The 4th of July is upon us, and thus it is Election Day here in the UK. Whilst the Americans are busy celebrating getting shot of us and going their own way, we are heading to the polls.
Or are we? Because there’s still plenty of people that excuse themselves from this process with the same tired old reasons. We have all heard them, “they’re all the same”, “I don’t understand it all”, “I don’t do politics”, “they never keep their promises” amongst many others. When really, these people just cannot be bothered and would rather leave the important decisions to someone else. If only we could all live like that with every major decision hey.
These so called voting age ‘adults’ don’t seem to understand the importance of voting. Maybe a spell in China or Russia would knock that out of them, where there’s a small chance they might just miss it when it has gone. Maybe they’d enjoy it, no pressure. Thankfully we do have a reasonable amount of people who do go out in the general election. Whilst we have a particular Facebook troll spouting that only 30% of people vote in Tamworth, it is in fact around 65% for general elections. That weird breed of people who make up the extra 35% for some reason deciding that elections closer to home that also very much directly affect them are apparently not worth their time. It is a ‘logic’ we shall never understand.
It’s no exaggeration that Hitler rose to power off the back of apathy. He really did. Relatively it was not that long ago either. The world has people like Putin in it today thanks to people not exercising their voices and rights to be free people. To think history could not repeat itself in Europe, especially when you look at what’s currently happening in France is stupidity. There’s thankfully just enough of the population in this country that currently do go out to vote that we are not yet in this situation. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this could change quite easily.
In Australia, voting is compulsory, turnout reaches 95%. Having to force people to go out and vote is backwards in a democracy, though some say we should have that here in the UK. We wouldn’t advocate for that. What it does show though, is that there is in fact no good reason or excuse for not getting to a polling station or filling out a postal vote. If the Aussies can do it then so can we. Our country is meant to be one of the gold standards for democracy. There’s no reason to not understand how it all works either, no-one is expecting our voters to become experts on parliamentary protocol, but you’d think that they had been asked to, to talk to some of them. If you’ve got a boss at work, and you could vote for a new one if you didn’t like them, it’s as simple as that. Even a little knowledge of who you could vote for goes a long way.
Those who don’t go out to vote when given the opportunity to do so should be ashamed of themselves. You’re not too busy or important and you are being selfish to not participate in something that no doubt you would complain bitterly about, should politics inevitably affect your life in some way. Everyone has the opportunity to vote, nothing is ever perfect in our lives, not even our politicians (shock horror), your preferred party might well not get in, but at least you have given a shit about the country you choose to reside in. Get out there and vote.
