The Police thing will have been November 2012. Across the country we all had to elect Police and Crime Commissioners who are in charge of the police force for the local area. It's a new idea the Tories have imported from the US and it's not been popular. You certainly weren't alone in not knowing what was going on. There was a lot more election bumf than usual as a result, because they a) had to convince people it was a good idea and b) had to convince people to vote on a random November day. It didn't work very well and turnout was only 15%.
Getting onto the electoral register should be pretty easy, you just ring your council. However you could also just wait until the electoral register is compiled later in the year (that's the piece of paper you remember seeing before). I think it's usually sent out around August-October, somewhere in there. There won't be any elections between now and then (other than by-elections, there are no more until the General Election next May - Scottish referendum aside, of course!)
Of course you won't be able to vote in the General Election, but you'll still be able to vote in the local election. (I'm surprised the Austrian embassy didn't write to you to check whether you wanted to vote in the UK or Austria for the European elections.)
As for knowing who to vote for, the obvious answer is to keep engaged with local and national news (remembering that newspapers are all biased, but the TV news must legally be balanced) and you'll get the hang of what sorts of things the parties stand for.
But the much easier answer is to use one of the sites which asks you questions about your political views and matches your answers against the different parties. There are some pretty sophisticated ones out there which are made without any political agenda.
The irony about your comment about two-party politics is that your own ward has, today, returned a Liberal Democrat councillor (which doesn't appear to have been surprising) and your council in general has slipped to No Overall Control due to an astonishing number of independents. I assume they're all somehow connected to each other because if not, they've got a remarkable number of seats!
On a national scale, it's true that we have had power passing between Labour and Conservative governments for almost the last 100 years. But in local government, the Liberal Democrats have traditionally been quite strong - though that vote is now collapsing because they entered the coalition government nationally. But we now have two more parties on the rise (the British National Party's brief moment in the sun having, thankfully, not come to much). The Green Party looks to be attracting a lot of former Lib Dems voters and are slowly turning into a credible fourth or fifth party (depending how far down the Lib Dems slip). UKIP, meanwhile, are storming up the polls - there's a strong possibility that on Sunday they'll have got the most votes in the European elections. Whether or not that translates into any MPs next year remains to be seen.
Thanks, Emma, that was a very insightful comment, especially the bit about the police elections. I'm still not sure why that's a role that should be decided by popular vote instead of someone being hired based on competencies, but I guess it's okay if the US do it. Huh.
No, trust me, most people in this country also don't think it's a role that should be decided by popular vote. (In fact, originally the Labour Party weren't going to stand any candidates for it because they disagreed with it so strongly.) Bizarrely although candidates campaigned on a party basis, once they were elected they became (allegedly) politically neutral. Very odd.
Getting onto the electoral register should be pretty easy, you just ring your council. However you could also just wait until the electoral register is compiled later in the year (that's the piece of paper you remember seeing before). I think it's usually sent out around August-October, somewhere in there. There won't be any elections between now and then (other than by-elections, there are no more until the General Election next May - Scottish referendum aside, of course!)
Of course you won't be able to vote in the General Election, but you'll still be able to vote in the local election. (I'm surprised the Austrian embassy didn't write to you to check whether you wanted to vote in the UK or Austria for the European elections.)
As for knowing who to vote for, the obvious answer is to keep engaged with local and national news (remembering that newspapers are all biased, but the TV news must legally be balanced) and you'll get the hang of what sorts of things the parties stand for.
But the much easier answer is to use one of the sites which asks you questions about your political views and matches your answers against the different parties. There are some pretty sophisticated ones out there which are made without any political agenda.
The irony about your comment about two-party politics is that your own ward has, today, returned a Liberal Democrat councillor (which doesn't appear to have been surprising) and your council in general has slipped to No Overall Control due to an astonishing number of independents. I assume they're all somehow connected to each other because if not, they've got a remarkable number of seats!
On a national scale, it's true that we have had power passing between Labour and Conservative governments for almost the last 100 years. But in local government, the Liberal Democrats have traditionally been quite strong - though that vote is now collapsing because they entered the coalition government nationally. But we now have two more parties on the rise (the British National Party's brief moment in the sun having, thankfully, not come to much). The Green Party looks to be attracting a lot of former Lib Dems voters and are slowly turning into a credible fourth or fifth party (depending how far down the Lib Dems slip). UKIP, meanwhile, are storming up the polls - there's a strong possibility that on Sunday they'll have got the most votes in the European elections. Whether or not that translates into any MPs next year remains to be seen.
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