A great, and very true cartoon by Dave Walker, who also does some lovely cycling cartoons.

Look, I’ll not beat around the bush – it’s general and local elections today and you can’t possibly have missed this fact. It’s been one of the nastiest, most closely fought campaigns in my living memory, and very probably represents the end of two party politics in the UK as we know it.

I’ll not tell you how to vote – that’s your business. All I ask is that you do vote. No, they’re not all the same; who you vote for can and will make a difference. We are in a new political landscape right now, and it’s a situation in which a small number of votes could make a massive difference.

Apart from that, I think it’s important that folk vote. It took centuries to get universal suffrage in this country, and to paraphrase, such things never come without something being sacrificed for them; freedoms are never given to anyone. I think we owe it to ourselves, and to our history, to take the short amount of time it requires to participate in the democratic process.

It’s no secret that I’m an unreconstructed lefty, but you will have your own ideas and beliefs, and that’s cool. Even if you don’t like any of the options and spoil a ballot, having taken part sends a message.

In my view, it’s also important that those who play on division, and seek to rekindle hostilities should be defeated. To my mind there is no position in British politics for the language of fear, prejudice and hatred, and I personally will be voting to keep them out, whether it’s the lazy rhetoric of UKIP or the divisive polemic of the Tories.

But that’s just me.

You will have your own beliefs. Vote according to them. That’s what this is all about.

You may wish to tell me I’m wrong, that the sun rises in the west and that everything will be glorious: I don’t care, go tell someone else – this blog has been political from day one (and it was six years old this week). I’m not impartial and never have been. If you don’t like it, have your fee back and find one of the millions of others out there you’ll surely enjoy more.

Vote for who you see fit, but just participate, please.

Polling information can be found on Walsall Council’s website here – your station is printed on the polling card you received in the post. You don’t need your polling card to vote, by the way, just as long as you registered.

Walsall Council’s dedicated election/results website can be found here – thanks, Helen!

Thanks. This stuff is important.

Needless to say, as soon as I get wind of any results, I’ll post them here.