Monday, July 18, 2005
Forced to Vote
Geoff Hoon has been expressing a view that we should be legally forced to vote. Voter apathy says an awful lot; every General Election 40 - 45% of the electorate tell all the main political parties what crap they are. Most ordinary people cannot stand for office, the deposit is prohibitive and then you have the huge Corporately funded campaigns - New Labour is a big benefactor of Corporate Interests and Millionaires. Imagine you running a campaign against a New Labour Candidate, glossy brochures promising the Earth to the constituency and you, barely able to afford 50 photocopies of your campaign leaflet at the local library, your're chicken shit. That's democracy for you. The biggest power we have is tell the main political parties what bollocks they are by not voting, it's our right to choose not to vote. Our choice is a big political statement.
Michael Bywater succinctly put it on Radio 4's Heresy
"...we are all now effectively disenfranchised, all the political parties are huddled into a vile knot like a plate of whelks where you can't distinguish them in the middle of the spectrum. They patronise us, they lie to us and they talk balls, and then once every four or five years they say "please come out and vote for us or we will hit you" it's not democracy, it's rape..."
Michael Bywater succinctly put it on Radio 4's Heresy
"...we are all now effectively disenfranchised, all the political parties are huddled into a vile knot like a plate of whelks where you can't distinguish them in the middle of the spectrum. They patronise us, they lie to us and they talk balls, and then once every four or five years they say "please come out and vote for us or we will hit you" it's not democracy, it's rape..."
