Euro elections, 4th June

[Ludwig]

I'll never vote again. Our votes give "them" a legitimacy they do not deserve (whichever party...) and allows them to make decisions on our behalf without real consultation other than once every four years or so. How many of us voted for the Iraq fiasco?

I see "not voting" as an extension of going off grid.(which I havent admittedly managed ). If nothing else I s'pose it's a passive act of rebellion against a system I do not like.

W

I don't understand this attitude. I will vote in protest rather than not vote at all. I accept that no party is perfect but I also think that some are worse than others.

It's all very well saying you're going politically "off grid", but not voting won't stop you having to live with the consequences of others' votes.

Also, what is it about the system you don't like? If you mean the lack of PR, I'd agree, but if you mean simply the fact that it never gives us a perfect society, I ask, what's the alternative?

[Ludwig]

Nope, there's nothing proscriptive or sinister about my statement. Moralistic, sure, but it's a moral argument. Disengagement from politics leaves you to put up with whatever turns up. Don't imagine that if only enough people disengaged, nothing would. Something always does. And there are worse things in this world than corruption.

The perfect system doesn't exist (democracy being 'the least worst form of government except for all those others which have been tried', that line famously used (but not written) by someone mentioned elsewhere on this thread), nor does power without some degree of corruption. Human beings, yes?

Hear, hear. So rarely does anyone dare to voice this sentiment but it's absolutely right. It is just stupid to demand either a whiter-than-white government, or no government at all. The latter would create a power vacuum that is guaranteed to be filled to the brim with the corrupt.

[Ludwig]

I forget who but someone clever said that each western nation should offer a home to a disposessed by global warming Bangldeshi family for each 10000tons of CO2 that it has emitted. The UK tops the league for per capita CO2 emission to date. Stand by to open the borders as the sea level rises. It's only fair.

I applaud your good intentions Biff but I suspect you're underestimating just how many people will be knocking on our door - not just because of sea level rises, but also because of desertification. I don't think they will be knocking quietly and we will also be struggling to feed our existing population once we food imports (due to oil prices) become prohibitively expensive.

At some point - hopefully many decades hence, but I fear much sooner - there will need to be a die-off of the human race, and no amount of utopian thinking can avoid this fact.

By all means help your neighbour, but don't imagine there'll be any reward for you in it, let alone for the world.

[Ludwig]

50 years old and never voted

Don't worry, someone voted on your behalf.

Nicely put. Not voting for the least bad is effectively a vote for the worst.

[JohnB]

I had a friend who was brought up in the Exclusive Brethren. Apparently they don't vote, or take any part in civil society, but will only live in a country that has a Christian government. If the country they live in doesn't have a Christian government, they move to a country that does. I don't really know how to comment on that attitude without using rather strong language

[PS_RalphW]

My wife used to be married to an (expelled) member of the exclusive brethren.

They will only work for themselves or another member. They will only live in a detached house, or a house attatched to another Brethren house. If a member leaves their entire family cut them off - parents, siblings, sometimes children, as if they never existed.

Their current leader (in Australia) is rumoured to have dubious retalions with young female Brethren, and to cook the books.

They are alive and well in Cambridge

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... s.features

[goslow]

The Exclusive Brethren sect are pretty extreme. They're quite strong in the south west where I used to live. I had not heard of them only wanting to live where there is a Christian government, their intepretation is probably quite broad if they are sticking around the UK!

[goslow]

Though of course in the euro elections they can now vote for the Christian Party!!!

[JohnB]

The Exclusive Brethren sect are pretty extreme. They're quite strong in the south west where I used to live. I had not heard of them only wanting to live where there is a Christian government, their intepretation is probably quite broad if they are sticking around the UK!

I read it on a web site about them that seemed pretty believable, but don't know where now.

[caspian]

50 years old and never voted

Don't worry, someone voted on your behalf.

Nicely put. Not voting for the least bad is effectively a vote for the worst.

