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Anyone remember the nineties?
I was coming out of my teens and starting to have an idea of who I was and what I wanted from life.
The dying end of the 80s and emergence of the nineties saw so many incredible things happen, world changing events.
Apartheid ended, the Berlin Wall came down, communism collapsed in Russia, manned space stations, an end to what seemed like 20 years of Tory rule, Britpop was in full swing.
The economy was vibrant, unemployment was the lowest it had been since anyone could remember.
Labour won in a landslide and people partied, pop stars made it cool to be into politics, No Logo set fire to the imaginations of millions of people fed up with seeing us marketed and sold to like cattle.
Things were changing, looking good.
And then we hit 2000.
Anyone else here was stupid enough to believe we lay on the brink of a revolution in our development?
The 90s were glorious years, anything seemed possible. Hell, we even won a load of medals at the Commonwealth games and Olympics.
It was the dawn of the new century, people partied like you wouldn’t believe, a jubilant mood. Even had a fireworks display in London instead of the miserable “don’t go near Trafalgar Square” orders.
America was enjoying it’s most vibrant period since the end of WW2, with a President who’s biggest scandal was whether he had slept with his intern or not. This was a guy more interested in shagging, playing his saxaphone and admitting he smoked dope at college, and America was booming.
Then came 2000.
And it started to turn bad. Bush was elected in a mire of scandal and doubt, Blair started to believe his own press clippings and decided he wasn’t accountable.
Within 2 months of Bush being elected, they almost came to war with China over a downed spy plane and the holding of pilots. Remember that? The cynics pointed out that Bush’s popularity soared, which made people forget about the dubious circumstances surrounding the uncertainty of his election victory, with the deciding county being in control of his brother Jeb - a man with known criminal and drug lord cartel connections, and under investigation for several shady property deals in Florida with a former Cuban businessman, currently serving 20 years for drug smuggling.
Then came the World Trade Center attacks, a horrific and despicable attack against innocent people - no matter what your feelings towards US foreign policy, the people that died were you and me, just at work that day.
And that signalled the rapid descent into the Orwellian nightmare we dwell in today.
America is in the grip of recession, spending billions of dollars per week to keep troops in Iraq.
We went to war without international sanction or support, on what is being shown to be at best erroneous, at worst deliberately fabricated evidence.
There has been a regime change…except there’s no change, it’s still interim confusion. Baghdad is still without power, water or basic human sanitary conditions. Troops are being killed daily and this week saw the attack on the UN headquarters, again targeting innocent people just doing their jobs.
We have civil war in Afghanistan, over 90 people killed on Tuesday in rioting.
There is genocide in Rwanda and Zimbabwe and Achen and East Timoor and Indonesia.
Pakistan and India are a few arguments away from nuking each other, Palastine and Isreal engage in petty retaliation murders daily.
This country is sinking in a morass of sleaze, lies, deceit and shadowy unselected officials dictating the grounds for war, an innocent man apparently committed suicide because hi conscience caused him to speak out against what he felt was wrong.
What the hell is going on?
How did we fall so spectacularly from the hope of the nineties? Where did we decide to kill each other, fear foreigners, neglect our kids and expect television to raise them inbetween shouting at them for misbehaving?
How is it that George W Bush, a bigoted fundamentalist of limited intelligence is suddenly the most powerful man on the planet? Did everyone forget the damage his war hawk father did? The former CIA chief turned advisor to Shrubby’s cabinet?
A cabinet made up of former and current oil company CEOs that decide to reverse Clinton’s capping of funding to the military-industrial complex and a restarting of the Star Wars defence programme?
Clinton said “We don’t need these weapons, we don’t need to spend billions on missiles, there’s nobody left to fight. Let’s concentrate on building America”.
But 3 months before the election, Republicans suddenly dig out Paula Jones and the whole Whitewater scandal that ended up as nothing.
Clinton leaves under a cloud of distrust, in steps Bush and suddenly we’re right back to the mid-eighties with war funding outweighing domestic spend, encroaching recession and everyone terrified of each other.
We have, as a planet, reverted back to arcane, hateful little me-monkeys. Locked inside our homes, comforted by the banal glow of reality tv shows, celebrity hairdressers and daytime talk shows that make sure they don’t stray into anything too mentally taxing.
We are fed a diet of fear, propaganda, bigotry and intolerance via our newspapers. You don’t even have to go out, it comes to your door.
