voting – is it worth it?
Posted by michael on January 31, 2009
I quite often hear people saying that there is no point voting, either the party they support in their constituency cannot get in or they see all the parties as the same.
But it is worth getting involved and voting for what you want or even voting against what you don’t like!
Your opinion does matter, but not if you are the only person in the world who knows what it is!
And you can influence or even change things by speaking out, writing letters, going to your MP and your local councillors.
Many of the government announcements are attempts to see how people react before they go ahead with legislation. New Labour are scared of people’s reactions – that is why so much stuff is announced quietly or hidden away in some other legislation. For example recently hiding the law changes to allow local councils to charge for recycling and bin collection charges. We are in a democracy (!) but New Labour hide law changes and sneak them in without us knowing.
Another example recently was the vehicle excise duty changes for new cars. They announce changes that most people would have thought were quite reasonable. And then once people had accepted these ideas, they quietly changed the legislation to cover cars up to 10 years old!. What a mess ensued, lots of people lost a lot of money on the value of their cars!
If a government upsets you greatly then vote it out of power as soon as you can. Do the same with your local council. Stand for your local council if you really want to oppose what they are doing.
Join a political party that you feel that you can support. Do what you can to change things. And if the wrong people still get into power then that is democracy in action. As a last straw you can always emigrate!
