h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Swine flu, the expenses row, the endless and futile point-scoring attempts by both parties, the sheer incompetence of a party I want to support.

I'm getting so sick of politics and it's really disappointing. I'm the sort of person this democratic system needs: I was one of 30ish% of people my age to even bother to vote in the last general election. In the recent Europeans, something like 15% of people under 30 voted and the only reason I did was because the BNP were doing sickeningly well in my area and I know that all evil needs to thrive is for good men to remain silent.

I'm politically literate, heck I've got a degree in the subject, I've campaigned actively, I keep myself well-informed. When someone like me is so sick and tired of politics that I'm seriously considering not voting again, what chance is democracy going to have?

A screechy, melodramatic media, parties who are more interested in maintaining their own elites than serving their constituents, a broken electoral system and mass public antipathy and outright distrust for Parliament: it's not just undermining support for the parties, it's undermining democracy itself. The next generation (though ultimately, as a lover of men, I'm basically a free rider on the next generation. Suckers!) is going to face unprecedented challenges including but not limited to; dealing with the baby boomers retirement, oil and water becoming increasingly scarce, climate change, and the rise of powers who don't share our affinity with civil liberties. Is this really the political system we want to hand over, where even the motivated are ceasing to care?

In short, the current political situation is annoying me somewhat. I want a return to the system I used to idolise and consider worth defending above all else. Right now if someone wanted to remove democracy, I probably wouldn't put up too much of a fight.

Naturally I can't make any particularly intelligent comment on the ins and outs of UK politics, but I can point out that disillusionment with the whole sad sorry business is widespread at the moment. Even down here, where we have a reasonably intelligent government at last, I feel somehow disenfranchised by the absence of a viable opposition. If the incumbents do something really dopey (which I concede is possible even though I'm a Rudd fanboy), what is there to turn to? Nothing much, really.

On the matter of electoral systems, as opposed to day-to-day politics: what would it take for the UK to change its system? FPTP is probably the worst of the democratic options... In our (federal) preferential system, you might not get your first choice, but there's a chance you'll get something you can tolerate rather than something you can't stomach at all. In the Australian Capital Territory's own system of multi-member electorates minority voices can still be heard. The NZ system deserves a close look too. Is there any chance of the UK ever moving away from FPTP?

I'm in no position to comment about the UK, either- I know only what I hear on h2g2 and understand even less. But I too feel the overall sense of disillusionment in general (in spite of feeling hopeful about the current administration, to the extent they can override the bible-thumping whackos that have come back into vogue).

Yeats poem comes, unfortunately, to mind...

Especially this bit:

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

I'm getting more and more pessimistic about being optimistic...

You'd be Jury Team material...if you weren't politically literate.