Friday, 9 June 2017

DEMOCRACY THE DAY AFTER

One of the things I really like about the day after an election, is that I can visit the BBC Website, look at the exact statistics for my constituency, see the numbers, and remind myself that I am one of them.

"That 7 would be a 6 without me," I smile to myself, looking at the last digit.

Of course, it makes no difference to the outcome - the seat was won by 3,000 votes, but it does give me a small glow of significance, to think that I'm allowed to be part of the process and in some way, I took part.

It didn't use to be like this. To my shame, I didn't vote at all in the 2005 election. I was feeling disillusioned with politics altogether at the time, and I wasn't alone. They seem like calmer times somehow now, when I look back on them, but of course, that is no real excuse.

Neither is it like this in other parts of the world. In some countries, the majority of people who live there have no say at all - they're bent to the whim of dictators, megalomaniacs and corrupt leaders who cannot be removed without bloodshed.

Then in other places, men can vote but women have no voice at all, and are treated simply as property. History never ends well when women are treated as property.

So out here, in this quiet old corner of the world, we file into our polling stations and we decide. Then, in a peculiarly British way, we smile to ourselves as the Prime Minister of the world's sixth largest economy lines up on a stage next to a man wearing a bucket for a helmet, and another who's dressed as Elmo - and it's all okay.

I hope North Korea were watching.

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