On that fateful night, we inadvertently plunged ourselves deep into an incredibly contentious war, signed up to a wild frenzy of securitisation and personal credit availablility that eventually lead us to the current crippling disaster....I’ll stop there....
Old news is no news, so to speak. The Conservative alternative (great song lyric if ever we needed a pro Tory Gazza rap), was frankly pathetic that year any way. If anyone recalls a Tory policy worth writing home about they are better men than I. As far as I recall the only point of note was the Tory smear campaign, of which, they are KINGS.
"Four years of Labour and he still hasn't delivered."
Coupled with a big picture of Tony Blair, pregnant....presumably pregnant with highly animated, WING-ED DE-MONS, dressed as Jack Nicholson's Joker.
On that fateful night I stayed up until the last seat was returned drinking with a friend whom I was and I fear still am a National deficit apart from in political knowledge.
That night I crowed and hawed about how disastrous it would be to return a Labour Government, ( a point I feel vindicated on, but not for any of the ill-educated gobshite I was spouting in those days). The friend in question was incensed by my attitude and comments.
'Silly, Labour voting idiot, blind to their ever declining socialism', I thought in my vacuum of a head.
Not only am I about 90% sure that he actually voted Plaid Cymru that year rendering the venom with which I berated the Blairites an irrelevant base of argument, but I myself did not vote. Truth be told, I didn't even know how.
A 21 year old who:
- Had no doctor due to being too lazy to turn up to register for one
- Had no dentist due to a lazy reliance on the idea that the underfunded NHS wouldn't have space for him...(that same 21yr old is now 29 with no dentist...though I do have teeth still)
- Didn't know how to vote
- Hadn't read a manifesto
- Hadn't thought to look at one
- Had wild and aggressive views all based on conjecture and instinct
That is not a pretty picture. In fact it conjures images of a dirty, pustular, toothless old bigot living in a bin and blaming everyone but himself.
It wasn't that far from the truth.
This year, my 30th year, I did vote, I do have a doctor and I did absorb every piece of electoral intrigue that I could bend my mind around....still no dentist and now having replaced living in a bin, with a bedroom consisting of a dirty old mattress on the floor...and a St George's flag for a curtain.
(The mind bending incidentally was necessary to swerve every tabloid headline, every throw away comment by a politician to deflect from their own lack of answers and assault their opposing number and to duck every hyperbolas brazen lie.)
Having learned so very much, having triumphantly absorbed sufficient information to not feel the need to fly into an anti-Labour rage filled tornado for next to no reason, I promptly went out and voted Tory anyway....because I believe that Labour are bad for us.
That, is well executed democratic right.
Educate oneself, discuss the issues as best you can with those around you...vote for reasons beyond simple self interest.
The election left a sour taste in my mouth though. Sour and bitter, in one horrible badly contrived gobstopper of a mouthful.
Not because of the landslide of confusion, indecision and lack of direction illustrated by the British populations voting habits.
Not because the Tories were comprehensively chosen by England but rejected by our provinces....resulting in no one's choice being accurately represented in parliament....
But because I became aware that my bottom feeding electoral misdemeanors of yesteryear are teetering on worthy of an MBE knighthood in comparison to some of the stupidity that is out there.......wielding the power to vote like gun with the safety off...
Some points of note:
TRANSCRIPT OF CONVERSATION WITH A 25yr OLD GIRL AT WORK:
Girl - Who are you voting for?
Me- Not decided yet, have you made your mind up?
Girl - I did that online who should you vote for thing...apparently I’m a Tory
Me- So you're voting Tory?
Girl - I just want to vote for low taxes
Me - It's probably not the economic environment for that...which taxes?
Girl - Just taxes. I'm just tired of seeing these people walking around stealing benefits.
Me- You can see people de-frauding job seekers allowance schemes? With your eyes?
Girl - Whatever, I just want low taxes and these illegal immigrants are stealing my money.
