Extending the hand of antipathy and enmity across Europe...

I recently had to wipe off a mouthful tea I had just spat into the face of a close friend.

The reason for my ejaculated beverage was that, while talking about the European elections, my dampened friend had previously commented that they were completely disillusioned by all of the major political parties and that they were thinking of voting for the British National Party (BNP).

Once I had dried my friend off and apologised for any minor scalding, we then discussed their rationale in a more mannered, and ultimately drier, way. We spoke of political policies leading to the credit crunch and of the recent expenses scandal and of any number of other political SNAFUs over the last few years, we also spoke of the reactions the other parties and how this amounted to little more than white noise and bluster rather than anything substantive.

I could only concur with their assessment of the state of politics in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, but had to disagree with the conclusion that the best way forward for the British people in Europe was to vote for a legitamised state of racism, mistrust and hatred. (See Private Eye, No. 1237 “The expenses row has really put me off politics... so I’m going to vote for racism, bigotry and hatred instead”)

For the sake of our continued friendship, we agreed to disagree.

Back on my own, I felt a strange unease about this visceral reaction to my friend’s political opinion. It played on my mind, not because I had hosed-down a close friend with a mouthful of Assam, but, I thought, it was because my reaction was based on an assumption that I knew the politics of the BNP on the basis of my stereotyping of their target demographic of tattooed fuckwits with their family-pet pitbulls that grace any coverage on the news.

I consider myself a reasonably conscientious voter; I take the time to read the manifestos of the major parties, I try to at least have a passing understanding of the major issues and the stance the parties have on them, I try to understand the ‘themes’ of the party policies without simply relying on the soap-box politics of the modern media. In short, I throw down my cross from a position of, at least, a modicum of knowledge. I can consider my vote has been cast from a considered, measured and rational choice. To my understanding at least, this is the basis of a modern democracy.

In reading their manifestos, I felt I had given at least a fair crack-of-the-whip to Labour, the Scottish National Party (SNP), the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish Green Party and even the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the Jury Team. (On the day of the vote, I realised there were a few more I hadn’t looked into (No2EU, the Christian Peoples Alliance, the Socialist Labour Party, the Scottish Socialist Party and the independent candidate Duncan Robertson) but if they haven’t done enough to even slip into my consciousness – fankly, bollocks to them!

So with this in mind, and in the spirit of equity, I decided I had to have a look at the ‘manifesto’ of the BNP. To save you the bother of looking for it (seriously, don’t bother), it amounts to a series of bullet-points basically saying (and I’ll admit I’m paraphrasing a bit here), “everything is their fault, send them home”, whether they have ever been to said ‘home’ in their life is apparently of no relevance. So exactly what I thought it would be; racist, bigotted, isolationist, protectionist, lowest-common-denominator bullshit.

Unfortunately, my feeling of unease wasn’t sated by giving myself a better knowledge of the ravings of the dumbfuck community, or even by that lovely smug feeling of being right at the beginning, I still felt the same unsettled feeling deep in my bowels.

And then I got it...

It wasn’t the fact that I didn’t understand the fucktard fraternity. It wasn’t even that someone close to me had such a lapse of judgement to consider it a good idea voting for them. It was the vote itself!

Here I am spending hours reading the sales-brochure propaganda of those professional gobshite politicians (of all flavours), making sure I understand what they stand for and what good intentions will be forgotten, watered-down and/or corrupted if they get into power, and meanwhile any dumbass, mouth-breather can make their way into a polling station and scrawl an ‘X’ on a page which, en masse, will affect every aspect of the lives of single person in the country – and more importantly, to me!. Is this what democracy is all about?

I mean, for fuck’s sake, people will even pay money to phone Sky News to register a vote of “No Opinion” – if you don’t have an opinion, save 50p and don’t fucking vote, you dumb fuck....! What chance do we have when trying to get the common prole to understand (or even give a shit about) the vagaries of economic, health or environmental policy when they can’t even yack-up an opinion on whether Jordan and Peter will get back together.

I understand the concept of universal suffrage, that everyone should be entitled to have their vote counted and treated equally. As an ideology, it sounds great. But, have a look at the common voter. Look at any city centre at about 11pm on a Saturday night and ask yourself “is giving these people the right to decide on policies affecting taxes, defence, social care, health, economy, education and so on, really the best that we can come up with in the 21st century?” By treating everybody equally under the current party politics system, we are allowing all of our lives to be dictated to by people who haven’t the faintest clue what any of the parties stand for.

People vote for all different reasons; they vote for the same party their parents voted for (possibly due to some misplaced loyalty or genomic imprinting), they vote for the person who has a nice smile, they vote for a party they heard a soundbite they agreed with (irrespective of the rest of their policies), they even vote for fucking Boris Johnson because he was unintentionally funny on “Have I Got News for You”, but how many people vote from a position of knowledge and understanding?

It’s time for a change. If we are to have a democracy at all, don’t have the shambling hoards pick a name they don’t know from a list of political parties they know nothing about, preaching a gospel they don’t understand. Give people a multiple choice exam on the political issues - and make it a hard one! If they don’t get enough correct answers, they aren’t knowledgable enough to have their opinion counted.

Don’t give me any politically correct bollocks either. People are not equal. Not because of race, sex, sexuality, belief, background, education or anything else that certain political factions might want you to believe. The new underclass simply don’t care enough to find out the issues, understand the drivers for change and the repercussions, and then to make an informed choice.

If that’s you, then, like my ill informed and tea-soaked friend, in the world according to SpiderBoz, you don’t qualify for a say.

Come the revolution...



NB: When preparing my blog entries I always try to link to any site that I feel will add to the understanding of the context of my blog or that deserves recognition in it’s own right. On this occasion however, I will not link this blog to anything remotely related to the BNP as I do not want to add, even in the smallest possible way, to the legitimacy of this collective of degenerate, neanderthal scum.