Democracy

I have written blogs before and whilst I start with the good intentions of writing interesting stuff, I very quickly start to write inane drivel about Brighton and Hove Albion's recent form and then let my blog dwindle in content to the point where it is no longer updated. This time will be different (perhaps). This time I have chosen an angle, a theme, a broad subject that will keep me banging away on the keyboard for weeks, months, perhaps years: my plan is to discuss things beginning with the letter 'D'. I may choose some myself, but it would give me much pleasure if you would contribute ideas that you would like me to discuss. The only rule is that they must begin with the letter 'D'.

  My first subject is democracy - a pretty big pillar of our society and a bit of a gargantuan topic to write about. It was on May 6th 1999, at the age of 19, that I was first given the opportunity to exercise my democratic right. Local elections were combined with a referendum on whether Brighton and Hove Albion should be allowed to build a new stadium in Falmer on a site at the north end of the city. The referendum question interested me most and I took the short walk to the polling booth to tick 'Yes' to the question of whether I thought Brighton should have a stadium and 'Yes' to whether I thought that Falmer was an appropriate site. Brighton had just finished a season playing their home games 75 miles away in Gillingham and I was desperate to see the team I loved playing back on my doorstep once again. My political convictions were less straightforward. I didn't want to vote for the Conservatives because my parents had imbued me with a belief that the Tory's political purpose was to make rich people richer and poor people poorer. It was a simple and arguably accurate understanding of their policies. I'm not sure I understand a whole lot more about what they stand for today other than that they have drifted closer and closer to a more moderate ground where they perceive the votes can be found. I would have voted for Labour had I not taken a dislike for the Labour MP after he had lied to my mum at the school gate about which way he would vote in a planning permission decision about a new leisure centre. The Liberal Democrats would not be receiving my vote because the former Chief Executive of Brighton & HA, who had brought about the club's demise, was an ex-Lib Dem MP and I associated the Green Party with vegetarianism and didn't want to give up sausages. The other parties were all acronyms that I knew nothing about, and so I handed in my ballot paper without an X marked anywhere. I'd abstained through whimsical reasons - tangents that my mind followed and negative connotations that I associated with some parties meant that I refused to commit myself. 

  Two years later, the election of 2001 came around. I'd thought that I would never vote Conservative, but standing in the Tory seat was my old baby-sitter and because I trusted her and because she'd sat downstairs watching TV while I slept, I gave her my vote. The Labour MP was still the same untrustworthy chap and so despite a desire that the Tories wouldn't get into government, I voted for her in the hope that my baby-sitter would get a seat above Porky. In the end Labour won both battles. A mildly interesting side-story to this election was that I received two voting slips, one at my parents' address and one at the flat that I lived at. I could quite easily have voted twice in this election. Would I have been committing a crime if I had done this? I suppose I would have been committing electoral fraud, but the story is not really worth pursuing as fear of detection, laziness and a moral conscience all meant that I was never likely to do this.

  Four years on and I had moved out of Hove and into Brighton - both Labour seats. After failing to vote for Labour on two previous opportunities, it was finally time to put my 

cross in the box and watch on as Tony Blair made it three victories on the bounce. A girl on the same English Literature course had been convinced by her mum that Blair was a crook who was destroying the country. It gave me immense satisfaction to follow her into the voting booth and undo her Tory vote.

  One more local election gave me an opportunity between the last election and the one on the horizon. I was back at my whimsical best and felt frustrated belatedly about the Iraq War. Subsequently the Greens got my vote. I felt that local elections offered an opportunity for the smaller parties to grab some power and I'd been impressed leading up to the election by a Green Party candidate talking about how they weren't a single-policy party on a Radio 4 programme. The fact that on a car journey, Radio 4 had been the only station with decent reception had brought about a sway in my vote. 

  And so, May 6th eleven years on offers me my fifth opportunity to take my place in the polling booth. I love that moment standing in a darkened cubicle feeling like the destiny of the country is in your hands. It isn't, but it some ways it is. I have tried to get to grips with my political beliefs by filling in a questionnaire on www.politcalcompass.org.uk They claim that dividing politics into left and right wing policy is too simple and that a vertical axis labeled Libertarian/Authoritarian is necessary also. After answering a range of questions, some of which I didn't quite understand, I came out in the left-wing libertarian box alongside Nelson Mandela and Gandhi. How this affects who I'm going to vote for, I'm not sure. I seem a bit of a distance from Gordon Brown (who they claim is slightly right of middle and closer to authoritarian). David Cameron isn't on it, but I'm sure he's even further away from me. Having abstained, voted Tory, voted Labour, voted Green, am I going to jump ship again and vote Clegg? I'm not sure.