Truth serum definitely needs to go into the drinking water

Scanned from Croydon Citizen (Sept 2014 edition)

I have long felt that Croydon is being held back by the tribal nature of the political discourse in our borough. Through custom and habit, probably 3/4 of the electorate file outside their homes on election day to put an 'X' by their party for life. Policies are secondary. The adversarial style of our democracy cements the idea that you had better plump for the usual because the other lot could get in.

The only way to truly stop this from happening is to start afresh with a whole new set of political parties or to find a way to stop people voting in this tribal fashion. If the electorate somehow forgot who they had voted for in the past, maybe that would stop this tribalism. So, when I saw that Croydon Citizen were running a feature on how could Croydon be improved, I came up with the truth serum idea:

I would make Croydon better by...

I would make Croydon better by releasing a de-tribalising truth serum into the drinking water so that the Croydon electorate will forget who they continuously vote for, for no other reason than custom and habit. This will result in voters having to use websites like ‘Political Compass’ to guide them on who they should vote for. The outcome would be real change and real progress because the political parties and politicians elected would actually have a vision for a better Croydon, instead of business as usual.

By chance the following week my wife was sent a link to Vote for Policies via Facebook. A small number of web sites are offering what can loosely be described as tests to aid individuals on which party to vote for. Vote for Policies seems to be leading the way. Thankfully she didn't end up with UKIP.

I checked out the Vote for Policies web site today. Prominent Greens have been tweeting about the fact that 25 per cent of those completing the survey are advised they really support the Green Party. An additional feature gives you the results based on constituency. Naturally, I entered Croydon North:

From the Vote for Polices web site 

If selected for Croydon North, you can be sure I will be letting people know of this result wherever and whenever I can. Meanwhile, I am searching online pharmacies.
--------------------------------------------------
Tags croydon, greenparty