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livHappy birthday to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
darcydodo!
Happy blogaversary to me - I joined LJ this date in 2003, and moved to DW around this time in 2009.
Happy election day to fellow Europeans, (apart from people in civilized countries where they've moved the European elections to the nearest weekend to improve turnout). I voted during my lunchbreak today, inconveniently in the wrong ward since my change of address hasn't yet propagated to the electoral roll. There was no local election in the ward I lived in until Feb, so it was Eurolections only for me.
My polling station, a local secondary school, has turned into an Academy since I last voted. It's quite scary; they've pretty much rebuilt it from the ground up and it's full of corporate-style "inspirational" slogans. I only hope it's good for the kids.
My ballot paper was very long and chock-full of racist parties. I don't know if I should be worried that there are so many, or complacent that the people who vote single-issue on how much they hate foreigners are too fragmented to ever get anywhere in this election. I am on balance a bit worried, especially since the mainstream parties are trying to compete with these weird xenophobic groups by taking an increasingly hard line on immigration, and not steering clear of expressing their anti-immigration views in racist ways.
I'm also annoyed about how much of the campaigning has been based on whether you're for or against the current government, and a lot of empty promises about purely UK issues that are nothing to do with the European parliament. I would have liked election literature about which alliances the parties intend to join in Europe, and about actual European issues and policies. Apart from anything else this can only reinforce the false impression that we have lost our sovereignty and are governed from Brussels.
I strongly agree withcosmolinguist that people who can vote should, and also that UKIP is not a joke.
darcydodo! Happy blogaversary to me - I joined LJ this date in 2003, and moved to DW around this time in 2009.
Happy election day to fellow Europeans, (apart from people in civilized countries where they've moved the European elections to the nearest weekend to improve turnout). I voted during my lunchbreak today, inconveniently in the wrong ward since my change of address hasn't yet propagated to the electoral roll. There was no local election in the ward I lived in until Feb, so it was Eurolections only for me.
My polling station, a local secondary school, has turned into an Academy since I last voted. It's quite scary; they've pretty much rebuilt it from the ground up and it's full of corporate-style "inspirational" slogans. I only hope it's good for the kids.
My ballot paper was very long and chock-full of racist parties. I don't know if I should be worried that there are so many, or complacent that the people who vote single-issue on how much they hate foreigners are too fragmented to ever get anywhere in this election. I am on balance a bit worried, especially since the mainstream parties are trying to compete with these weird xenophobic groups by taking an increasingly hard line on immigration, and not steering clear of expressing their anti-immigration views in racist ways.
I'm also annoyed about how much of the campaigning has been based on whether you're for or against the current government, and a lot of empty promises about purely UK issues that are nothing to do with the European parliament. I would have liked election literature about which alliances the parties intend to join in Europe, and about actual European issues and policies. Apart from anything else this can only reinforce the false impression that we have lost our sovereignty and are governed from Brussels.
I strongly agree with
cosmolinguist that people who can vote should, and also that UKIP is not a joke.