What is your attitude concerning people who are not planning to vote in the general election? What main concerns do you have that may influence your

I live Northampton North Constituency. Northampton's local MP is Sally Keeble who is apart of the labour party.the name of our local county council is Northampton county council and it is dominated by the conservative party.

My attitudes towards people that don't participate in voting is very much mutual. As a non voter I believe that if people don't vote it is entirely their decision. Everyone has their own reasons for not voting which loyal voters may frown upon. My reasons are that I don't trust the the political parties that run or want to run this country. When a new party comes to power, the other party thats been other thrown complains that the new party are not making things any better whilst the party in power argues that things were 10 times worst before they were elected to power.
To be honest I think the government feed the masses with the idea that they care about the social and environmental issues as much as their public do.

With broadcasted Important Political Talks and media support the government can easily encourage the public that communities need to unite for and individuals need to put in efforts to make a differences and assure them that what they are doing is making a differences.

Blog to what extent your ward/SOA resembles a 'sustainable community' and what extent you don't think it does.

I've lived in Northampton all my life and to be honest did not take any notice whether my community was sustainable or not until I started to take this module. I remember my parents telling me to 'always put my rubbish in the bin' and at my lower school we would take part in 'litter picking', I wasn't aware that we were actively being sustainable, I was just interested in the treat promised to us when we were done! However as I got older the government got tougher on the appearance of the cities and towns in England. it was encouraged that it was important to Keep Britain Tidy and was enforced by fines for dropping chewing gum and cigarettes butts on the ground. The government said that the money raise from the fines would be used to buy more bins and help rise awareness to the public.
I have notice a differences in the town's appearance but on the other hand have notice the amount of bins that are made from metal and plastic, which I think is unnecessary and and a bit of a contradiction if the country's wants to be Eco friendly. Some may not agree but I think there is a lot of motorized traffic in Northampton town compared to the villages around it. we have a lot of schools, a university and people who still have a job! The county council of Northampton don't really push the idea of alternatives ways of sustainable transport from what I've seen but do really concentrate on the idea of recycling rubbish, old clothes and reducing the amount of the litter in the town.
As I have mentioned before, Northampton has a University. This intuition has to cater for a huge amount of student and staff that need to use electrical resources to teach, learn and live among other things. Just imagining the amount of the University's electrical usage especially by students that live on campus does not give the impression that Northampton is not such a sustainable community.
The sustainable community spirit in Northampton I think, has be generated from the media, news and schools that have recently started to teach students about it. The Northampton's Super Output Area 2007 statistics, shows the domestic comsumption of electric was 3,697 and of gas was 16,307. From then till now I do think the number in comsumption would have increased with a growing population of 202,800 despite the promotion of being Eco-friendly in Northampton.

Is there really a transport problem? Are there any minor (or perhaps major) changes you personally feel could been made

There are 27,000,000 cars on the road, 3 million of those are company cars and it has been found that women drivers have have increased to just over 60 percent and train travel has risen by 40 percent from the result of occasional trips It is evident not just by the figures I have found that the is a transport problem and from the government to the general public are trying to do something about it. However there are argument for why there is increase in transportation and the benefit people get from it.
The most popular arguments are:

Cars are convenient for people who need to get around
Public transport can help people who haven't got used of a car
Trains are a the best way for people to commute from home to work
People with cars no longer have to dependant on others or public transport
The Motor Industry help generates a lot of jobs and makes money

These are valid points and there would be a large number of people who agree that motorize transport is necessary despite the the impact it's having on the environment and the economy. The capital of Britain experience huge amount congestion nearly every day with the amount people that live, visit and work in the big city, who will be using public transport, cars to get around.
My personal thoughts on the matter are that i don't think the problem with transportation will be solved for now. HOWEVER if I had any ideas that could possible resolve the situation, I would think the way the government ban smoking public places, they could enforce stricter rules on the use of transport in Britain. They could cut back on public transport so people would have to find alternative ways of transport like cycling and walking which are both sustainable. When it comes to the many school runs families have to do, it could made that depending how far a family lived from the school and fit a certain criteria (health problems) determines whether they were allowed to drive to take their children.

Some may think my suggestions are a little far fetched but motorized transportation is one of major impacts on the environment so someone better could up with some ideas!