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

...and may the rest of us be ashamed

The Maltese - sole, as I understand it, of all the 25 nations voting to the EU parliament, achieved a decent turn-out with a little more than 80%.

The average? 45 point something, and Denmark - an old, tradition-rich democracy - only 48%.

Voting is something you have a given right to, fellas! In other places, people die to get it. Or are told to go vote for this one or else...

As a colleague said today: You ought to go with in your step, rejoicing in the secure knowledge that you can actually do this!

At the very least, if you don't then shut up - we do not think that you have the right to complain over what the government/parliament/politicians do if you can't even be ars*d to get out of the sofa and lift a pencil up do set a cross on a piece of paper.

Hrmpf!

(just for the record: yes, I did vote - a lovely walk in the sunshine down to the polling place around 2pm yesterday)

Ah - but what if you don't like any of the alternatives that you've got to choose from? There is not one single political party in Sweden that fits in with my major political opinions/ideas/ideals

No wonder I scored 'conservative radical' in one of those online quizzes - there obviously isn't a cathegory for people like me!

There was a party for me here and I did my voting. But all together we achieved only 27%. That was mostly educated and urban citizens. People in the countryside simply don't think their vote matters at all. Brussels is so far away...

On one occasion, must have been when I was around 20 or so, I couldn't find any to vote for either. So, as a consequence, I voted blank - that is, I did go up there, got my square meter or so of paper , and just didn't put an X on it.

But I have always voted - even in advance by "letter vote" (or whatever you'd call that in English) when I've known that I'd be away on the voting day...

I absolutely agree, Santra, and even in the worst of my drinking days I still managed to make it to the polls. I too once took the trouble to organise a postal vote after I'd moved a long distance.

This time, it was actually meant to be an all-postal vote in my area - but if you wanted to you could go down to the City Hall and hand in your votes personally. I did that on the first day possible to make absolutely sure that my votes arrived.

There was some very bad news in the results, though: the far-right 'We're not racist, we just hate foreigners' British National Party won seats on my local council, which is exactly the kind of thing that happens when sensible people don't bother to vote. In one sense, I'm glad that the election results don't actually reflect the general public's views. If they did, it'd mean that roughly every 12th adult I passed in the street in my home city was a fascist.

Yeah, that's another thing. If all the people who're in general OK with what's happening are not voting, the future will be decided - at least to a certain extent - by the ones who are protesting or having certain agendas to forward. And that is - my viewpoint at least - neither beneficial to democracy nor to the society.

The "we don't want to deal with it if it's bad" attitude could also get me started on a rant with the press who seems to only want to tell the saucier murder/scandal/unrest/whateverotherbadthingsthereare stories - in their mind, who cares to hear about what goes well? (unless it's sport, of course). But I won't...