Add MediaNow there’s a thing to think about…….
Several times we’ve approached this one and tried to get a fair wind behind the idea of compulsory voting.Yes… I know , many of you out there in Norneverland implied that there is no one worth voting for out there and anyway when you do vote we get the same old boring tosh handed back to us ; the same old unadventurish tribal nonsense is drummed up in one form or another and we end up with the same old two-horse race .That old “them and us” thing again.The “them and us” aren’t even the” haves and the have nots”.
I have to say , I really like the idea of a radical change .I really think that making voting compulsory mught be the only way that we might ever really shake up the moribund system and pump some new radical life into the corpse of political life here.One way or another we’d know for sure where we stood .We’d know exactly the opinion of every breathing citizen and we’d have to like or lump the resulting vote -count. Maybe when everyone got the hang of it and realised that they really had some power, we’d actually see some movement here. This isn’t a new idea , of course.It’s used in other countries and it’s illegal not to use your hard-won vote , enforced as it is by law.That might be the only encouragement anyone really needs . Look what happened when smoking was outlawed indoors.People grumbled as they do , but soon the idea bedded in and now we think little about it. We’re really that easy to train.
I’ll put it like this…How many times have you ever had to do “Jury Duty”? You do know that it is compulsory to do it , don’t you?How many millins of us are living here in Norneverland now? I’ll have to check and see sometime , but I know this much , that in living memory I’ve received that little invitation through my letterbox at least three times so far in my life .It arrives like that unwanted wedding invitation. Too many of those is a sure sign that that you’ve made too many friends in your life or that your extended family are on an out- of- control breeding programme. You know what I mean, the wife will have to begin preparing for the great day at least six months before the date .There’ll be hair-do s and outfits to plan . There will be presents to buy , time booked off work and of course money to be found for the eventual blow-out.
A call for Jury Duty is a bit like that .You might not want to do it , but few are exempt. You simply , by law , have to put your life on hold and spend possibly weeks or months attending court . I still remember on one of those occasions, some two or three of of our good citizens decided not to turn up , only for the sitting judge to arrange for an immediate police summons.
Like I said, if voting was on a par with Jury Duty ….and you have to ask yourself why it is not, we’d have a better idea how the population was thinking and voting .Who knows what kind of changes that might bring ….what kind of government we might actually end up with.
A compelling suggestion, Harry, but would have no chance of even being considered down here in the Free Southern Stateen unless it underwent a name change.
You see, the c-word is the big no-no in these here puritanical parts. Mind you, the m-word is acceptable,,being normally restricted to counts of eight in Madison Square Garden.
So, if compulsory were to be replaced by mandatory it would certainly make it to first base and beyond.
Curiously, the c-word is used in one context and one context only: the context of the language variously known as leprechaun, Irish and Mahogany Gaspipes.
Compulsory bad, Mandatory good
The story of leprechaun’s compulsory
A language of worry, curry and slurry;
English made mandatory
By both Whig and byTory
Tastes of apple cider from happy Surrey.
Yep…Mighty Perk .I know that the irish are a cussed lot …not unlike the English .None of us like being told to do anything .We’d rather pretend we’d made up our own minds …even those of us who have n’t got a solitary rational thought in our heads.We all did accept the no smoking ban though.We accepted the introduction of a plastic bag tax.We merrily complied to the introduction of any number of waste bins being introduced and the councils have us busily sorting out all the waste and rubbish for them….you’d think we could charge them for our services.
.You would think that the Australians would have no truck with compulsory voting and would have demanded an end to it just out of pure cussedness…but when these things bed in , we are easily trained to accept them …like children or wee dogs.With the introduction of something like that , it might inspire a greater degree of involvement with those of us who couldn’t give a damn , either learning a little more about who controls their lives or at the very least protesting about the quality of the service by saying so on their ballot ticket..