Sometimes

Do you vote in political elections?

I know that the Suffragettes fought and gave their lives to give me a vote, but I also believe that women have rights to decide whether they can or can’t vote in good conscience.

I dislike our two-party, mud slinging, party before people, political system, and don’t want to support it.

I also know that there are promises and there are finances. The promises are for votes the finances are a realty.

The UK is not a wealthy country. Our systems and services are broken. A combination of Brexit, Covid, and problems created by the Ukraine war, have seen to that. Plus the illegal immigration that our services can’t support. It’s not racism that you won’t get good medical help for example, the NHS is on its knees. We don’t have the tax payers to support the people we have now.

We were on target to one of the strongest economies in the world, we’re slipping down the league table now. unless Labour can do something.

Covid was world-wide. Brexit was a result of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage playing a political game for their own reasons. Johnson was shown clearly to be a game player and liar during Covid.

The Brexit truth was written on the side of a battle bus, the £350m per week was actually £240m after the lifelong 40% discount that Margaret Thatcher won us. We were also the best negotiators in Europe and nearly always got a deal that benefitted us. Oddly they forgot to mention that. A simple oversight I’m sure. 🙄

However, a fraction over 50% believed the lies, and here we are.

That’s when I lost faith in politics but oddly I don’t blame politicians wholesale. I blame the public equally.

We tend to vote based on prejudice. Labour or Conservative. With a few independent minds bucking the trend. We will never deliver a shock by not voting. We have never, as a nation, had the courage to vote Liberal Democrat in my lifetime.

Lord Paddy Ashdown was a truly decent man, an ex SBS Captain and former marine, and he warned us about the two party system. He was right. He also warned us that if you won’t pay for the NHS it won’t survive as a free service. Well hello! He said give him one penny in the pound extra tax and he would ring-fence it for the NHS. People weren’t voting for higher taxes, and as he warned, we’re stealth taxed instead. Petrol is taxed, then 20% VAT is put on top. The tax is taxed again.

We chose to believe politicians we know are lying to us. Famous faces get involved to influence votes. Not including Eddie Izzard who is actually putting a lucrative career on hold to stand as an MP and physically do something. He says it’s his turn to give back.

Many of the public don’t have the real interest to do more than vote for a lifelong belief every 2 or 5 years, they just want someone else to make everything right.

As such I don’t see the point in voting and perpetuating this mess. I’d love a general election where no one turned out and instead flooded social media with:

“If you want us to vote, tell us the truth, keep your word, and never ever say “let me be completely clear (and then waffle, lie, or both) ever again.”

Not just talk

I did try. But I learned when I was in politics that we were up against an intractable and entrenched public incapable of driving true change in case they (insert your fave hate) win.

A public who would abuse and spit on you on the door step, and then come to you and demand that you helped them. Equal aggressively. A public who would threaten your life. That was in the 1990’s. It’s horrendous now.

I created a riot in the District Council when a man who had threatened to kill me demanded that I visit his home. The Council Officers wrote a joke letter saying that I would not visit his home as he threatened my life, I would only see him in the Council offices supported by Council Officers.

You should have seen their faces when I signed it and handed it back. There was stuttering and my fellow councillors screaming “you can’t send that!” I just said “It’s the truth now send it. I will not visit that man nor see him alone.”

I’ll never forget when the Officer walked out still staring at my signature on the letter. There was a group of giggling staff members waiting at the door, he just looked at them and said “She signed it!”

Brilliant moment.

So you see, I did try, I was actually reckoned to be the next Margaret Thatcher. Only partly true, I would have been strong but my husband would have been firmly instructed to verbally throttle any and all suggestions of power going to my head or megalomania.

But as I’m people first and a person of duty, I’d probably have driven myself nuts because I couldn’t help everyone. I certainly could not have taken the games, the insults passing for public duty, or party before people. I fell foul on the local LibDems immediately over that one. And continuously.

I would have sat at PM’s questions, and if the opposition leader launched a diatribe, stood at the end and thanked them for their words. If the Speaker challenged me I would have said that perhaps my honourable colleague could frame it as a question I could answer, but I noted the admonishment.

Fit for purpose?

I left because British Politics is not fit for purpose at any level – including the public. It’s why I rarely vote.

If you want me to join the voting team the public needs to our act together and stop supporting a broken system. Give them a shock. Remind them where the power really lies. You can get rid of your leader – but we can get rid of all of you! Every single one. We don’t vote, you don’t rule.

However, the following rule still applies at the moment:

“If you think as you’ve always thought, you will do what you’ve always done, and you will get what you’ve always got.”

I create change. Politics isn’t a game, it’s our lives. It’s too serious to be entrenched in our thinking and resulting actions.

Mind you, anything has to be better than the giant killers we have now. One day they will be throttling potential leaders at birth.

Will I vote Labour? Who knows. Will I vote? Probably not If I vote? More than likely LibDem. But I’m that confused at the moment it isn’t true.

Sigh.

Deb (in neutral and seeking hope for all, as always)