The Full Entry
Election Fever
Published Thursday, May 5th, 2005 by Charlotte Cairns
After weeks of being bombarded with election news, the day has finally arrived. The good, and for that matter the not-so good, citizens of Ely must walk to a random church or village hall and make their choice. Or at least that is what you should be doing.
As a young-ish person I am constantly being labelled as ‘apathetic.’ Allegations of a lack of political consciousness are thrown about like the chip shop papers from which I apparently eat at bus stations late at night.
Whilst I have to agree that apathy does affect some younger people when it comes to voting, the same can be said for a percentage of any group of electorates. Yet we need to care who is representing us, our needs, our wants, our fears. We have a duty to play the part in our democracy of choosing who runs it.
Many people forget what a power this is; we can decide who makes the decisions that affect our lives.
I recently saw an ingenious political party broadcast by the Liberal Democrats showing a young boy who looked a little like Mr Blair crying that there was a wolf in a forest. His argument ran along the lines that sheep were in there, and wolves wear cheeps clothing, thus a wolf was also present. The townspeople looked and looked but found no wolf. And nobody trusted anything he ever said ever again.
Casting your vote wisely tonight is a moral obligation, not something to occupy the time until something else comes along.
Remember this: if Oliver Cromwell’s House is turned into a gentleman’s club, you should have voted.
2 Comments so far (Leave a comment)
Leave a comment
Comment notes
Keep comments relevant. Inappropriate or offensive comments may be edited and/or deleted.
Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br/>.
Create links using the <a href="http://urlhere"></a>.
The following HTML elements may also be used: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong> . All other code will get removed before posting.
At 7:42 pm on May 7th, 2005, Martin wrote:
I voted on Thursday night. Two questions came up for me:
1) Why were there no Green candidates?
2) Why no Labour candidates for the County elections?
All very odd. I guess you could put number 1 down to lack of resources, but number 2? What is going on here?
Love the website!
At 11:20 am on May 8th, 2005, Karl Bedingfield wrote:
I was very surprised by the lack of canvassing!
I only had the Lib Dem’s knock on my door and post flyers. Nothing at all from the Conservatives or Labour.
I think the result is what many people wanted – a reduced majority.