On Thursday at 07.00 residents of Newark will breathe a sigh of relief and so to will thousands of people who have been under immense pressure to cover every single inch of the constituency with leaflets and handshakes and ensure that every feasible phone number is phoned. At 7am the polling stations will open and that is the end of the influencing, indoctrinating and browbeating. Never again will the residents of Newark receive so much attention and in all probability it will return to being a safe seat for the Conservatives, even though it was a Conservative MP who let down his constituents so badly. I have written previously about the travesty which allows seats to be as safe as Newark, this is not something that would be tolerated if the Political Parties were to truly focus on the needs and desires of the people who are entitled to vote in elections. However it is very easy to simply allow the status quo to remain if it is a system that ensures that you and your colleagues can continue to eat well on the public purse, thanks to these trends. Never mind that Millions of people have almost no prospect of changing the outcome of any given Parliamentary election in their local area. At present all but 85 or so of the 650 seats are currently unlikely to change from one election to another.

This morning on Radio 4 the International Economic correspondent was speaking of the likely outcome of the Chinese financial figures. The point was that made that the predicted level of growth would be met, whatever happens, the only variable is the level of Governmental intervention needed to ensure that the growth matches the figures that have been published. The outcome of British elections are not as controllable as Chinese Economic output, but there are similarities. Watching twitter for the number of Conservative paid officials (including MPs who are supposed to be representing people all over the UK) along with volunteers (including Peers) who have visited Newark in the past few weeks shows just how much propping up is going on to get the outcome that the party knows is needed if the General Election plans are not to be damaged. On the Radio the prospective MP admitted that all Conservative MPs and Ministers had been instructed to visit the constituency 3 times during the campaign. This form of intervention is surely no better than the manipulation of the Chinese Economy by their Government.

In the work I have been involved in over the last 20 years, the phrase Community Development is used to describe an approach which starts with local residents and their needs and abilities and introduces resources (financial, human and training in skills) in a manner that allows the residents to increase their confidence and competence at a pace which they can achieve sustainably. Over time the local residents are able to take over the running of the relevant organisations on their own behalf. Sadly this is the very opposite of the approach adopted by many large businesses and political organisations. They respond in the same way in which all of the major parties have responded to Newark, flooding the ‘problem’ with disproportionate levels of resources, irrespective of the true impact on the residents, because they can! It is how some of the worlds natural disasters have been addressed with donors flooding the area with people and goods, assuming that they know best. Yet in democracies elections are supposed to be fought on terms that are free and fair. It is supposed to be the ideas and the principles of the candidates that determine who people vote for, not the number of balloons that his supporters can hand out.