A Sad, Sad Day

[lupestripe]

The BNP gain two seats (largely thanks to the media scaremongering actually giving them publicity and thus being counter-productive) whilst UKIP have made significant gains too.

In fact, it has been a great day for Eurosceptics and parties on the far right throughout Europe. This tells me something - either people are widely opposed to the EU or the EU needs a massive overhaul in the way it is governed and administered. From my own point of view, I sincerely hope it's the latter rather than the former (I think if managed correctly, the EU can be a fantastic thing) but sadly, I fear it's not.

To me, the results of this election are merely one more reason to leave the country as I am becoming increasingly disenfranchised with where this country is heading (although, I accept, the local elections couldn't have really gone better really from my own standpoint).

Still, that's the delight of democracy I suppose. I just wish that the media had delivered all of the facts as I certainly did not see balanced reporting or indeed any real discussion or debate on the options that each political party presented forth. People were just too obsessed with the far right. And look at what we got.

In fact, the only articles I read in the Press were about the dangers of the far right - and all that did was give them publicity. Indeed, the BNP's policies were the only ones I didn't have to search for when I was trying to make my mind up on who to vote. In some ways, I wonder whether the rise of the far right is what the media actually wants - indeed the timing of the expenses scandal was certainly interesting regarding these elections.

P.S. I have always believed that every election is important and should not just be used as a "protest vote". I have always believed that not voting for who you truly believe in is counterproductive and damaging to democracy.

Comments

[emejn.livejournal.com]

It's certainly saddening that for ~1mm people, there is no party that is more closely aligned to their views than the BNP, but hopefully it will trigger policy adjustments in the rest of the political spectrum to pull back some of that ground.

As for the corruption - let's be frank, the MP's expenses scandal is pretty insignificant on the grand scale of institutional corruption. It's beer money compared with what goes on elsewhere. It's nothing compared to arms and oil related backhanders in the middle east. It's nothing compared to Silvio Berlusconi passing a law in Italy to grant himself immunity to prosecution. It's nothing compared to the amount of fraud going on in the EU, especially in agriculture and MEP expenses. Contrast what has happened here to how the EU treated whistleblowers such as Marta Anderson. Yes, it's bad, and needs fixing right away, but it's important to keep a sense of perspective.

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

You'd hope it would do that but the BNP have been making significant gains over the last 15 years and every time, the Press has said this is "a wake-up call for the Government". Sad thing is that the Government have never seemed to have woken up.

Of course MPs' expenses are small fry and there is significant corruption elsewhere too but it is still a tip of a worrying iceberg. As you say, perspective is important, which is why I want to see a wholesale change in both UK and EU transparency regarding these issues. If that can happen, then I think the EU can be a good thing. The problem is politicians have started serving themselves rather than the electorate and when that happens, it's a very slippery slope.