Hmm...

I am pleased to find that the omnipresent Graham Norton, whatever his other talents, is no radio show host. Certainly not a breakfast DJ at any rate.

Hmm...

I am pleased to find that the omnipresent Graham Norton, whatever his other talents, is no radio show host. Certainly not a breakfast DJ at any rate.

A short intro and then back on the soapbox.

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.

A short intro and then back on the soapbox.

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.