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And I reserve (what?), the right to live (where?), my life this way (how?), I couldn't give, a damn when I (what?), hear people say (who?), I'll pay the price, that others pay,
cause it's worth it, yes it's worth living for...
I've come back from polling with the PSB on my discman and a stupid gumby smile on my face. Our best estimate is about a 50% turnout, which if replicated means that our Euro MPs will have a greater mandate from the people than their brethren in Westminster.
Things started slowly and predictably when we opened, an average of twenty to thirty peopleper hour from seven a.m. through to about four or five p.m. Then people started coming. And kept coming. And kept coming. Traditionally Euro-elections have the lowest turnouts and although we thought things might be a little better because we also had the London Assembly and Mayor elections too. By the end of the day we had 600 people at our station. There were two stations so double that for our ward, roughly two thousand people apiece, so four thousand, loose an estimated four hundred people who had proxy votes. Still very low, but compare that to numbers for the last general election, Labour winning with less than fifty percent of the vote.
Like I say, it's too early to talk about results. But we had people literally voting up to the last available minute, at fifteen minutes to the close of poll we'd normally have taken most of the posters down and done all the cleaning up we could, flicking blu-tack at one another and counting the minutes, we were still giving out ballot papers. People were good natured and happy, but there was something making them angry.
The next bit is even more highly subjective, by which I mean that it might not even be true, I may be misremembering. As far as I can judge, against my previous experience at this polling station and my knowledge of the area, the white share of the vote today was low, but on a general level with previous votes. The non-white vote, which was mainly Indians and Middle-South Africa was up. We had entire families coming to vote and confering about their vote. Old octagenarians with their children and grandchildren coming to vote, we've had some of this before, but nowhere near this level before. If you could look through our electoral rolls, you'd see entire groups of families that have come out and voted, unprecendented.
I would guess that Europe hasn't been much of an issue in our area, maybe there's a strong non-white vote against the perceived danger of the BNP, who had candidates on each ballot paper, but I would guess that the most obvious thing would be the Iraq war. I'm worried that rejoining Labour may have turned out to be a bad misjudgement for Ken Livingstone.
I'm hoping this doesn't turn out to be a hugely undeserved victory for Conservatives, that people don't forget the Eighties and Nineties and vote Tory as a protest rather than for a useful party, but we will see tomorrow. But what I know now is that today the 'norms', the 'mundanes', the 'sheeple', the ones 'still plugged into the Matrix', for a moment woke up and flexed their muscles. And it was amazing to see. |
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Really dumb of me.