On Wednesday 22nd May, the UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, stepped out into Downing Street in the pouring rain, stood at a lectern that for his height was oversized, and announced that there would be a general election on Thursday 4th July. A fair number of commentators thought that Sunak looked pretty tense when he was making the announcement. There's a view that the optics of the announcement were far from brilliant - I'll comment on that later on in this piece. Meanwhile, on with the actual 'contest', that's if elections are your thing...
Interesting analysis, as always. With regard to the question of abstaining by not showing up to vote at all, or spoiling the ballot paper with NOTA, there’s a sizeable chunk of UK residents of voting age who won’t even have the choice: the roughly 3 million EU citizens with residency in UK. I’m one, so here’s from personal experience: me and my ilk have been totally disenfranchised from the charade that passes for democracy. We are not allowed to vote in UK general elections but neither in the general elections of those countries whose passports we still hold. I’m not allowed to vote here even though I’ve lived here for nearly 40 years, which means I have never in my adult life been able to participate in the charade that passes for “democratic system”. And like I said, there’s about 3 million like that in the UK.
Going to post this video about spoiling the ballot paper here too! The article posted here by HeadAndHeart also makes clear that not voting is in effect a vote for the party that wins. It's a little hard to grasp this but it's true. https://youtu.be/6pvlVE7-Rqs?si=7EJpAArV3QikvbCy
Understood. And yet, here is a different perspective on this, from someone who used to think and say these exact words (if voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal) and avoided voting her entire life, and yet now - after getting into the nitty gritty and seeing clearly how the process actually works - realized that she was wrong and that this saying is actually precisely what the ruling class bastards want us to be thinking and doing (and spend a lot of energy and resources to make sure as few people vote as possible, especially among the most marginalized and disinfrenchised in society). I was quite surprised to read her post and report, she definitely illuminated for me certain things which i wasn't aware of. I think she makes a very persuasive case, and even if one disagrees, i think it's worth at least listening to what she has to say https://miri.substack.com/p/play-the-game-or-the-game-plays-you
Interesting analysis, as always. With regard to the question of abstaining by not showing up to vote at all, or spoiling the ballot paper with NOTA, there’s a sizeable chunk of UK residents of voting age who won’t even have the choice: the roughly 3 million EU citizens with residency in UK. I’m one, so here’s from personal experience: me and my ilk have been totally disenfranchised from the charade that passes for democracy. We are not allowed to vote in UK general elections but neither in the general elections of those countries whose passports we still hold. I’m not allowed to vote here even though I’ve lived here for nearly 40 years, which means I have never in my adult life been able to participate in the charade that passes for “democratic system”. And like I said, there’s about 3 million like that in the UK.
You're not missing out on anything. If you really want to effect change, all you need is money.
Going to post this video about spoiling the ballot paper here too! The article posted here by HeadAndHeart also makes clear that not voting is in effect a vote for the party that wins. It's a little hard to grasp this but it's true. https://youtu.be/6pvlVE7-Rqs?si=7EJpAArV3QikvbCy
Understood. And yet, here is a different perspective on this, from someone who used to think and say these exact words (if voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal) and avoided voting her entire life, and yet now - after getting into the nitty gritty and seeing clearly how the process actually works - realized that she was wrong and that this saying is actually precisely what the ruling class bastards want us to be thinking and doing (and spend a lot of energy and resources to make sure as few people vote as possible, especially among the most marginalized and disinfrenchised in society). I was quite surprised to read her post and report, she definitely illuminated for me certain things which i wasn't aware of. I think she makes a very persuasive case, and even if one disagrees, i think it's worth at least listening to what she has to say https://miri.substack.com/p/play-the-game-or-the-game-plays-you
That's a great article - thanks!
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