In the wake of the elections in this country last week and the news that the United Kingdom will be sending two MEPs to Europe on our behalf from the British National Party, I am thinking two thoughts.
Firstly, I am reminded of a (slightly Real Ale fuelled) conversation with a clergy colleague of mine who was so disgusted with the entire political system that he had chosen not to vote in the election at all.
Secondly, I noted today that the BNP won two seats in these elections even though they had fewer votes than they did in 2004. Sounds odd doesn’t it? The reason being that the European elections work on a kind of proportional representation system and because only 34% of people used their vote this time around, overall the BNP had a higher percentage of the vote and so they claimed two seats.
So, basically, a big reason why the BNP now have two MEPs is because a whole bunch of people, two thirds of those who are eligible to vote, did not do so.
Edmund Burke, an Irish politician of the 18th Century (1729-1797), once famously said:
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
We took our pre-school age children to the voting polls last week. We explained to them how important it is that we use the vote that we have been given. We explained to them how some people in the world don’t get a vote and how bad that is. We explained to them how some people had fought hard to win the vote, including (for our little girl) the right of women to vote. Seems like many people, including some of my clergy colleagues, could do with going back to pre-school too.
3 Comments
well said mate
so flipping annoys me when people can’t be bothered to vote or choose to protest by not voting
I’ve just signed up to the ‘Not in My Name’ campaign here
http://action.hopenothate.org.uk/page/s/notinmyname
to be delivered to the European parliament
absolutely david – i too felt fairly demotivated by all the rubbish that has been going on of late in our political system, however emily wilding davison gave her life so i could have a voice and so whilst we’re talking about doing things in people’s names: i vote in hers, even when the choice is pretty dire
(ps i voted for the greens – not you by any chance?
That is a powerful quote – I came across it during my A-levels.
I voted by post and it was bloomin’ easy. I think people should be made more aware of the postal vote.
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