And those that take a step back and say “Wait a second” are labelled as traitors, new-age hippies and “wannabe liberals”.
If we are not presented with tanks protecting our airports from an un-named threat from a country that has never acted aggressively towards The West then we are kept scared by reports of violent, organised criminals in the shape of immigrants. Headlines even stoop so stupidly low as to talk of eating donkeys.
Take a step back and think about how utterly retarded we are as a nation to consider eating donkeys as an indicator of these evil foreigners.
You are being kept isolated from your neighbours. You are being kept stupid with programmes about nothing and magazines devoted to the lives of these ciphers.
You are told that your government knows best and to leave it to them. Every wondered why despite massive rises in the budget every year, alcohol only rises minimally if at all?
Because if you make booze cheap enough, people will get smashed in these times of recession, job losses, frightening immigrants, terrorists, child snatchers and killer farmers with shotguns.
If the papers are to be believed, this evening you will be raped and eaten if not by 12 evil refugees, then by burglars or Saddam Hussein.
It is easier to keep the population scared and inside peering through their windows than it is to have them questioning and asking if that’s really necessary.
The “Gulf War 2” is a perfect example of this.
Over a million people marched to protest, saying there were no WOMD in Iraq, pointing out that there has never been an act of terrorism towards this country by any group other than The IRA so why go to war?
Regime change? Wasn’t the reason we were told we needed to. But it became the reason when no traces could be found of these WOMD we were all told could be launched within 45 mins.
Blair has gone from talking about WOMD to “programmes of WOMD”, a subtle shift in language that’s hardly noticeable.
But what galls me is our meek acceptance of this climate of fear and hatred towards each other.
Simon Cowell, Pop Idol’s “Mr Nasty” and Ann Robinson.
2 people that have made a career out of being vicious and nasty to people like you and me. We celebrate and reward sneering disdain as if it were a virtue.
What kind of a world is this we have created and revel in? We idolise and make celebrities out of humiliating and belittling each other? Since when was that to be lusted after?
You want a reason why this world is screwed? It’s everywhere, and most of our problems are caused by us.
Bin Laden, the man responsible for the WTC attacks. Trained by the USA. The CIA selected him when he was studying over here. We funded him, armed him and gave him the capabilities to wreak havoc against Russia when it tried to invade Afghanistan. The CIA deliberately chose the most fundamentalist, hardline religious maniacs they could and let them loose to prevent those evil commies from gaining a foothold in the oil region. Then they left him to do what the hell he wanted to. The Taliban didn’t just spring up in 2001, it had been operating with consent since the early eighties, and they were left to control the poppy fields. Because poppy fields equal heroin and opium.
Saddam Hussein? Same story. Picked, funded, trained and set loose by us to combat The Ayotallah Kohemi, who overthrew the CIA installed Shah, who came to power in 1953 in a coup organised by the CIA and MI5.
It’s all smoke and mirrors, and we swallow it.
We follow the lives of a footballer and a failed pop singer as if this is something to aspire to, meanwhile inner-city schools are becoming war zones. We lap up the mundane and celebrate the mediocre because it is rammed down our throats to keep us numb and stupid.
Don’t bother reading up on how many Middle Eastern governments we have toppled to keep that area destabilised. Instead, buy cheap beer and keep yourself stupefied and scared of immigrants.
And nobody is allowed to stand up and make a difference.
Because those that do are killed.
JFK? Murdered. He wanted an end to the Vietnam war and fought to give blacks the right to vote. He helped empower an entire underclass who were basically living in slavery. Blacks didn’t get the right to vote in America until the late 1960s. We’re not talking 200 years ago. He prevented the CIA planned invasion and coup of Cuba, resulting in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Bobby Kennedy who vowed to carry on that work? Murdered.
Huey Newton? Murdered. He told blacks they didn’t have to tolerate being beaten, murdered, denied basic human rights and he was killed. The Black Panthers rise to prominence neatly coincides with the arrival of heroin and crack into inner city ghettos targeting who? Black angry youths.
Ghandi? Murdered. He united a country against British tyrannical rule. He advocated non-violent protest and over threw the largest empire since The Romans. But he died, and India & Pakistan have warred ever since.
Martin Luther King? Murdered. For suggesting blacks weren’t animals and had the right to sit where they wanted on a bus.
Malcolm X? Murdered. For the same reasons.
