Every vote counts

Five years ago, the general apathy of a large swathe of the British public was made very clear when the election results were shown. Something like 15.9 million people didn’t bother voting (35%). As a result, there was no clear government, resulting in a coalition between the Tories and the LibDems. This has not been a good thing. Perhaps if the 15.9 million apathetic people in this country had bothered to vote, we may have had a single government rather than the fractured farce we wound up with.

Funnily enough, I’ve found a website which shows what the government would have looked like if all of the people who didn’t vote in 2010 had voted for the same party. They call it the Apathy Party. And it would have been in power with 438 seats. And yet, a lot of people still think their vote means nothing.

One thing that could have come out of the 2010 elections would have been the addition of an extra box on all voting slips. It would read ‘None of the above’ and would clearly show the country’s dissatisfaction with all the parties. I guess they’re too scared to do it because the None of the Above Party would obviously win.

Anyway, five years later and it’s election time again, so, first thing, I popped down to the Polling Station at the Territorial Army HQ for the painless application of a cross in a box. It took all of five minutes, most of which were taken up with the guy finding me on the electoral roll. I mean, really, how is that so difficult?

Anyway, I didn’t have time to bathe in the glow of self gratification for too long as I had to head off to the Talking Newspaper for the Alton edition.

I was very pleased to see that I had John Evans on my team today. He’s always good value. I also had Margaret (very dry sense of humour without knowing it) and Linda who I’d never had reading for me before and who announced it was going to be her final session. She’d only started in January but does a lot of other volunteer work and is a bit pressed for time. Also, her German is suffering.

Of course, to put it in John’s words, we had a wonderfully anarchic and chaotic time with plenty of laughs and few mistakes. Which was extra good this week because Margaret needed to leave for the opera before we finished. I gave her her own goodbye before the sports report. I also gave Linda a big goodbye seeing as she’ll never grace the ears of our listeners again.

All in all, an excellent Alton edition. And, because I haven’t included any of the recordings for a long time, here’s my sports report.