Blog On The Motorway

Don’t worry, I will be returning to conclude the tales of Amsterdam in due course, but I just wanted to say a quick word about the fact that the UK election is due to be officially announced tomorrow, and will in all probability be held a scant month away on the 6th May.  Now I fully understand that to most people this will result in little more than a rolling of eyes and mutterings of ‘who cares’ but not for me.  For me it is a time of unbridled joy and geekery.  My apologies to Ellen in advance, I may be a little insufferable for the next month or so.

As old fashioned a notion as it is, I am a firm believer that there is nothing more vitally important in our roles as citizens than than that we fulfill this obligation.  In an age when there is a general rise in extremist views, and when the populist bear-bating of groups like the Sun and the Mail is at the most vociferous it has been in decades, it is the duty of every person out there to register what they think.  It is not the impact that your vote that should concern you, but rather the fact that your voice is yours, and that it should be counted.  Your voice alone can change nothing, but taken together with a thousand like minded people the impact of your voice can be real. If everyone who didn’t vote as a course of habit were to take the time to do so then the political landscape we see around us would be vastly different.  One need only look at the fact that my local area now has a BNP MEP, simply because 1000 or so people didn’t turn up on the night to see what a difference a vote makes.

This is especially true for women.  At a time when there are still women around the planet dying for the right to be able to vote, and in memory of all those great feminists who gave their lives to make sure that women and men are equal in the eyes of the law in this country, it seems absurd to me that there are women out there who would betray that by not bothering to show up to vote.  It’s simply not good enough for anyone to say that there’s no point, or that they didn’t know who to vote for.  We have to engage in the process to get something out of it.  If you don’t know who to vote for then look into it, find out more about your local candidate, ask them questions.  Watch the debates, make a choice.

As for me, my choice will be the same as it has been since I first voted back in 1997.  I will be voting for the Lib Dems, and the reasons I will be doing so are multitude.  Firstly, I think there is a real chance that the next government will be a hung parliament, which for the first time will give the Lib Dems the chance to wield real power.  As for the specifics of why I am voting Lib Dem, it’s because I actually agree with about 90% of their platform of ideas. I also thinks that Vince Cable is a Godlike genius.  Also, if you ever see an MP with a sense of humour, the chances are they’re a Lib Dem, and I inherently don’t trust people without a sense of humour.  I agree with their education plans, and their plan to pay down a huge chunk of the debt by scrapping Trident.  I think theirs is the party of Secular wisdom.  (I read a fascinating article about the parties and their approaches to secularism and science on the New Humanist website the other day.  Go read if you haven’t yet made up your mind)  And on other issues, such as the Digital Britain bill, ID cards, faith schools, they are the only party who to my mind fall on the rights side of all of these debates.

That’s not to say they are perfect, or match my views on every subject.  But I agree with most of what they say, and that’s good enough for me.  I actually don’t mind Labour, I think they have been (illegal wars aside) a pretty good government.  But watching Gordon Brown is like watching the end of the Godzilla remake with Mathew Broderick, when the army are taking so many pot shots at the creature that you start to feel sorry for it.  And that’s not really where you want your leaders to be governing from.  As for the Tories, well, if I wanted to be led into the future by an emotionless cyborg hell bent on the destruction of mankind, I’d vote for the Terminator.

Anyway, none of this is meant to be me telling you what to do (apart from the bit where I tell you to vote) but as a politics geek, the next month represents a golden opportunity for me to indulge one of my more worthwhile interests.  I may even take the day off after the election itself, so that I can geek out properly, maybe have an election party.  It’s going to be a fascinating month.  The polls show that despite a Conservative government being the most likely outcome that this is far from a certainty.  We all have the chance to shape the government that will decide how we face up to the deficit, to global warming, to a thousand other issues that will impact on Rosie’s generation.  Surely that can only be a good thing?

On a separate note, the new Doctor was a bit good, wasn’t he? To be honest I was starting to get a bit hacked off with Tennant, he was become irritating.  So yes, good first episode for the new Doctor, let’s hope he can keep it up.