Farse? Do You mean the Europian Elections?

I don't know about you folks (she says ironically to her one reader), but has anyone got the impression that there isn't much realistic support out there for the Europian Election?

Having worked in domestic violence in a past life, I'd argue that the EU rulings on this issue, and particularly on Human Rights, has genuinely helped save peoples lives. Whether you agree with the process or structure of the EU or not - it has had some direct and significant impact on policy in the UK. So why don't we hear more about it? Why don't people know or even care who their MEP is? And what is going on with this election?

Firstly, the media seems far more concerned about the affect that this will have on Gordan Brown, than anything else - to them the whole purpose of the election, is for people to protest vote against the established parties - aka Labour and the Tories, by voting UKIP and BNP. Which is a bit of a misenoma in itself - why would you vote for someone to represent you in the EU, who doesn't want anything to do with the EU? There was even a "No to EU yes to Deomocracy" party - Barmy or what? All of which draws attention away from the actual issues and policies discussed in the EU parliment... doesn't sound very democratic to me...

Secondly - although this has probably only happened in Leeds, I get the impression that the people organising the election aren't too fussed about it. If there is a general election - information about how to vote is advertised everywhere. This time around I had to harass my council on a weekly basis just to find out if I could vote or not. They even neglected to send us polling cards, and when I rang them they couldn't give me the address of the polling station. Me and my youthful-spouse, had to trail around the back streets of murky Garforth, trapsing from polling station to polling station, only to be told that we lived on the wrong street and to "try that one round the back, you know it's round back there [points to floor] somewhere" . All we needed was a donky and we could have made it into the new testomont.

After an hour my Youthful-Spouse had explained to me that despite my lecture about "what our anscestors had to go through to get us the vote", he was heading for bed, for "I don't reckon Miss Pankhurst would have bothered jumping under that horse if she knew all it meant was two mugs from yorkshire trudgin' around in the mist just to put an X in a box". Thankfully we found the polling station after that... about ten metres away from our house (ooops). When we got their the old woman (why is it always an old lady and an old man at polling stations?), said we just had to tell her our names and where we lived and we could vote.

"No polling card?" I asked
"Don't need it." She said
"No ID?" I asked
"Nah, they told us not to bother with that" she said
"But," asked Youthful-Spouse "aren't you worried about fraud?"
"ha haha" interjected Old Man
"Oh no Deary" said Old Lady "we don't worry about that"
"No fraud hear love" said Old Man "people round here wouldn't bother with that sort of thing"

Well, I was like Buddha faced with that fat pleasure god-bloke, from the first level of heaven...Talk about temptation, all me and youthful spouse would have to do is look through the phone book for names and addresses, go to whatever the polling station was, and use other peoples votes. I mean, it's not like they are using them, most people I've spoken to can't be arsed voting today. We could start a revolution - drive up and down the country and make vote in every polling station - I could get the Greens in - or any random party!

Sadly, being a wishy-washy-lefty-libral-hippie at heart, I couldn't do it.

I mean - think of all that petrol I'd be using

PS - sorry about religious references I'm revising for an exam on it