Sweet revenge

Late in 2010 Nottinghamshire County Council were proposing to cut the grant awarded to local advice services. This is money which Nottingham & District Citizens Advice Bureau relied upon to provide the services we offer - services which were, and are, in great demand.

To, we hoped, influence the councillors before the vote, clients in the county who had used us recently were contacted and asked to write to their councillors. The clients were provided with a standard letter, to use if they wished, detailing the importance of what CAB offers and the importance of its services both personally and to the county.

The upshot was that the 2011 funding cut went ahead. The impact on our CAB required restructuring, redundancies, and reduced hours for the remaining staff. (Voluntary agencies can't survive on thin air, no matter how keen the volunteers.) What stuck in my memory was the comment of one councillor that she had been 'been getting all these identical letters about the CAB'. Far from taking note of representations from her constituents, she'd been annoyed about the letters!

Fast forward to the local government elections in May 2013. I never vote in government elections. (As Edgar Broughton said "There's one thing I won't give you, my friend. Compliance in all of your games".) And I rarely bother to vote in local elections. This is generally such a staunch Tory area that there isn't much point.

But this year I am so angry about some of the benefit cuts visited by this government on already disadvantaged people ...and incensed by NCC cutting our grant at a time when advice services are needed more and more, that I took a few minutes to cast my vote. And blow me, didn't the Tories lose their majority on the Council to Labour by one seat. And didn't one of the Labour councillors in my ward get elected by nine votes!

True, it would be better if Liz Plant had won by only one vote (mine, obviously). But I like to think that the arrogant 'identical letters' woman had pissed off just 8 other people and got her instant karma a couple of years late.

Simple vindictive pleasure is so sweet.