Thursday 6 May 2010

Voting in the UK Elections


I stopped off on my way home from work to vote today.

Strangely there has been nothing political on the TV or the Radio all day (bliss). Someone told me that they are not allowed to on the actual day of the election, I can't think why, but it didn't seem to include the papers because they were pulling out all the stops.

If i'm honest it just got up my nose. I hate someone telling me what to do and especially in such a sledgehammer way. Give me the details and let me decide. According to the Murdoch press if i don't vote Conservative the world will end on Friday morning and we will have riots in the street, But they told us all to vote Labour last time so what do they know?.
The Daily Mirror (A proper Labour paper) think i should avoid David Cameron because he's a posh knob, but they would do wouldn't they ? and i'm sick of the class thing being thrown around at times like this.
No one supports The Liberals, or at least i've not seen any paper that does, and anyway a vote for them is supposed to be a waste.

So all in all it's hardly a surprise that they are predicting a hung parliament where no one wins and we all end up doing it again in a few months time. That's probably why i heard someone leave the polling station saying "see you again soon"

Anyway i walked into the hall where throngs of people could flex their voting muscles. The place was empty, no one around except three blokes sat behind a trestle table with bits of paper. Me appearing out of nowhere made them sit up like a dog suddenly realising their owner has just come home.
There are two ballot sheets. The Main General Election and the Local Government elections which are being held at the same time.

They couldn't find my Local Election Ballot paper for a while and more or less shit themselves with worry.
It eventually appeared stuck to someone else's and you could see the relief on their faces as they apologised for what seemed like the three hundredth time.

The private cubical that people use to vote in was actually quite dark and i had to step out of it again to read the bloody thing. I wondered why i was putting my X to paper with what looked like a pencil not a pen and imagined someone with a rubber and a proper pen fishing the papers back out of the box again when i left and fiddling them.

I cheated, i didn't actually vote for a person i voted for a party. I looked down the list and found the one i wanted and stuck an X next to it. Thinking about it afterwards i'm not really sure whether it was for a man or a woman, how bad is that ?.

All that time spent trying to find out who i should vote for and the one thing i didn't do was find out who the bloody candidate is.
Still, it's done now.

The one thing i am looking forward to is the end to this intro (below) to a serious late night political TV show on BBC One.
Every time it appears i cringe with embarrassment. I consider it the most horrendous, buttock clenching, watch from behind the sofa, introduction to a political review show.....EVER !!!.
And they say the electorate isn't taking this election serious enough.

8 comments:

drew said...

well you did it. I think as you age politics will be more and more important. Many your age don't vote in the US so you should be congratulated for giving it a go.. alright who the hell did you vote for????

Anonymous said...

That is the way my nipper voted too but at least he knew who the candidate was.

I always watch This Week and can only conclude that some one must have found some old acid when they made that intro.

Well we have the hung parliament we'll have to wait and see what happens now, it could be interesting.

Glorfindel said...

I love your election story. I voted after breakfast but before going to work. It was quite crowded actually, but still pretty quick. I can't believe all these people who left it until the last minute and ended up being shut out. What did they expect?

Jason Shaw said...

I guess now, it didn't matter who we voted for, they are gonna make it up themselves!

But I wished they had a different name for it when there was no overall control. I got so excited when I heard it was going to be hung - then all hopes dashed!

Hugs

naturgesetz said...

That intro video is amazingly stupid. I have just lost all respect for and confidence in the once reliable Beeb.

drew said...

Well, did it kill you to vote?? Hope things are OK. Haven't heard from you??

Joe said...

Mambam, I hope you are doing okay. I've been missing reading your posts. Hopefully, you've just gotten busy and not been able to post and that nothing is wrong. Wishing you the best.

Anonymous said...

Hey Michael,

Hope you are well and all is O.K.