Notes from the Underground

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I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it.

All of the ephemera that is far too trivial to be bothered with elsewhere on this site or, depending on your point of view, a meta-commentary on it. This ephemera includes, but is not limited to art, music and literature. Most of the content here will be discussed in terms that are as abstract as possible, reality being a singularly overrated concept.

Friday, June 04, 2004

 
I have to say that going to vote today was the most dispiriting of all the occasions when I have gone to make my mark on a ballot paper. The ballot paper for the local elections was essentially what I had seen on previous occasions; the three major parties and the green party. This was therefore a quite small ballot paper with three votes permitted on it. The European election ballot paper was twice as long and had one vote permitted on it. The reason for this difference being the sheer number of present; comprising the far right (British National Party), the nationalist right (UK Independence Party, English Democrat Party), the Religious Right (ProLife, Christian Peoples Alliance) and the far left (Respect). I shall be generous and not include the green party in this list, though it was a narrow decision. Never has Alan Coren's observation that democracy consists of voting for your dictator of choice seemed quite so apt.

This is in many ways an extension of a trend I have noted many times before concerning the matching centripetal and centrifugal tendencies on modern politics; as the three main parties cluster around a single ideological centre (largely in the interest of winning over what were formerly the only sections of the electorate likely to transfer their vote), much of the electorate find they can no longer consider themselves represented and vote for one of the fringe parties accordingly.

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posted by Richard 8:08 pm