'A what?' you ask.
'A cause? Mario, are you sure? No good ever came out of people who take up causes. They end up ignored by the masses at best, and martyrs at worst. The DEAD kind of worst.'
Well, yes, you would be right.
And I've not time for dead martyrs (The only kind. I've yet to find a live one...)
The cause I'm taking up is this one:
Now, on to explain this one.
I have been in the UK for a while now. Voter apathy tends to be all that gets talked about every time there's a general election, and yet all people seem to talk about in the office is how party 'A' is a bunch of crooks (I shall endeavour to use polite language throughout), Party 'B' is politically inept and weak, and party 'C' is filled with xenophobic miscreants, all the while laughing at parties D, E, F and the rest as a waste of time and of a vote.
For politically apathetic people, the British sure love a good politics moan.
But every time I've asked a British friend or colleague 'Why don't you challenge the system?' The answer is a series of roundabout non-answers that would make any of the politicians of those so belittled parties proud.
'You can't challenge the system! Politicians have made it so that it can't be beat!', they say in a dejected chorus, as if The Hypnotoad has just been unveiled in the room.
So, the systems sucks, but what are you going to do about it?
You CAN tell the system and those who run it that you don't believe in it.
'But we have! We constantly whinge about it!'
Yes, well whingeing the way it's normally done has not effect when children do it to their parents.
Do you think it will work on a well entrenched, very well connected political establishment where the career politician is a master of tiptoeing through all sorts of minefields unscathed? A system that is if anything acutely self aware and determined to preserve itself by any means possible?
Go cry to the Hypnotoad.
You stand a better chance.
Some would argue that violent revolution is required, but I loathe to advocate violence no matter how revolutionary it may seem to be (and because 10 out of 10 times violence is used...someone gets hurt).
I advocate something much more pragmatic.
Rather than choosing the lesser of two weevils...
...or being 'apathetic'...
(by the by, thank you internet for all of these images...and people who put them on the internet...including the ones I used for making the first one)
...why don't we as a concerned group of individuals brought together within the confines of society and its many quirks, simply DO something about it?
Come General Election Day in the UK (Thursday, May 7, 2015), rather than partake of the unofficial National British Pass Time of Whingeing, why not whinge WHILST registering to vote AND queuing at your local electoral station to CAST your vote of 'No Confidence' (doing all of this will probably put you in the right grumpy mood to be able to do this last part).
I think it is the best course of action short of becoming an active participant in a real life re-enactment of an Alan Moore illustrated novella.
(I can almost feel the back of my head being struck by that awesome walking stick of his for saying that...)
By the by: up until about an hour ago, I thought I was alone in this particular thought regarding a solution for the political malaise of the UK, and yet it's funny what happens when you write 'vote of no confidence UK' into Google:
It gives information on how to successfully case a 'vote of no confidence', and is well worth a look.
Remember, folks, this is a democracy as much as it is a partisan democracy.
While NOT voting is a right within a democracy, VOTING, even if it is for NONE, is that right being put to action.
Rant over. :-)
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