Archibishop Romero in El Salvador? Murdered.
Anyone that tries to say “It’s ok, don’t be afraid. There’s no need to live like this, you don’t have to fear the person next to you” is killed.
It doesn’t pay to have your citizens thinking and questioning, because once they do then they will see through your sham governments, your lies, your big business destroying what future we have.
It’s far better to keep us all in our homes, watching purile tv shows about nothing, drinking beer and not education our children about these things.
And it’s continuing to this day, all around you. Look in today’s papers.
War, terrorism, immigrants, no job security, roaming gangs of violent murderous gangs of youths, hateful Arabs, intolerant Europeans.
There’s no need for this to continue. Over a million people marched to protest the Iraq invasion. It wasn’t supposed to change anything, it was supposed to show those that want you scared and isolated that there are people unwilling to surrender to this climate of terror and mistrust.
I refuse to believe that there is no hope left for you and me, I cannot stop demanding you write to politicians, that you don’t watch trivial tv shows, that you don’t believe every immigrant wants to steal your car and rape your parents.
If you stop trying, if you surrender and give in to those that want you to be afraid and suspicious then we have no chance at all.
Be it donating to charity, stopping someone bullying in the street, refusing to listen to racists at work…even the smallest, most insignificant thing matters.
Ghandi changed the world because he was thrown off a train, he wrote a letter of protest and ended up overthrowing an empire.
You can do something, you just have to want to.
I was coming out of my teens and starting to have an idea of who I was and what I wanted from life.
The dying end of the 80s and emergence of the nineties saw so many incredible things happen, world changing events.
Apartheid ended, the Berlin Wall came down, communism collapsed in Russia, manned space stations, an end to what seemed like 20 years of Tory rule, Britpop was in full swing.
The economy was vibrant, unemployment was the lowest it had been since anyone could remember.
Labour won in a landslide and people partied, pop stars made it cool to be into politics, No Logo set fire to the imaginations of millions of people fed up with seeing us marketed and sold to like cattle.
Things were changing, looking good.
And then we hit 2000.
Anyone else here was stupid enough to believe we lay on the brink of a revolution in our development?
The 90s were glorious years, anything seemed possible. Hell, we even won a load of medals at the Commonwealth games and Olympics.
It was the dawn of the new century, people partied like you wouldn’t believe, a jubilant mood. Even had a fireworks display in London instead of the miserable “don’t go near Trafalgar Square” orders.
America was enjoying it’s most vibrant period since the end of WW2, with a President who’s biggest scandal was whether he had slept with his intern or not. This was a guy more interested in shagging, playing his saxaphone and admitting he smoked dope at college, and America was booming.
Then came 2000.
And it started to turn bad. Bush was elected in a mire of scandal and doubt, Blair started to believe his own press clippings and decided he wasn’t accountable.
Within 2 months of Bush being elected, they almost came to war with China over a downed spy plane and the holding of pilots. Remember that? The cynics pointed out that Bush’s popularity soared, which made people forget about the dubious circumstances surrounding the uncertainty of his election victory, with the deciding county being in control of his brother Jeb - a man with known criminal and drug lord cartel connections, and under investigation for several shady property deals in Florida with a former Cuban businessman, currently serving 20 years for drug smuggling.
Then came the World Trade Center attacks, a horrific and despicable attack against innocent people - no matter what your feelings towards US foreign policy, the people that died were you and me, just at work that day.
And that signalled the rapid descent into the Orwellian nightmare we dwell in today.
America is in the grip of recession, spending billions of dollars per week to keep troops in Iraq.
We went to war without international sanction or support, on what is being shown to be at best erroneous, at worst deliberately fabricated evidence.
There has been a regime change…except there’s no change, it’s still interim confusion. Baghdad is still without power, water or basic human sanitary conditions. Troops are being killed daily and this week saw the attack on the UN headquarters, again targeting innocent people just doing their jobs.
We have civil war in Afghanistan, over 90 people killed on Tuesday in rioting.
There is genocide in Rwanda and Zimbabwe and Achen and East Timoor and Indonesia.
Pakistan and India are a few arguments away from nuking each other, Palastine and Isreal engage in petty retaliation murders daily.
This country is sinking in a morass of sleaze, lies, deceit and shadowy unselected officials dictating the grounds for war, an innocent man apparently committed suicide because hi conscience caused him to speak out against what he felt was wrong.
