Public Service Announcement...

[ajntornj]

Shamelessly cadged from aussiedave because he:-
a)said everything that I wanted to, and
b)writes better than wot I do.

DOING YOUR DUTY...and I seriously fucking mean it. This is your duty. Yes, you, reading this now. I'm not going to mince words or be diplomatic

Comments

[gedhrel]

Not doing the below officially negates your right to complain.

Complete and utter bullshit.

[ajntornj]

Ah, I think you mistook the Australian definition of 'officially' with the OED definition. This is more of a 'That's it, I'm officially sick of having hangovers' kind of officially.

[ajntornj]

Actually, perhaps I should rephrase this as it has been playing on my mind for the past 18 hours or so. Whilst nabbing the text from aussiedave saved me a chunk of writing time, I should probably clarify my exact view on this bit at least.

Also, please note that when I use "you" for the rest of this post I'm being generic here. I haven't caught up with gedhrel yet, and wouldn't want this taken as a comment directly against him (since I don't know anything about his current plans for the election

[gigolohitman]

Not sure I agree

[ajntornj]

Yes, I rather expected that you would say something along those lines

[gigolohitman]

I think it's a little unfair to suggest that I'm massaging the numbers to show anything. Sensibly, one should take account of all the costs - and that happens, in this case, to be several lifetimes

[ajntornj]

Fair point, my 5 minutes was based on the fact that I'm already fairly politically aware and pick up additional information merely by dint of watching the news, reading a selection of papers etc. I'd do this anyway but I accept that many others wouldn't.

However, I'm fairly certain that there are inefficiencies that we all currently face due to the bloated state-centric behemoth that the government has become that more than equal the 30 minute required to vote and hopefully implement change that would bring about a reduction in the bureacratic delays of life.

In fact, tax is quite a nice one. If any of the other parties saved each working person £100 a year (fairly achievable by any of them, and eminently so under the proposed Lib Dem budget) then that equates to about a day's work (on average salary) that you wouldn't have to do. Call it 7 hours to be generous. Government statistics put 62% of the population to be of working age so from your numbers that's about 40 million people. Remove the non-working parents but add in

[boblink]

Compulsory voting?

[ajntornj]

If only. Though I suppose it rather goes against the principle of democracy to force people. Perhaps something more carrot-based instead? You only get certain rights (such as the right to have children, or the right to jobseekers benefit or something like that) *if* you can show that you voted at the last elections.

That's probably the electoral reform that Brown mentioned last week.

[aussiedave]

I grew up with a compulsory system. It creates an interesting situation. Politics (you may struggle with this concept) in Australia are more populist and personality-driven. The two main parties are more centrist.

[boblink]

Yeah that's the problem, lowest common denominator. Philosopher kings or benevolent tyrants anyone?

[aussiedave]

Wow, you got loads more debate on yours than I did on mine. And yes, I meant "officially" is a joky way. I'm a frivolous kind of dude

[aussiedave]

I didn't finish that last bit!

...usually from people who didn't participate, and fuck those guys. Fuck them right in the ass.

[gigolohitman]

Does this extend to people saying that people "should" vote, without having campaigned extensively for electoral reform? :-D

[aussiedave]

Sure, why not