soapbox

so it's official. on the 5th of may, britain goes to the polls. it will be interesting to see how this one will turn out. will the general populace put down their copies of heat magazine and actually vote this time? or will uninformed cynicism win the day once more?

after all the brouhaha about iraq, and the divisions within the labour party, will middle england don their barbour jackets and vote in a facist party who killed off heavy industry, screams about evilasylumseekers, and disenfranchised anyone who didn't live within the home counties?

i certainly hope not. new labour may have abandoned all principles of socialism in favour of something, well, a bit more comfortable, but they've done a hell of a lot more good than the previous occupiers of 10 downing street. devolved powers for scotland and wales, a stable and prosperous economy, the good friday agreement, not to mention a seemingly genuine drive to use the uk's g8 and eu presidency to tackle world poverty head on.

yes the reasons for going into iraq were shaky, and yes spin seems to rule the day, but i'm sure that any other party who gets into power would be exactly the same. this is not cynicism, but realpolitik. shit, as they say, happens.

i'm not telling you who to vote for (just not conservative, ok ;-)). you're all big enough and ugly enough to do that for yourselves. all i'm saying is that after you've watched a re-run of acomfortableamericansitcom, get your arse down the polling station and vote!

right, time to lie down i think...