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10th August 2010 21:14 | by Philip Hunt
I’m standing as the Pirate Party’s candidate in the Liberton/Gilmerton by-election for Edinburgh council.
The by-election is happening because at the general election, Cllr Ian Murray was elected to parliament for Edinburgh South. The by-election to replace him will take place on Thursday 9th September.
Britain today is an information society; millions of people now have the internet intervowen into the fabric of their everyday lives. But our leaders are still living in the past. A symptom of this is the Digital Economy Act, where the politicians decided to try to cripple the internet and abolish our civil liberties in order to save the record companies’ obsolete business model.
In addition to digital rights issues, I will be campaigning for better public transport links and increased provision of affordable housing.
To learn more about my manifesto for the city council, or to get in touch with me, please visit my website.
2 comments
samgower wrote: Congrats on being our first local candidate!
Thank you.
How do you plan to apply Pirate issues to local government?
I'm going to answer that in two parts -- (1) if I don't get elected, and (2) if I do.
If I don't get elected. As I explained to a voter today, a lot of Pirate issues can't b e resolved at the local government level. But the more votes I get, and the more votes in future Pirates get, the more the other parties will take note of us. If they realise that policies like the DEA are vote losers, they will change their behaviour. And because it's an STV election, if someone votes for me and I don't win, it isn't a wasted vote, because they can use their lower preferences on other candidates.
If I do get elected. My platform doesn't just contain core Pirate issues, it also contains issues that I care deeply about, that core pirate voters are likely to agree with, and which I think fit in with the Pirate philosophy and with our narrative of how society got where it is.
This narrative states that the existing politicians can't deal with the internet because mentally they aren't ready for it: they are still living in the 20th century when the world has moved on to the 21st century. Hence their futile desire to save the record companies' obsolete 20th century business model by castrating the internet. They won't succeed, of course, but they'll cause a collateral damage by the time their failure is obvious even to them.
But the DEA is only a symptom. The disease is that politicians are still living in the past. They think in terms of the industrial age, but technology has moved on, into the information age, and we need to build a modern 21st century society. This modern society will be efficient and technologically advanced, which means:
* it'll have a new and innovative transport infrastructure, that's cheap, quick, has reduced congestion and pollutes less.
* everyone will be well-off by today's standards. In particular, one of the main costs people face, housing, will be reduced by using new technology and by removing political obstacles to affordable housing.
Realistically one Pirate councillor can't do all that. But we have a realistic chance of getting several in the 2012 council election, because it's an STV election, and some council wards have high numbers of students, and affluent young voters, who are likely to vote Pirate.