Voting or writing the croppy requiem: today you decide

What a beautiful Spring morning!  Given my infirmity, I was transported to the polling station by the present Mrs C.  I don’t usually vote in the morning, but I preferred as few people as possible to see my slim and elegantly muscled frame reduced to a creeping shell. Alas,  there were plenty of people coming in and going out, even at that early hour. The present Mrs C thought it’d be a jolly wheeze to get a photograph of me, cast and all, crouched at the voting booth, but the person checking off the names checked her off: no photographs within the polling area. Which makes sense. Although haven’t I seen countless party leaders popping their vote into the box before the TV cameras?  I wonder what the rule is.

As I’ve implied by noting the surprisingly busy polling centre, this could be an election that bucks the trend of declining turn-out. I read somewhere recently that the middle-class voter retired to the golf club somewhere in the early 1970s and hasn’t been seen since. There’s truth in that – the prod in the garden centre syndrome, although in recent elections it’s been more like the taig in the garden centre. But as I say, I think this election may just turn out to be one that marks an up-turn in voter activity. At this point there can be few who don’t know what RHI stands for, and  practically nobody who isn’t aware  of the Cash-for-Ash scandal.

And that’s what makes this election unique: it’s not (pace Arlene) an Orange vs Green election, although that does play a part. Primarily this election is about that doomed scheme, adopted and modified by the DUP, offered to the public with every possible encouragement, including the First Minister writing to banks and telling them what a safe-as-houses (do we use that term any more?) scheme it was. That kind of economic illiteracy would be reason enough for rage, since it’s not some kind of symbolic gaffe, it’s money out of all our pockets. But beyond that there is a feeling that there’s been something dodgy going on in the background with this scheme. Nothing has been proven, as Arlene has been at pains to point out, and we must wait for the public inquiry to report. But the pong of greasy dealings matches the whiff from Red Sky, NAMA and similar money-sucking schemes. It’s fair to say, I think, that unionist voters don’t like having hundreds of millions of their money wasted any more than nationalist/republican voters do. Whether that will be enough to make them shift their vote from the DUP we’ll know at the weekend.  If it doesn’t, the old adage about putting a union flag on a donkey and electing it will have been proved true yet again. Which is a truly depressing thought, because it suggests that unionist voters have given their representatives a green light on doing just about anything they fancy doing, as long as the horns and cloven hooves of nationalism/republicanism are held at bay.

Nationalist/republican voters, on the other hand, are more likely to experience an anger that will carry them to the polling booth. That’s because they know condescension when they see it, and the day when nationalists/republicans in our NE nest would shrug their shoulders or tug their forelock and pass on – those days,surely, are gone. Nobody likes to be taken for a fool, especially if it happens repeatedly. And nobody likes to be mocked in terms of what they hold dear, especially if it’s done repeatedly.  Will this anger at serial  incompetence and condescension  be enough to propel nationalist/republican voters to the polls?  To know for sure we’ll need to wait until the weekend, but I’ve a feeling this election, although only eight or nine months since the last one, has come at just the right moment. You could almost hear nationalist/republican discontent  with continual negativity and insult from unionist politicians,  and almost smell nationalist/republican outrage at being expected to keep on offering the other cheek.

If nationalists/republicans do not turn out and register their anger at the polling booth today, and deliver a massive kick to the political backside – both cheeks – of unionism, it’ll suggest that croppies are resigned to being unionism’s punch-bag.  Which would be beyond sad.

So as Ladfleg tweeted so eloquently  this morning, “Get yer holes to the polls!”

Indelicate language but wise words. If not now, when?