you might even find a country where everyone votes, the Government has family friendly policies, and it doesn’t rain in May. Good luck!

If you’ve got any posts that I’ve missed, please add them to the linky below. And if you write anything over the next month that you’d like to see in next month’s round-up, please get in touch. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.

About Ruth Dawkins

Ruth Dawkins is a 28-year-old mother and writer who has recently moved from Edinburgh to Hertfordshire. She blogs as DorkyMum on everything from parenting and poetry to politics and photography. Before becoming DorkyMum her jobs included: environmental campaigner, Green Party parliamentary candidate, newspaper intern, and student union president. However, her favourite job was being a climate change ambassador for Ben and Jerry's; a role that involved camping in the Arctic and eating a lot of free ice cream (although not at the same time). When she's not engaging in armchair activism or entertaining her toddler, you can find Ruth wasting her time on Twitter and Facebook.

• Mail
|
• Web
|
• Twitter
|
• More Posts(8)