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Why Bother?
June 8th, 2009
It’s difficult to know what to say. As I type this I know that the British National Party are celebrating. They have been legitimised by the electorate and have a representative in the European Parliament. I don’t know which side of this bitter, bitter pill tastes worse. The fact that they were able to get together enough support to vote for them, or the fact that only 30.4% of the electorate bothered to vote.
The BBC News website tells us that 12,236,761 people are registered to vote. That seems like a very low number of permanent UK residents over 18 who aren’t incarcerated etc… In fact, I would say that this shows yet another problem – people don’t even bother to register to vote. These people consciously decide not to bother voting. As if that wasn’t bad enough 8,132,859 of those who could be bothered to register couldn’t be bothered to actually go and vote, or fill in a postal vote form. This left the decision to 4,103,902 people.
Taken from news.bbc.co.uk
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Here at home I was, am, and will always be – it seems – the only person bothered to vote. That’s a 25% turnout from our house. It’s a scary figure to work with and I think it’s vital that those of us who do vote find out why people don’t and work together to encourage more participation. I hope beyond hope that the voting in of the far-right BNP will be a wake up call for some of those people who couldn’t be bothered.
I vote for a few reasons. Firstly – it’s my right to vote. The only way that right can be taken from me is if the Government decide to take it. The only way that the Government can decide to take it is if the electorate vote them in. Therefore, if I use my vote, I can stop it from being taken away.
Secondly, I know people who vote for the far-right. I know people who honestly believe that multi-cultural Britain has caused the recession, the idea of “Broken Britain”, violent crime and even more. In fact, the castigation of one subsection of the population and legislation to deal with it has come up in history before. In fact, I never thought I’d agree with a political post by a Conservative, but this post (How the BNP is replicating 1930s Nazi Germany) by Tony Sharp makes some very valid points.
I know that people think that their vote doesn’t matter, that they can’t make a difference, and that the politicians are all the same. That’s not the case. Really, as you can see from these numbers, just 20,000 more people voting Green would have moved the BNP even further down in the North East. And in Yorkshire and the Humber (where the BNP won their seat) they only got 120,139 votes!
Please people, take the wake up call, do you really want the BNP to take over the country just because you couldn’t be bothered to write an X? If you don’t vote, then you might as well have marked the paper yourself, and when the minorities are taken away to “work camps” and extradited (and yes, that’ll include me probably) you can pat yourself on the back. At least you didn’t have to walk to the Polling Station/Post Box.
Still feeling relaxed?
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