Stroud District: Greens win two seats

Just wanted to add a quick blog to update folks....Caroline Molloy took Central Ward (Independent Andy Reed had stepped down from that seat), while Jonathan Edmunds held Randwick, Whiteshill and Ruscombe with around 150 vote majority - although apparently I am still District councillor legally for another 3 days....??!

One exciting result was Coaley and Uley where Jim Dewey missed winning by 26 votes and Greens came second in various seats like Bisley and Painswick. Many thanks to all who came out to vote and supported the campaign.

Greens have already met once since the election to discuss next steps...the District Council now has 22 Tory, 20 Labour, 6 Greens and only 3 Lib Dems.....so who will work with who? The last two years Labour, Greens and Lib Dems have had a constructive cooperation agreement....will that continue? Well negotiations will no doubt be talking place this week between parties....

See full election results at: http://www.stroud.gov.uk/docs/democ/elections.asp#s=sectioncontent3

Nationally Greens gained 23 seats - we are the official opposition in Liverpool and Solihull, Islington and Lewisham in London, and remain the official opposition in Norwich.  We have 162 councillors on 56 councils. You can read more at: http://greenparty.org.uk/news/2014/05/24/local-elections-the-surge-is-on!-green-party-gain-ground-across-britain/

An article by Polly Toynbee on voting caught my eye - see it here - it is deeply concerning how the big parties see no urgency in reforming our voting system....while turn outs in Stroud area were better than many, quite often in wards they were much less than 50%.....