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THE INDIVIDUALS VOTING TO MAKE A STATEMENT

Winning may be a distant prospect, but it hasn't stopped dreamers and idealists from putting their case to Yorkshire voters.  William Green reports.  It was more than 50 years ago when Robert Leakey last stood for election.  But now the 90-year-old is standing for Parliament =AD to abolish money.  The founder of the Virtue Currency Cognitive Appraisal Party says money is the root of all evil and bankers are "the oldest criminal profession in the world".  Mr Leakey is standing in the Skipton and Ripon constituency but admits he is unlikely to unseat Conservative David Curry, who secured a 12,930 majority in the 2001 General Election. 

Mr Leakey last stood for election as a county councillor in the 1950s and would feel "very guilty" if he didn't fight for Parliament. 

He was born in Kenya to a missionary family, but disaster struck when his mother got appendicitis when they were living there.  Motorists refused to take her to hospital unless they were paid first, and she later died.  He wants money replaced by "virtue currency" =AD where the person needing a service ( like food or housing ) would literally print the cash for the person providing the service. 

Government run by the people, is another of Mr Leakey's demands.  Other independents who have taken up the election gauntlet, include Shipley candidate David Crabtree, who spent UKP 160 registering his "Iraq War.  Not in My Name" party. 

"Whatever protests we made were ignored, so I thought there will come a day when these people will have an opportunity to voice their feelings, and that day has come =AD May 5," he says. 

"My sole intention is to allow people who are still angry or frustrated about the Iraq war to register their vote against it," says Mr Crabtree, who owns three Bradford care homes for the elderly. 

Hull North candidate Chris Veasey wants a better deal for the North, and his party, Northern Progress, has been founded to achieve that goal.  He is also ready to consider civil disobedience and does not rule out breaking away from the UK "if we are simply not going to get anywhere".  "Northerners are at the bottom of the heap for everything because Labour thinks Northerners have nowhere else to go but Labour. 

"Well, now we do," says Mr Veasey.  But he faces competition for independent-minded voters from market trader Carl Wagner who is standing on a "Legalise Cannabis Alliance" slate in Hull North and Hull East. 

Mr Wagner says the ban on cannabis is "Naziism", and wants it legalised for recreational and medicinal uses, and to make eco-friendly products.  He has partially financed his campaign by selling 20p stickers from his Hull market stall for the past three years. 

And Socrates, also known as Peter Lee Boswell, has spent UKP 1,500 of his own money to fight for the Leeds East seat on a platform harking back to the citizen-based democracy of ancient Athens: "I thought it was better than spending some money on a holiday," he says philosophically.  Socrates, who bears a likeness to the famous Greek philosopher of the same name, says he is standing because "things are getting desperate".  He says the political system does not reflect the wishes of the people.  The 54-year-old believes laws are not being genuinely agreed and freely made.