Now, you can say what you like about Europe,
especially if you vote for UKIP. But whether you like your Brussels or not, the elections are in town.
For those of you who have never voted in one
of these before (which is fair enough, it only happens once every five years),
it’s quite simple. The parties are the same, but you probably haven’t heard of
your MEPs before. That’s fine, the feeling is probably mutual. On average,
there’s one British MEP for every 860,000 of us. They have a lot of people to
listen to, so I’m sure they’ll get round to you eventually. Your call is
important to them.
Before the outrageous theory that politicians
aren’t listening to you puts you off Europe, and you start to consider lifting
up the anchor and seeing if Britain can paddle it’s way further into the
Atlantic, flicking the Vs at any continental passer-by, remember that: 1.
Europe is bloody important to us and 2. The Atlantic is full of sharks and bits
of the Titanic. It simply won’t end well.
That’s where you come in. The purpose of this
article is not to recommend who you should vote for. You probably have a good
idea about which politicians you absolutely despise the least, so it would be
hugely in your interest to put an ‘x’ next to their name. I promise it’s worth
it. You’ll get a huge sensation of contributing to democracy, which is what our
forefathers would have wanted. Don’t forget, if you don’t vote, you can’t whinge
about which party wins. You’ll be limited to just whinging about the government
in general, which is massively risky, because if somebody even half-challenges
you for your idea of an alternative way of ruling people, you’ll have to be
forced to invent something on the spot, and it will be crap.
Politicians have been begging for “yoofs” to
pay attention to them since Supreme Warlord and Kaa from the Jungle Book
impersonator, Tony Blair, tried to rebrand Labour as a cool party. In a delayed
response, David Cameron (you may know him by his more deroga-Tory nickname), told his Conservatives to
‘hug a hoodie’. Nobody under 25, or over, for that matter, could keep a
straight face. As a result, barely any young people have voted. Some, like Russell
Brand, have never voted. So, when it
came to raising tuition fees in 2010, nobody in Westminster batted an eyelid,
because how many voters were affected? Not as many as you might think.
Now there’s a wedge in the chasm between politicians and students that will only grow bigger unless one group does the
right thing and try to bridge the gap. And seeing as well all know that politicians are smelly poopy bums, it’s up to the younger generation to be mature about
the situation.
Vote for whoever you want today. It’ll be the last thing they expect.
