I met some local political activists in Reading town center on my way to catch a train to work. There were three or four Tories and one Lib Dem handing out flyers. Since one of the former four decided to approach me with a piece of paper, I decided to take one from the Lib Dem instead – and then turned and told the Conversatives: “I hope you lose, I hope he wins, and I hope you have a bad day [of campaigning]“.
Who am I going to vote for? In an ideal world, I’d vote for something more radical – like the Green Party (but at this time, I don’t know enough about their policies and don’t want to deviate much more from the mainstream so as to add myself to the statistic of protest voters) – but this time around it’s likely to be the Liberals. I can’t in good conscience vote in Tony Blair, since he seems to support the George Bush school of politics – first a war in Iraq, then privacy invading legislation such as the current ID Cards bill before parliament (actually, they already introduced really evil privacy invading stuff long before that).
No, there’s virtually no risk of the Conservatives getting in to power in my local constituency and so I’ll send Tony my protest vote in disgust against a slew of bad policy decisions. Unfortunately, enough people buy the drivel fed to them by the other parties that my vote won’t count for anything, but maybe I’ll feel just a little bit better with myself for having had my say on Thursday.
That’s it. Now let’s think about issues that really matter. The election’s only a diversion from the current problems which need fixing. No matter who wins on Thursday, there are far too many legislatory idiots who feel a need to regulate every aspect of our lives – just you wait until the new session opens in the commons.
Jon.