AS A non-voter, I am totally fed up with politics here and the government. I have no faith in the DUP or Sinn Féin to deliver anything apart from ministerial cars and fat pay packets to themselves and their own. But I'm just as fed up with having no alternative. I often hear other parties whinging and grumbling, just like I do from my settee at home. But if all they're doing is complaining (and being paid for it) then what, exactly, is the point in them when I'm doing that for free?
I want to vote again but I need a reason to. My beliefs match closely to the SDLP and Alliance. But what are they offering that's different? Do they have an alternative to the DUP/SF budget?
To school closures? To the lack of cancer drugs? To Welfare Reform? It's all well and good opposing things but if you don't have an alternative then you may as well be selling ice pops at the north pole.
Elections come and go but year after year the 'alternative' parties fail to tell me what they'd do different. My vote is up for grabs to those who tell me what change they offer.
If you sit back and expect a vote because you wrote the Good Friday Agreement 15 odd years ago or just because you keep saying shared future over and over again then you can go and whistle. My vote's for sale and the price is a 'Plan B'. And there are thousands like me.
ANDY MAGUIRE
Belfast