What the hell is going on?
How did we fall so spectacularly from the hope of the nineties? Where did we decide to kill each other, fear foreigners, neglect our kids and expect television to raise them inbetween shouting at them for misbehaving?
How is it that George W Bush, a bigoted fundamentalist of limited intelligence is suddenly the most powerful man on the planet? Did everyone forget the damage his war hawk father did? The former CIA chief turned advisor to Shrubby’s cabinet?
A cabinet made up of former and current oil company CEOs that decide to reverse Clinton’s capping of funding to the military-industrial complex and a restarting of the Star Wars defence programme?
Clinton said “We don’t need these weapons, we don’t need to spend billions on missiles, there’s nobody left to fight. Let’s concentrate on building America”.
But 3 months before the election, Republicans suddenly dig out Paula Jones and the whole Whitewater scandal that ended up as nothing.
Clinton leaves under a cloud of distrust, in steps Bush and suddenly we’re right back to the mid-eighties with war funding outweighing domestic spend, encroaching recession and everyone terrified of each other.
We have, as a planet, reverted back to arcane, hateful little me-monkeys. Locked inside our homes, comforted by the banal glow of reality tv shows, celebrity hairdressers and daytime talk shows that make sure they don’t stray into anything too mentally taxing.
We are fed a diet of fear, propaganda, bigotry and intolerance via our newspapers. You don’t even have to go out, it comes to your door.
And those that take a step back and say “Wait a second” are labelled as traitors, new-age hippies and “wannabe liberals”.
If we are not presented with tanks protecting our airports from an un-named threat from a country that has never acted aggressively towards The West then we are kept scared by reports of violent, organised criminals in the shape of immigrants. Headlines even stoop so stupidly low as to talk of eating donkeys.
Take a step back and think about how utterly retarded we are as a nation to consider eating donkeys as an indicator of these evil foreigners.
You are being kept isolated from your neighbours. You are being kept stupid with programmes about nothing and magazines devoted to the lives of these ciphers.
You are told that your government knows best and to leave it to them. Every wondered why despite massive rises in the budget every year, alcohol only rises minimally if at all?
Because if you make booze cheap enough, people will get smashed in these times of recession, job losses, frightening immigrants, terrorists, child snatchers and killer farmers with shotguns.
If the papers are to be believed, this evening you will be raped and eaten if not by 12 evil refugees, then by burglars or Saddam Hussein.
It is easier to keep the population scared and inside peering through their windows than it is to have them questioning and asking if that’s really necessary.
The “Gulf War 2” is a perfect example of this.
Over a million people marched to protest, saying there were no WOMD in Iraq, pointing out that there has never been an act of terrorism towards this country by any group other than The IRA so why go to war?
Regime change? Wasn’t the reason we were told we needed to. But it became the reason when no traces could be found of these WOMD we were all told could be launched within 45 mins.
Blair has gone from talking about WOMD to “programmes of WOMD”, a subtle shift in language that’s hardly noticeable.
But what galls me is our meek acceptance of this climate of fear and hatred towards each other.
Simon Cowell, Pop Idol’s “Mr Nasty” and Ann Robinson.
2 people that have made a career out of being vicious and nasty to people like you and me. We celebrate and reward sneering disdain as if it were a virtue.
What kind of a world is this we have created and revel in? We idolise and make celebrities out of humiliating and belittling each other? Since when was that to be lusted after?
You want a reason why this world is screwed? It’s everywhere, and most of our problems are caused by us.
Bin Laden, the man responsible for the WTC attacks. Trained by the USA. The CIA selected him when he was studying over here. We funded him, armed him and gave him the capabilities to wreak havoc against Russia when it tried to invade Afghanistan. The CIA deliberately chose the most fundamentalist, hardline religious maniacs they could and let them loose to prevent those evil commies from gaining a foothold in the oil region. Then they left him to do what the hell he wanted to. The Taliban didn’t just spring up in 2001, it had been operating with consent since the early eighties, and they were left to control the poppy fields. Because poppy fields equal heroin and opium.
Saddam Hussein? Same story. Picked, funded, trained and set loose by us to combat The Ayotallah Kohemi, who overthrew the CIA installed Shah, who came to power in 1953 in a coup organised by the CIA and MI5.
It’s all smoke and mirrors, and we swallow it.
