What a Choice...

I will be voting on May 5th as I want my vote to count both in the regional list vote for Holyrood (for the Greens) and in the AV referendum (Yes). However, when it comes to the constituency vote for Holyrood I'm faced with a completely uninspiring choice - in my particular constituency (as in many this year) the choice is just the candidates from the main 4 Scottish parties. In all cases, I can come up with very good reasons not to vote for them, but am struggling to come up with a single decent reason to vote for any of them.

The Conservatives seem to have put together a manifesto that is totally blind to real issues of poverty and inequality that Scotland faces, not to mention a head in the sand approach to pressures on the environment. Labour still seem to be in absolute denial about their role in damaging the UK economy and creating the pressure for the cuts and have come up with a bunch of crowd-pleasing slogans and no money to pay for them. The SNP also have a huge unexplained financial hole in their plans and are an environmental disaster with their support for more fossil fuel use and more road-building. As for the Lib-Dems, who would normally be my default choice, not only are there the compromises of coalition, which in themselves wouldn't put me off, but actually more importantly, the absolute insanity of what seems to be their central campaign idea of financing their ideas by selling off Scottish Water's debt. That's not going to end well in the long term. If Labour mortgaged our children's future, the Scottish Lib-Dems now seem to want to re-mortgage it.

So, the choice is do I hold my nose and put the cross beside one of the above or do I, for the first time in my voting life, spoil the ballot paper. Its not a practice that I normally approve of, but if I was to do it, I'd like to do it quite imaginatively by, for example, writing in a candidate that I would genuinely like to see elected to the Scottish parliament. Any suggestions?