Election Special

So, election day 2007 has dawned.

I have a confession to make. I am a middle aged bloke and I have never ever voted. I make no apology for this, it has always been my personal choice and if you object to this then fuck off and leave me alone. I have long held the view that each candidate and party was as bad as each other and no one was worth voting for. That is of course of the candidates and parties which would ever have a chance of any success, I disregard the independent weirdos.

The background to this is that I was brought up in Motherwell in deepest darkest working class (and I don't mean that in a derogatory way) Lanarkshire and if one of my cats had been put forward as the Labour candidate when I reached the age of 18 then it would have won with a landslide (and probably done a better job, but that's a different point). I assume it's probably the same there now, but it certainly was the case then. There was then no point in voting and no incentive to vote. If I was going to vote Labour, they didn't need my vote, if I was going to vote for someone else they wouldn't win anyway.

My mindset gradually changed when I moved away from Motherwell in the early 1980s. I formed the impression that whichever party were in power they would screw me anyway and I could genuinely see no point in choosing one over another. As an aside, strangely for a while I actually had some sympathy with the Thatcher Conservative government, but I couldn't bring myself to vote for them.

Today is 2007 election day. I think I'm going to vote.

The reason I'm probably going to vote is not because I feel strongly that a particular party should be in power, but rather that I think a particular party shouldn't be.

I haven't decided how to vote yet (although I think I know what I'm probably going to do) but all I want to do is to prevent the Scottish Nationalist Party from gaining any power. They are racist, petty minded, parochial tossers and shouldn't be given the oxygen of publicity. I think it was Billy Connolly who once said "I have only three words to say about Scottish Nationalism, and the last two of those words are Scottish Nationalism"*. I couldn't agree more. They all seem to have that infamous Scottish chip on their shoulders, although in fact to be fair some of them appear to be well balanced individuals with a chip on each shoulder. Some time ago I knew of someone who claimed that they were not anti-English they were pro-Scottish, yet that pro-Scottishness manifested itself as an apparent hatred of England and English people, which really disturbed and distressed me.

So today I will probably break the habit of a lifetime. I don't care which of the other parties gets in, I just need to try to work out the best way of preventing the small minded ones doing so. If I fail and they do get into power and subsequently manage their stated ludicrous and dangerous aim of breaking up the United Kingdom, then I fear I will leave Scotland and live elsewhere. And I don't say that for dramatic effect. I am in fear of the lunatics taking over the asylum.

And that's all leaving aside the issue of the unneeded extra level of government based at the parliament of Disney in Holyrood. Waste of time. Waste of money.

/rant


* the implied first word started with the letter F