Suitable Election Candidates and their leaflets

Following the "disastrous" leaflets drop by Labour candidates Arnold Bohana and Tecwyn Thomas (if you remember they were not only printed out of town but out of the county as well!!!) - you responded in your droves to complain and tell us they have lost your votes even before they canvass.

This started us thinking more about the election leaflets and candidates in general.

As most of you who complained know, we contacted each and every one of you to get your response and most of you were good enough to answer and we have printed our findings below.

Most of you thought it was unfair that the big parties were paying for their candidates election leaflets, whilst Independents had to pay out of their own pockets. This gave an unfair advantage. (We must point out however that some candidates claimed they were paying for their own leaflets and not claiming expenses from their parties. (we will find out after the election if this is the case)

The main concerns seemed to be the age of candidates. Many of you thought that councillors were too old and younger blood was needed to shake a few trees. The general belief was that candidates over the age of 65yrs were too old to stand and the law should be changed to have an age ceiling.

There was also strong feeling that candidates should not have conflict of interests. Candidates claiming to sit on "this that and the other" couldn't possibly be fair at different meetings as they would be quite often wearing more than one hat when making decisions.

High on the list of complaint: Candidates should be working solely for the council and not have other interests such as holding down jobs or running businesses. The reason being that a councillor should be accessible any time of day and if they had a business to run or they were holding down a job, then how could they possible divide their time fairly for the constituents?
When we pointed out that community councillors were unpaid and county councillors only receive slightly more than £10,000 per year the general censures of opinion was that Community council matters could be handled at County level by elected councillors and that County councillors salaries should be higher as to attract a better standard of councillor. One witty remark we received was "If you pay peanut then all you get is monkeys!"

According to those who responded, many of you thought it should be a requirement that councillors in Gwynedd should be totally bilingual with the ability to write in Welsh. Many of you thought there should be an aptitude test and if this could not be passed then the candidate could not stand.

It was also brought to our attention that some candidates had put their names forward on more than one ward as to assess the situation so that an election could be avoided.  You told us this should be scrapped  and candidates should only be allowed to put their name forward on one ward.
It was also said that no one should walk in without an election and if there was no opposition then it was acceptable for the candidate to carry on his or her work as they had been previously elected. But no one should be able to take a new seat without first of all winning an election.

Many of you expressed concerned about the Assembly cut backs and how it was effecting Gwynedd, concerns were also raised on the schools issue and if the cutbacks were going to effect our refuse collections.
Parking in Gwynedd was also a big concern and many of you told us you had lost faith in Plaid Cymru AND Labour and were considering your options.

Caernarfon Online asked a total of 133 people (who complained to us following our leaflets article).
Of those a total of  112 responded and gave us the replies above.

We hope this helps you to decide who to vote for on May 1st