The ONLY politics thread in AH

humanji wrote:

Won't be voting myself, due to complete disillusionment in politicians.

So we can take it you won't be giving out about any politicians or the way the country's run until the next election then? Not voting doesn't even give you the right to complain abot being disillusioned about politicians IMO. Vote for the independent who's only going to pick up 100 votes if you have to, at least then you can legitimately complain about not liking the next lot in power.

Binomate wrote:

I'm sorry, but that's absolute bollox. By the same logic, you've no right to complain about the party you vote for.

I fail to see how you can come to that conclusion. If you don't vote you're not taking part in the democratic process, which is your one chance every 5 years to have your opinion mean something. If you don't vote, well then the obvious conclusion is that you don't really care what happens to you or the country, whereas if you at least register a protest vote, and enough others do the same in every constituency, those who do get into power will know just how many people are unimpressed by them and it may encourage them to try a bit harder.

I don't see any reason why you can't complain about who you voted for. If they don't live up to the promises that they made that convinced you to vote for them in the first place, well then they're fair game for a bollocking, and even more so from the people that voted for them.

The whole "disillusioned with politicians" is just another way of saying "I'm too lazy to get up off my arse and find out which politicians/parties represent what's closest to my ideals so I can vote for them, so I'll just stay on the couch on election day".

What difference does that make? If your choice doesn't win, well then obviously you're likely to have issues with the party that does. The fact that you went out and voted against them and tried to stop them getting elected gives you the right to complain about them. If you didn't, well then really you end up with what you* deserve.


*When I say you, please understand that this is not a personal attack, it's a general "you" that includes anyone not planning to vote. It just bugs me when people complain about politicians but aren't prepared to get involved themselves and try to make a difference. You won't always succeed, but you'll never succeed from the couch.

Reading it again, I will admit that maybe I didn't word it the way I meant it. Here's a better way of putting it - it was suggested on the radio the other day (not sure what programme or station, I only caught a minute of it) that politicians ignore areas where nobody votes. The example given was that in a previous election only two people voted from all those living in one particular tower block in Ballymun, an area that was undoubtedly neglected for a long time. Now if all the people in that block had voted that sends out a message to the politicians that there are votes to be won there, and the likelihood is that that area would be looked after better. Other areas with higher voter turnout were given as examples where the constituants were "better looked after" by their representatives. I'm not saying that this is absolute fact, and as I said I only heard a brief part of this so there could have been very valid arguments against that I didn't hear, it just kind of demonstrates what I was getting at, that I believe that writing off all politicians and not bothering to vote makes it easy for politicians to ignore you, and if they do they're certainly not going to care what you want.

I do accept your point about paying tax, but there's a lot more to government than just how they spend your money.