It's nothing of the sort. What if you don't believe in democracy as a tool to change society for the better? (Or at least our bizarrely undemocratic version of democracy.) Should you participate in a system that you believe is corrupt and useless? If so, why?

Like many people, I used to be an enthusiastic voter but now I realise that nothing will really change for the better under the present system. The differences between the parties on all of the really important issues are marginal. Even the Greens have been fairly ambivalent about peak oil.

[Ludwig]

Don't worry, someone voted on your behalf.

Nicely put. Not voting for the least bad is effectively a vote for the worst.

It's nothing of the sort. What if you don't believe in democracy as a tool to change society for the better? (Or at least our bizarrely undemocratic version of democracy.) Should you participate in a system that you believe is corrupt and useless? If so, why?

You participate in the system whether you like it or not, unless you're living self-sufficiently on a Scottish island. You have to live with the consequences of how other people vote.

To say our system is corrupt and useless is just facile. What does that make the system in Zimbabwe? Why does everything have to be absolute in your world? I.e. if the system doesn't work absolutely perfectly, it should be abolished (in favour of what, I'm not entirely clear).

To take an example of what I meant: if, in my constituency, there was a close two-party contest between the Tories and the BNP, I would vote Tory, because though I don't believe in much of what they stand for, I do believe in some such things, like parliamentary democracy and not stoking up irrational hatred of foreigners.

Your argument seems to be that our system couldn't possibly be worse, in which case you really should learn about what goes on in most of the developing world, or Russia, or Italy, or indeed America.

Yes I think we're more stuffed than most by PO, yes our economy was mismanaged, but the whole point of democracy is that when our politicians f*** up they can be brought to task.

Clearly totalitarianism has the advantage that the Government doesn't have to be answerable to the myopic, self-interested demands of the people, but surely you can see that non-answerability makes corruption among politicians worse, not better.

[biffvernon]

I notice that there are quite a few parties fielding candidates. In my constituency, East Midlands, we have Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Green, BNP, NO2EU, Jury Team, Christian Party - Christian Peoples Alliance, Socialist Labour Party, United Kingdom First, English Democrat and Libertas.

So with the extreme right split half a dozen ways and nobody voting for the big three because of bath plugs and moats it looks like 5 out of 5 MEPs to the Greens

[DominicJ]

Biff, most of those parties are left,

IE big state supporters.

[biffvernon]

Maybe left of where you are but they are long way to the right of me.

[marknorthfield]

It's nothing of the sort. What if you don't believe in democracy as a tool to change society for the better? (Or at least our bizarrely undemocratic version of democracy.) Should you participate in a system that you believe is corrupt and useless? If so, why?

Like many people, I used to be an enthusiastic voter but now I realise that nothing will really change for the better under the present system. The differences between the parties on all of the really important issues are marginal. Even the Greens have been fairly ambivalent about peak oil.

There are two main problems as I see it. One you highlighted in brackets in your first paragraph and is certainly true as far as first past the post is concerned. That needs to change; the sooner the better. It doesn't affect the Euro election though (whatever you may happen to think about the EU parliament as an institution).

Beyond that, you only refer to 'the system'. Even if this was substantiated by an actual argument, I think it is the wrong target. The problem is us as human beings: we are the system. We (the electorate generally) imagine that by not paying attention or getting too involved things will just tick along and we can all get on with our lives comfortably. I come back to my statement 'if you don't vote then you're guaranteed to get the representatives you deserve'. I could add that if you don't research the parties/candidates on offer properly then you may as well not bother.

But voting isn't the endgame of democratic participation, it's the start. You may feel that because you voted and nothing changed, nothing will ever change. How about if enough people who felt that way got involved with a party, or started their own? What then? Or campaigned for electoral reform by some other means? Change happens because people make it happen. How will anything ever change by non-participation? That's such a depressingly easy option.

If you think the Green Party are ambivalent about Peak Oil or have policies of marginal difference to any other, then you really need to take a closer look at their EU manifesto. You'll find Peak Oil highlighted very clearly and concisely on page 6. And which other party would state: 'We don’t want to restore growth-as-usual'.

Well?