We follow the lives of a footballer and a failed pop singer as if this is something to aspire to, meanwhile inner-city schools are becoming war zones. We lap up the mundane and celebrate the mediocre because it is rammed down our throats to keep us numb and stupid.
Don’t bother reading up on how many Middle Eastern governments we have toppled to keep that area destabilised. Instead, buy cheap beer and keep yourself stupefied and scared of immigrants.
And nobody is allowed to stand up and make a difference.
Because those that do are killed.
JFK? Murdered. He wanted an end to the Vietnam war and fought to give blacks the right to vote. He helped empower an entire underclass who were basically living in slavery. Blacks didn’t get the right to vote in America until the late 1960s. We’re not talking 200 years ago. He prevented the CIA planned invasion and coup of Cuba, resulting in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Bobby Kennedy who vowed to carry on that work? Murdered.
Huey Newton? Murdered. He told blacks they didn’t have to tolerate being beaten, murdered, denied basic human rights and he was killed. The Black Panthers rise to prominence neatly coincides with the arrival of heroin and crack into inner city ghettos targeting who? Black angry youths.
Ghandi? Murdered. He united a country against British tyrannical rule. He advocated non-violent protest and over threw the largest empire since The Romans. But he died, and India & Pakistan have warred ever since.
Martin Luther King? Murdered. For suggesting blacks weren’t animals and had the right to sit where they wanted on a bus.
Malcolm X? Murdered. For the same reasons.
Archibishop Romero in El Salvador? Murdered.
Anyone that tries to say “It’s ok, don’t be afraid. There’s no need to live like this, you don’t have to fear the person next to you” is killed.
It doesn’t pay to have your citizens thinking and questioning, because once they do then they will see through your sham governments, your lies, your big business destroying what future we have.
It’s far better to keep us all in our homes, watching purile tv shows about nothing, drinking beer and not education our children about these things.
And it’s continuing to this day, all around you. Look in today’s papers.
War, terrorism, immigrants, no job security, roaming gangs of violent murderous gangs of youths, hateful Arabs, intolerant Europeans.
There’s no need for this to continue. Over a million people marched to protest the Iraq invasion. It wasn’t supposed to change anything, it was supposed to show those that want you scared and isolated that there are people unwilling to surrender to this climate of terror and mistrust.
I refuse to believe that there is no hope left for you and me, I cannot stop demanding you write to politicians, that you don’t watch trivial tv shows, that you don’t believe every immigrant wants to steal your car and rape your parents.
If you stop trying, if you surrender and give in to those that want you to be afraid and suspicious then we have no chance at all.
Be it donating to charity, stopping someone bullying in the street, refusing to listen to racists at work…even the smallest, most insignificant thing matters.
Ghandi changed the world because he was thrown off a train, he wrote a letter of protest and ended up overthrowing an empire.
You can do something, you just have to want to.
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Blank wrote:
> You got sent out of class in college? I didn't think that even
> happened...
I've seen people sent out of a University Lecture before, rarely but occasionaly - usually if you turn up late then start making a pile of noise, depends on the lecturer though.
> You got sent out of class in college? I didn't think that even
> happened...
I've seen people sent out of a University Lecture before, rarely but occasionaly - usually if you turn up late then start making a pile of noise, depends on the lecturer though.
In many ways it is 'our' fault for sitting idly by and allowing ourselves as a mass to become embroiled in triviality and mediocrity, but having said that, I honestly believe that power - political/governmental power - attracts the same type of character over and over again - in my view, the worst type: power-hungry, self-obsessed, corrupt men [usually] with flawed intelligence who lack true spiritual/ethical integrity. Men who ultimately see the world as a battleground wherein rivals must be suspressed and stiffled; men who believe there is no higher purpose than the furtherance of their own power; fear-driven men who seek to control their fears by manipulating their "rivals" into weakness. And I can't see or imagine how it will ever be any different.
People who are truly noble [if that's the right word] have no interest in power or manipulation, they just want to harmonize; they just want genuine respect and they want to genuinely respect others. The power-hungry, those who rise to the top of power tree, will and must do anything in order to 'get there', and thus by default will always become mask-wearing hypocrites and hollow-hearted scarecrows doing and saying whatever is necessary to fulfil their political ambitions. Just think what it would take for you to become the Prime Minister of this country or a powerful figure in the British intelligence agency; just think of how much of your integrity you would have to cast inside in order to get into a 'real' position of power.
