This is a slight diversion from the usual direction of my blog entries, in that I'm not covering the usual lighthearted self centered stuff that fills the pages of Col Zone, and may be erring on the side of being a bit political in response to recent events here in the UK. It does kind of fit in though, as the whole theme does amuse me, albeit in a deeply ironic fashion.
I was listening to the radio - Radio 5 Live - on the way home from work the other day, when there was a piece about voter apathy in the UK. Apparently there's a whole Government thinktank studying ways in which the electorate can be encouraged to actually turn out and vote. Amongst the new ways of encouraging us to elect more representative representatives, we can anticipate TV Voting (Bid Up Your Candidate perhaps 
), supermarket voting (Tesco's take over another facet of our lives 
), email votes (a definite phishing opportunity for all you spammers) and text voting (Vote Bl@ir ). Whilst all of this is designed to treat the symptoms of the disease, it doesn't go any where towards treating the illness itself.
The problem, dear politicians, is that most us who are eligible to vote, don't actually consider that you are worthy of being voted for. As a government that was elected on a no slease ticket, the Blair administration seems to have forgotten that we voters aren't a bunch of thickie twats like they seem to take us for and can usually tell when someone is being genuine or not.
In the most recent case, Tessa, I'm afraid I don't think you are. "I didn't know what I was signing...?" It just doesn't wash with me I'm afraid. Ignorance isn't an excuse in law - "Really Officer, you tell me that I was driving at 130 mph?" - and nor should it be in politics. Interesting that the ignorance excuse was the same one that Tony himself has used when Cherie was off charging (big bucks as it happens) around the US and buying up housing in Bristol. It seemed to work ok for Tony, so perhaps Tess thought she'd give it a spin? Sorry love, but you can only fool some of the people some of the time.
And don't even get me started on weapons of mass destruction, identity cards, education reform and the war on terror...
Anyhow, if politicians want a bigger turn out, they should spend less time with their snouts in the trough, stop pandering to the US and genuinely represent the views of the British electorate. Then we might actually want to vote for them. Only might though.
