08 June 2009

A dour Monday morning

With more than 90% of the results in, I'm ashamed to have woken this morning into a country which has elected two BNP members to the European Parliament.

Only 35% of us bothered to vote. The BNP got 6.5% of those. Either of those percentages is enough to generate what TTMF dubs "a dour mood". (Updated final figures, Tuesday 9th June: 34.5% and 6.2% respectively.)

2 comments:

acerone said...

Sadly, today i heard a friend justifying not voting by wanting to 'make a statement to the politicians - they are all crooks!' Whilst i fully understand the frustrations people feel at the moment towards politicians in general, i couldn't accept that not voting would make any sort of statement at all - quite the opposite.
But not wanting to cause any bother, i kept quiet, but felt annoyed...

Felix Grant said...

AcerOne: in my view, you're absolutely right.

Philosphically, I'm an anarchist; but in practice I could never agree with all those fellow anarchists in my twenties whose slogan was "don't vote: it only encourages them".

If we don't vote, we are directly responsible for what happens as a result of others' voting.