I'm generalizing a bit, and maybe I'm way off the mark, but this is where I think the majority of self-created problems stem from. And how can it be any different? 'Heaven and Hell and everything in between' - mankind's never-ending fate.
People who are truly noble [if that's the right word] have no interest in power or manipulation, they just want to harmonize; they just want genuine respect and they want to genuinely respect others. The power-hungry, those who rise to the top of power tree, will and must do anything in order to 'get there', and thus by default will always become mask-wearing hypocrites and hollow-hearted scarecrows doing and saying whatever is necessary to fulfil their political ambitions. Just think what it would take for you to become the Prime Minister of this country or a powerful figure in the British intelligence agency; just think of how much of your integrity you would have to cast inside in order to get into a 'real' position of power.
I'm generalizing a bit, and maybe I'm way off the mark, but this is where I think the majority of self-created problems stem from. And how can it be any different? 'Heaven and Hell and everything in between' - mankind's never-ending fate.
You got sent out of class in college? I didn't think that even happened...
As someone once said...
"Ever since the end of 2001, we could solve the world's energy problems if we could just harness the rotational energy coming from Orwell's grave..."
"Ever since the end of 2001, we could solve the world's energy problems if we could just harness the rotational energy coming from Orwell's grave..."
It's a great A-Level to take. But the disadvantage is that teachers (I'm making your standard biased generalisation here) are left-wing in general, whereas I'd class myself as slightly right-wing. Now, wouldn't matter in most subjects, but most important part of this subject is voicing your opinions. Doesn't matter if you've got a teacher who understands difference of opinions, but I had, for half of my lessons, a irrate Northerner who bitterly hated anyone who didn't come from working class Bradford. I got sent out a good few times.
Great subject though.
Great subject though.
I'm wondering about doing Politics (A level or sokme kind of degree) or something like it through open university sometime after I finish at Uni, once I'm into a decent job I'd definitely like to give it a go.
I've spent the last day or so since my sister got her GCSE results trying to persuade her to take Government & Politics AS level. She's got no clue about politics - none of her friends do. I'm only a few years older than her and she treats me as though I'm ancient when I explain newspaper articles to her.
And it's people like her who will be voting come the next election. That's why I try to teach her politics. It's not working, really, but at least she'll know not to vote Labour, and refuses to vote the same as me (Green party). Which is good, I'd like to see her form her own opinion.
Still, she'll die if she votes Labour :)
And it's people like her who will be voting come the next election. That's why I try to teach her politics. It's not working, really, but at least she'll know not to vote Labour, and refuses to vote the same as me (Green party). Which is good, I'd like to see her form her own opinion.
Still, she'll die if she votes Labour :)
i know a lad that is 12, but is under police curfew. and a 14 year old girl.
Sadly my new found semi interest in Politics comes from watching the West Wing, which is undoubtedly not a fair representation of the reality, and American, but if it gets people interested in a subject traditionally viewed as boring then it has to be doing some good doesn't it.
Heh. B5 rocks...
Thing is, we've been quite deliberately encouraged to believe that voting doesn't make a difference, hence many people don't vote. And that was a very deliberate move on the part of the Thatcher governments. Apathy among the 'masses' mean that the few who bother to vote are predominantly party activists and this benefitted them in that it got Major elected. The fact that there is no real choice any more doesn't help matters.
I agree with you and think that more people should vote, but I'd LOVE to start a campaign at the next election to get people to turn up and spoil their ballots. Whomever the government is afterwards, they'll pay a lot more attention to 40% of voters turning up to basically say "You're all cr@p, but I'm willing to vote so if a political party comes along that I like, I WILL vote for them" than they do to 40% staying at home on polling day.
Thing is, we've been quite deliberately encouraged to believe that voting doesn't make a difference, hence many people don't vote. And that was a very deliberate move on the part of the Thatcher governments. Apathy among the 'masses' mean that the few who bother to vote are predominantly party activists and this benefitted them in that it got Major elected. The fact that there is no real choice any more doesn't help matters.
I agree with you and think that more people should vote, but I'd LOVE to start a campaign at the next election to get people to turn up and spoil their ballots. Whomever the government is afterwards, they'll pay a lot more attention to 40% of voters turning up to basically say "You're all cr@p, but I'm willing to vote so if a political party comes along that I like, I WILL vote for them" than they do to 40% staying at home on polling day.
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