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Use Your Voice
12
Woody Guthrie - Note The Sticker
Today is polling day for the European Elections in Britain, I realise this is last minute but I wanted to remind everyone to use their vote. About 10 days ago I went to a Billy Bragg concert in Liverpool, I talked about it here on the blog. At that concert I signed up for a mailing list. I’d forgotten all about it until this morning when I received an email urging people to vote and stop the British National Party (BNP) and their racist agenda. I’ve already voted myself and talked to many others about it. Only last night we discussed it at the Liverpool LUG. The EU elections are all calculated on proportional representation, which means apathy is a real danger. At the moment people in Britain are fed up with politicians and politics in general, they have every right. The scandals over expense claims are ridiculous. There’s a real danger many people will simply not vote in protest, or far worse turn to a Fascist party like the BNP. If you don’t vote you are increasing the BNP’s percentage of the total outcome. All they need is for you to do nothing. Sleep now and we’ll wake up to a right wing nightmare. I may be late in writing this, I should have done it yesterday, but I hope maybe some of you will read it before polls close tonight.
This email really illustrates the danger in a far more effective way than I could, I wanted to share it with you:
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Today is election day.
And because it’s proportional representation, not only does every vote count – but every person who doesn’t vote actually increases the fascists tally.
How?
Let’s do some numbers.
Imagine that there’s just 8 BNP voters in the whole of the North West (I wish!).
If 1,000 people vote then the BNP score just 0.8% (8 divided by 1,000).
But if only 10 people vote then they score 80% (8 divided by 10).
So not voting ups their score.
By staying away from the polling station today, you’d be upping the fascists vote.
What the fascists need
They need you to stay at home today.
Because if they get just 8% of the vote here’s what they’ll get:
* the poisonous NIck Griffin will be YOUR MEP
* they’ll have £1/4 million of OUR money to spend on their vile divisive politics
Who to vote forWe’re not going to tell you who to vote for. That’s up to you.
But get out and vote today – and vote for anyone other than the fascists.
Make sure you vote – because any vote against the BNP really screws them up.
Vote Vote VoteThere’s enough parties on the ballot paper to enable you to vote against the fascists and still register your disapproval with the main parties if you wish to do that.
So vote. If you don’t, you increase the fascists score.
If you stay at home or spoil your ballot paper, it increases the BNP’s chance of victory.
Festival HQ
PS Voting is today (June 4th). Please get out and cast your vote or you could wake up tomorrow to find your MEP is a fascist with £250,000 of our money to spend on spreading hate in our community.
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Please make your vote count. You don’t have to vote for a major party if you don’t want to. Vote Green, vote for the Socialist Party, vote for UKIP if you must. The BNP is not the answer, they take perfectly legitimate concerns over immigration and jobs and distort them to suit their agenda. This has happened in the past and we all know where that lead. You can make a difference. Thank you! I’ll leave you with this video, a classic song by Woodie Guthrie, performed by Billy Bragg
Tags: eu elections, voting
12 responses to “Use Your Voice” 
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Erm… doesn’t this mean that if there are 8 left-wingers fresh out of kryogenics from the cold war who think that Lenin is a fantastic guy, the result would be equally pushed in that direction?
Not going to argue about warning against the right-wing gang. We had the same with the Danish People’s Party:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7091941.stm -
@mjjzf – I suppose it does, it’s open to manipulation from all sides. The problem is that people don’t vote and excuse themselves with “it’s not like my vote matters in the overall count anyway”, but it does. That’s the message I want to get across if possible.
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Although you don’t want to tell people whom they should vote for, I most certainly do want to tell them which candidate is best. So I will.
Vote for the person you think would be best for the job.
As a voting citizen of a country that is stuck in a self perpetuating two party monopoly, I never, and I do mean never, vote for the lesser of two evils. I vote for the person that I think would be best for the job at hand.
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Hmmm… Just fired off my own vote by mail today. I’d actually be very interested in what you voted for.
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@Fab – After much research and agonising, I voted for Labour in the end. I like most of the Green Party policies but there are a few I disagree with, I think we’ll need nuclear power to survive in future for example. The Socialist Party was my favourite but they’re campaigning on removing us from the EU, and I think that would be idiotic. So as much as I agree with 95% of their policies, I’m not voting against Europe. I was left with a choice of Lib Dem or Labour. I seriously considered Lib Dem but I looked at their MEP’s and didn’t know any of them. I couldn’t find enough information on them to feel confident. I wasn’t going to vote for Labour because I’m a bit fed up of their move away from the Socialist values they are supposed to stand for. I like some of their MEP candidates in this region, like Arlene McCarthy. She’s done a lot of good things and she’s very honest. She’s done a lot to try and free Michael Shields, a Liverpool fan wrongly jailed for murder – http://www.michaelshields.uwclub.net/ After weighing everything up, I voted for Labour. I also think it’s the most effective way to block the BNP. As you can see, it’s not a decision I’ve taken lightly.
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Interesting. I’d never have figured you for a nuclear power supporter. We might have found a point we really disagree on after all…
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Hanna June 6th, 2009 at 17:36
We have our voting day tomorrow and I will definitely vote. Luckily we don’t have party as right wing as BNP (at least not as visible in media) I definitely won’t want anyone from the right wing parties to get in EU parliament.
I wish more people would vote. No matter how small the chance is that things would change to better, it’s even smaller when people don’t even bother to vote.
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@Hanna – Agreed, I get annoyed when people tell me they don’t vote or care about politics. They are usually the same people who complain about the hospitals, crime and the price of petrol. It’s all politics you idiots!! A lot of people take the attitude that their one vote doesn’t matter. Of course it does, and when everyone thinks like that we’re left with nobody voting, but the right wing nutters.
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Submitted my vote – a vote to the one Danish EU politician who goes into DRM, open standards and software patents working for consumer protection. It looks like her seat in the parliament is safe.
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@mjjzf – Sounds good, I’m glad you voted. It’s been a VERY depressing 24 hours here in the UK. We now have Fascists representing us in the EU. In the North West of England where I live, we now have the leader of the BNP Nick Griffin as an MEP. Needless to say I’m totally disgusted by this. In Yorkshire they voted in another BNP member who’s a former leader of the National Front. They’re campaigning for an all white Britain and these idiots are listening to them. How stupid do you have to be???!!!! I can’t even think of the words to sum up my feelings today, but luckily some else has. Jarvis Cocker – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbGmAKXJoos
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Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér June 4th, 2009 at 14:57