BRITISH VOTING PATTERNS.

Or who votes Green? And Why!!!!

It's not my imagination because proper political commentators have said this but it takes longer now,now we have digital communication etc to get the result of a local election out than back in the day when it was a guy on tv with a home made “swingometer’. Remember when - in the 1960s,70s,80s,even 90s,the media all agog,pretending it was exciting,would be all ready to film and record the Returning Officer of whatever Local Authority announce at 3am the result of the vote. It had been quickly and efficiently counted and it was all wrapped up and in nicely dramatic fashion the media could bring you the results within hours of the poll closing,and Screaming Lord Sutch always managed to get the prime place just by the returning officers right shoulder. Now we live in a digital world where everything is fast and connected and it takes at least a day and a half to get the result out and that's without disputes or recounts. The media is learning there is no point in expecting a dramatic in the small hours result announcement because now we are a more just and caring society we knock off the count and let all the tellers go home to their families and return next day in proper working hours. It's so much more civilized. And boring! I'm glad we still use the age old method of voting. We place a cross on a slip of paper. It's much more secure than tapping an icon on a screen. Who knows what transformations an ALGORITHM inside the program can do to your tap in the secret realms of the cyber world. We vote -alone- in the secret privacy of the booth. Thus we vote in self serving fashion for the candidate who has promised to cut all that social spending to the minimum and promised us we can keep more of any money we have been savvy enough to accrue. Of course we have been very vocal about how we carealot about the socially disadvantaged so when the result comes out and Mr GrindthePoor has won in contradiction to all the poll forecasts,well it's very puzzling. Who voted for this guy,or sometimes Mrs GrindthePoor. According to reliable and well conducted pre-vote polls three quarters of the registered voters declared they were going to vote for He/She/Them Nicey-Nicey,yet almost no one did. It's a puzzle. Now a new concern is Family Voting. This is a safe euphemism for women in black robes of the Muslim faith being told who to place their cross by,by their husband,who in turn has been told who the “clan” is voting for in a block vote by a male superior to him. It's not THAT sinister, and it's what people have always done. In Britain ever since the vote became both more or less universal and “secret” whole towns,families,tranches of society have voted en bloc for “their” party. It's only in VERY recent years that this certainty has broken down. So long as no actual fraud is involved then a whole lot of people all going into the voting booth individually and placing their cross beside a name they have all been told to,is not criminal or even sinister,in itself. People have always voted that way. It has been noted that “the vote” is not SO SECRET as we think. On the voting slip you get handed you at the voting venue is a serial number,it corresponds to a serial number on the counterfoil it was torn from. Thus it's possible,highly unlikely but possible,that your individual vote could be identified. This has only ever been used in rare cases where some singularly strange disruption has occurred. One of the ballot boxes going missing or such. Or allegations of yes,fraudulent voting. But it's worth bearing in mind that for a short while after the vote YOUR VOTE can be identified should anyone in control of the information wish to do so. I dont know for how long they keep the voting slips and associated paperwork. It would be bulky to keep so they must discard it at some point. But my question is - who votes Green and Why? In the last General Election NO ONE wanted to vote Labour or Tory. Both major parties of yore seemed and were deeply tarnished. So mainstream Tory voters voted Green instead because “green” is NICE. It's about trees,and birds and flowers. And a lot of old style hardened Labour voters voted Green because Green is about sticking it to the rich. Thus the Green Party had a boost. And people found out that living in a Green World is not so idyllic. The Green Movement,like the Feminist Movement (although both have deeper more obnoxious origins)addressed some valid points way back in the day. But it got infiltrated and hijacked as many old style green activists including the creator of Greenpeace can testify. Its now about trashing the environment to save the planet. Green local Councils cut down trees. And the fact that Dull Derek has chosen to rename himself using a name with deeply unpleasant and sinister resonances should warn anyone to avoid those people.