BEFORE General Elections disappear from the public mind for another five years may I briefly respond to the comments of Cllr Lodge in last week's Citizen. He suggests that non-voters simply 'cannot be bothered' with the intellectual process of distinguishing between candidates. Yet it is by this very process that I conclude they are all the same.

What's more 38,000 people in Lancaster and Morecambe apparently thought so too and as 25 per cent of the electorate they would represent the second largest party in the country if they decided to organise! They can't be all lazy good-for-nothings.

I have a fundamentally different conception of democracy from the councillor. My idea of democracy is co-operative, not adversarial, community based, not party led and informed not white-washed. It is precisely because I set store by this conception that I decline to choose among bogus options in a media circus aimed at preserving the status quo. I spoiled my ballot in the General Election and I hereby predict the following: three years from now or even less, many readers including the 25 per cent who did not will begin to wish they had done the same.

PJ Shannon.

Lancaster

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.