Post by Bartonite on Apr 28, 2017 12:23:33 GMT
If you aren't going to vote on May 4, you probably won't care that this article is about you
'Your vote is your voice. It also gives you every right to complain after the election and to hold councillors to account.'
'Because, if you don't vote, don't moan on social media, in the pub, or around your dinner table, about anything the county council does or doesn't do.'
'And if you vote, you'll be welcome to ring us up and moan about potholes as much as you want.'
'Your vote is your voice. It also gives you every right to complain after the election and to hold councillors to account.'
'Because, if you don't vote, don't moan on social media, in the pub, or around your dinner table, about anything the county council does or doesn't do.'
'And if you vote, you'll be welcome to ring us up and moan about potholes as much as you want.'
This is one of the most fascistic screeds I have read in a local paper, and sadly, I predicted it over a week ago.
The same paper that has almost entirely withdrawn our opportunity to express our views on its website and, on the rare occasions when we (or rather, those of us who haven't been blocked with no explanation) do get the chance to post comment, are routinely abused by trolls (or, rather, just one troll, known to the paper's barely literate staff, if not actually a fellow colleague), preaches on the value of being able to express an opinion?
Until voting becomes compulsory, our 'right' to complain is not in question.
But I wonder how Phil Norris thinks his notional 'right', on the grounds of being a voter, would be affected if he voted, not for the candidate he would like to win, because he knew he/she had no chance, and therefore voted to keep out the person he would least like to win? Is that worse than abstaining?
Voting is often nothing to do with how we feel about the individuals named on our ballot papers, and the eventual winner rarely behaves as if that was the case.
So can we just get straight to the companion piece to this verbage, the article lauding our MPs and councillors as actually highly principled philanthropists, bent on helping their constituents, whatever they sound like at PMQs or at council meetings? And then the Citizen's highly replacable journalists can get back to not giving a stuff about our opinions for another few years, while they try to find the spell-checker on their laptops.