Me - So what do you think that we should do with them?
Girl - Just stop them
Me- So which party's immigration policy do you agree with?
Girl - don't know what they are.
Me - You seem to be emotive about it, should you look into it as a vote decider?
Girl - I just want lower taxes.
......................
She has a degree, yet she once spent all night in a warehouse waiting to compete in AMERICAN pop Idol, despite not being an American citizen and was surprised and angered when she was turned away like....an illegal immigrant.
We should call 999:
'Hello, emergency services'
'HELP'
'Which service please'
'POLICE'
'What seems to be the problem?'
'She has a vote. What is worse she looks like she might use it.'
'Hold on sir, there's a car on the way, stay in the house and lock all the doors...'
......................
Would it be so much to ask that the polling card came with a questionnaire? Simply asking you to recount some of the key manifesto promises of the main 3 parties? Achieve less than 50% and your vote isn't counted?
.........................
Tension mounted outside polling booths as it became apparent that the country had become so used to pitifully low voting turn outs that it was drowning in the averagely decent turn out that 2010 had to offer.
A sympathy must be offered to many who fell foul of this situation, but to the woman who managed in Sheffield to twice negotiate her way onto camera bleating words of disgust at this abhorrent injustice.....we must offer only a blank gormless stare and possibly some dribble.
She was enraged. She had stood fastidiously in the rain and the cold waiting to cast her democratic sneeze all over Britain and had been denied, denied desipite the hard fight for democractic equality embarked upon by Emily Pankhurst whom suffered so. DAMN YOU SHEFFIELD!
Of course, she did let slip that she'd passed the queue at 18:30 and seen how long it was, so had some dinner (probably cabbage, she looked like she enjoys cabbage). Returned at 20:30 to see that it was still quite long, so waited until 21:30 to joint the queue only to be OBVIOUSLY disappointed.
As I understand queues, if you don't join the queue, you tend never to get to the front.... to check in at the airport one should attend an hour in advance of check in closing, lest you not be allowed on the flight.
In Birmingham however one constituency was being heralded as the heroes of democracy.
Realising the perilous situation the returning officer quickly ushered the populous into the polling booth so that they could not be influenced by the exit poll in the outside world and all could vote, even if it was beyond 10pm.
Apparently no one in Birmingham has a mobile phone. That must explain why no one in Birmingham ever rings me. That and because the only Brummie I know, lives with me.
But it isn't just the pig shit brained British public that is so harrowingly concerning...
...and I’m speaking to NICK CLEGG here. Nick Clegg, who had largely been so impressive in his baptism into the general public eye.....
Don't embark upon your final push for votes, a grueling trek up and down the country, bleating promises and clear easily digestible motivational sound bite, wearing a tie that is in the KEY PRIMARY COLOUR OF AN OPPOSING PARTY.
The public are stupid enough, the tabloids unscrupulous enough, don't arm them further.
It isn't that important really...is it?
Or is the naivety of it tantamount to thinking that Monica Lewinski was ever going to keep schtum once her mouth was no longer full? Or that Hitler wasn't fibbing? Or that Gordon Brown could keep Labour afloat....
Naivety (also nativity actually) is an affliction that we all suffer from on some level, most of us will always look back with 20:20 vision on our terrible choices, ignorant reactions and cringe at our own vehemence in the face of the more knowledgeable....among other such equal denominations of stupidity that we have engaged in. There is thankfully always going to be a glut of those who drown out the noise of our own shameful past with their own ear deafening bollocks, billowing out of their beaming, self satisfied pie holes, screamed into our faces with a giant mega phone loud enough to make us all run for the nearest rabbit warren....
Now that it is all over though and the votes are quite literally in and counted; It does rather look as if the idiots are taking over and that a nation of Nathan Barley's who's only discernable purpose in life seems to be to make us feel better about our own err's, quite simply, are not worth the catharsis.
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