A short intro and then back on the soapbox.

[caddyman]

I am aware that I am scandalously behind in updating the trivia of my life and that this will be causing grievous withdrawal symptoms for you, my most avid of readers. All I can say in response to this deserved and correct charge, is that I have been busy at work and otherwise engaged at home in recent times, but that I shall try to do better.

When I have a spare moment, I have a bunch of photographs to upload from my week in Wales; they are of varying quality since many were taken from a moving car, so I shall pick, choose and post only the best, or at least those with less motion blur or unexpected leaping privets etc. I also have photographs from last weekend (ie the weekend a week ago, rather than that just gone), which feature when I get around to uploading them, a short video taken from the outdoor O-Gauge train set in snorkel_maiden’s back garden, complete with odd perspectives, foliage collisions, but alas, no gargantuan cats.

All this and more will come when I have the time and access to a reasonably functional IT system (ie not the office set up). Or I may forget. Who knows? It makes life more exciting.

Anyway, to the purpose of this message: I know we are all getting bored with the election and the lies, mean-spiritedness and overall lethargy it is now moving into and the apathy that is beginning to return. It seems that the politicians still don’t really comprehend just how much their collective stock has fallen with the electorate, or just how much there is a desire building for some sort of change. Or rather I think that they understand that people want change, but they are thinking still, in terms of party percentage change and swings from left to right, up and down and in and out. I think that people are beginning to sit up and wonder why there is nothing more fundamental on offer, given the sudden and long delayed rise of proper three-party politics in an essentially two party system.

So here is my pitch:

Go out and Vote.

I am not going to recommend who you should vote for – I realise that if there were a ‘none of the above’ option most of us would go for that, but there isn’t. Just go out and vote. Don’t vote tactically, vote how you feel. I don’t hold with this tactical voting concept: if more people voted with their convictions rather than swallowing the propaganda about ‘keeping the other guy out at all costs’ then we would have evolved a system that would have allowed such advice to be seen as the nonsense it is. Tactical voting distorts the figures and favours the big parties; it has nothing to do with how you are represented in Parliament.

Go out and Vote. Go out and be counted in the first election in many of our lifetimes where it could conceivably make a difference.

For what it’s worth, I shall probably vote Lib Dem. Not because I think they will win – and as a matter of fact, I’m rather glad that they won’t, they have too much of a split personality across the issues and in some cases downright dangerous – but they have always been under represented and the bigger the slice of the vote they can command against the big two, the more clear cut and urgent the case for electoral reform becomes. This can be election where democracy stirs in the UK, even though it will still have to try harder to emerge from the shackles of a first-past-the-post system that regularly delivers strong, but unrepresentative government.

I think it boils down to whether or not you feel that you might like to try living in a democracy for the first time in the UK’s long history, or whether we should keep our safe and cosy elective dictatorship and the democratic deficit it promotes.

Go out and Vote.

Comments

I agree with you, but...

[caffeine-fairy.livejournal.com]

...not to split hairs, but isn't

For what it’s worth, I shall probably vote Lib Dem. Not because I think they will win – and as a matter of fact, I’m rather glad that they won’t, they have too much of a split personality across the issues and in some cases downright dangerous – but they have always been under represented and the bigger the slice of the vote they can command against the big two, the more clear cut and urgent the case for electoral reform becomes.

tactical voting?

Re: I agree with you, but...

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

I suppose so after a fashion.

But at the moment I am living in a safe Tory seat, so I'm hardly voting one way to stop the other candidate getting in. I am adding my miniscule amount of voter power to add to the Lib Dem surge.

Of course, if our local Lib Dem gets in by one vote, I can pretend I was King Maker.

Re: I agree with you, but...

[pauln.livejournal.com]

Sutton & Cheam?

Re: I agree with you, but...

[caffeine-fairy.livejournal.com]

Sorry?

Re: I agree with you, but...

[pauln.livejournal.com]

Apologies - I've commented on the wrong post. This should have been under your comment on your own post that you were in a constituency which was a tight fight with the Tory challenging a LibDem incumbent. I was wondering if it was S&C and implicitly noting that Barking would be a better place for that particular Tory to be standing.

Re: I agree with you, but...

[caffeine-fairy.livejournal.com]

Oh, right. Nope, we're Wallington something or another.

Re: I agree with you, but...

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

I assume that the implication is that having found one nutter, they are all nutters?

Re: I agree with you, but...

[pauln.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't dare imply that. After all, we've got Lembit.

Re: I agree with you, but...

[w00hoo.livejournal.com]

That was my thought, I started reading and thought, 'ah, but I'll be doing tactical voting for the Lib Dems' then found out it was OK really :-)

Another ultra safe Tory seat here, although I have to wonder if they'll take a hit from the National Front candidate standing too (now there is truly scary.)

[ladkyis.livejournal.com]

Our present labour MP is a fairly good one with regard to being in the house and voting and he remains on the back benches where he can remain a thorn in the side of his leadership.
I will vote, I have not missed a vote since I was 20 (they waited until I was past 18 before they lowered the voting age) MY grandmother supported the suffragettes and she never missed casting her vote from the time it was legal for her to do so. Women died to give me the right to vote - men died to give every man a vote. The least we can do is honour their courage by using that right whenever the opportunity arises

~Climbes down off the soap-box~

[ladkyis.livejournal.com]

Of course it is emotional blackmail! that's what we humans do best. Mothers are top of the list at being able to do this and with my ethnic background I should be able to corner the market. Making others feel guilty is what it is all about - control!
Seriously my grandmother was active in the Suffrage movement and she dinned into me the importance of using my vote. She always had a sneaking suspicion that the vote for women was not freehold and the lease would end one day.
So succomb to the guilt trip and go out and vote - don't EVER say that not voting is a protest Oh I'll go and write this in my own LJ...