Ticking My Boxes

I went to vote this evening. The Euro election ballot paper was about a mile long. Well, at least 18 inches long. It was essentially a list of terrifying racist, bigoted parties that I'd never even heard of before. Very scary. I've never struggled more to decide who should get my vote, although who shouldn't get my vote was easy. All the major parties seem to be so similar these days and all are equally unappealing.

I'd even taken a test on t'interweb to see who to vote for where the policies of the parties were listed, without telling you whose policies they were. I might have to tone down my views on policing. Apparently I side with the BNP on that one. Oops!

Education and the economy (particularly with regard to small businesses) are very important to me and none of the major parties even come close to ticking my boxes. Fnar fnar.

We also had our local elections where 'Monkey the Drummer' was the Monster Raving Loony candidate. If he'd be running for the Euros, I might well have voted for him. At least he'd have been honest and he'd have been some fun. Oh, and he'd probably be the sanest person in the European Parliament on the ballot sheet.

I made my marks on the papers and then had to faff around folding the Euro ballot to get it small enough to fit into the box. A man with a giant shoe horn came over to help poke it into the box. What a waste of paper.

Now I'm watching some of the election coverage on the Beeb. Tomorrow I will get a life. What I'm seeing is the most archaic waste of money ever. People. Hundreds of people. All sitting in leisure centres and the like manually unfolding mile-long bits of paper and counting - by hand - the votes. What a hopelessly inaccurate, inefficient way of doing things. I'm sure it's very exciting to sit up all night waiting for the results to come in, but really - aren't we a digital society now? Surely a lot of the voting could be done electronically.

Bed time! Sleep tight voters! xxx