Interesting stats Paul. I wonder why people are apathetic about involving themselves in something as basic as national or local voting. Is it everyone has too much already these days or they are too busy to bother or they feel disenfranchised by the whole electoral system and candidates, who knows. It is often noteworthy that many of the retired and older folk turnout in all weathers to vote in elections whereas the young non family members sometimes cannot be bothered or too busy with their own lives. In all honesty until we departed from the UK I voted at all general elections as did my wife but the government in the UK make it difficult to vote now by postal proxy and have a ruling that as an expat one cannot vote after 15 years resident away from the UK. In truth I rarely voted in local eletions in the UK as the Conservative seat was as 'safe as houses' by some thousands of votes, as was the national seat in general elections. Near enough the whole of West Sussex was blue Conservative by tens of thousands of safe votes and invariably the only opposition was Labour and they were not exactly a viable alternative. We now have a right wing party, UKIP, but some of the nasty cracks are beginning to appear in some of their candidates mouthing off unwarranted nasty racist remarks in the press which is disturbing. Their other issue is they don't appear to have any tangible manifesto thereby they could return the UK economy into another 2008 financial disaster. It's a dilemna all round at present as the current coalition, Conservative/Liberal government, are at odds and they are wilting fast in popularity due to bad decisions and hence bad press creating losses in even local elections. The alternatative Labour party are or appear mostly of former failed politicians from the Blair era and IMO many are buffoons and unfit to govern.