So, did you vote in the Euro elections?
Apparently out of the 375 million Europeans eligible to vote, turn out was 43 percent, an all-time low. In Scotland, Wales and England only 14,032,420 of us bothered to vote. That’s a dismal 34.8 percent.
Congratulations to those who didn’t vote. As a result we are now represented by two members of the least appealing political party in Britain, a party whose prevailing doctrine is to discriminate against people on the basis of where they were born and the prevailing weather conditions.
Excuse me if I don’t name the party concerned. It is distasteful to have to do this in a democracy but in the age of Google Alerts, it is very easy to discover if you are being talked about on the net.
The party concerned have a tendency to flood blog comments with their supporters, drowning out legitimate criticism with noise.
As to their main policy, these days it is based on restricting immigration to Britain. Their argument boils down to this: If you were born somewhere else, you should stay there. Or at least, not come here.
Presumably this doesn’t apply to the bullet-headed brigade going on holiday or wishing to emigrate (assuming anyone will have them).
And it nimbly ignores the benefits this country receives from immigration. Let alone the fact that if given a DNA test, most people here would be hard pressed to trace their ancestry much earlier than the last influx of Vikings.
So how long do you have to be here before you’re solidly British? (My lot probably came in with the Normans, thanks for asking.)
Their previous stance was based on race, something which today it is illegal to pursue. Besides, it is a tendentious concept. At the genetic level, there is no such thing as race.
Differences between individuals outnumber those between groups of people. And skin colour is all about evolved strategies to cope with different sun and heat levels.
So racism boils down to being a bigoted because someone else’s ancestors had different weather.
If there’s a mildly amusing aspect to all this (and as a cartoonist and founder of apathyparty.co.uk, I suppose I should look for one), it’s this.
For the next four years, the two elected representatives are going to have to live and go to work somewhere foreign, alongside the sort of people they are trying so hard to prevent coming into the country.
Otherwise, this week, on this particular Monday, I can’t find anything to laugh about in the news.
Normal service will be resumed next week.
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