Having made the throwaway comment in my post about GP ‘approval’ ratings that my equivalent would be much lower I thought I ought to check.

I was right.

Obviously these aren’t direct ‘approval’ or ‘satisfied’ questions, but using the results of elections to do sums that aren’t relevant to anything. It’s complicated because in Wandsworth council elections people have three votes and it’s not possible to work out exactly how they are cast. Some people will only vote once or twice, some will split their votes between parties. My recollection is that about a third of the votes cast this year were not for the straight party slates.

However, taking an average of the votes cast for the party candidates (the greens only fielded two), then working out a percentage and then subtracting the proportion against from the proportion cast for us brings me to an ‘approval’ rating of 6.2%.

Like I said, nowhere near as good as even the worse GP. What’s worse, it’s dropped. The same calculation was 10.1% in 2006. Given that I was the council’s exec member for regeneration and community safety in that period I suppose it’s possible that some people blamed me for the recession and rising crime.

Totally meaningless. Unless to serve as a reminder (not that I need one) that pretty much whatever I do, there’ll always be about half the people of Shaftesbury who think someone else can do it better.

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