June 4th, 2009

Haven’t blogged in a while, and my old posts seem really lame so I thought I’d discuss the the EU elections coming up soon.
On June the 4th, everyone over the age of 18 in the UK will be entitled to vote in the EU elections, but will they?

Sadly, probably not. The last election in 2004 had a 39% turnout, which is pathetic. The one in 1999 had fewer votes than big brother in that year. So why don’t people vote? The media can be largely to blame for this, so far there has been very little coverage. Some people I’ve spoken don’t even realise its happening soon. Many people in the UK are largely apathetic to politics, especially anything to do with Europe. British eurosceptism has always been prominent, so much so that there are parties dedicated to it (i.e UKIP).

So Why should people vote? The European Parliament has a massive impact on the lives of EU citizens and is democratically elected with 78 British MEPs, only Germany has more. Many people complain about the supposed ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU(an argument I can’t be bothered to go into after doing a presentation on it) but don’t vote in the EU elections. Any laws passed in the EU parliament apply in all member states despite the laws of the nation state. MEPs are there to represent you and your views so your vote can count. An example of an EU law which affects most people is the Roaming directive. This law limits how much mobile operators can charge you for roaming calls in other countries (I probably could of found a better example). One advantage the EU elections has over national ones is the use of the proportional representation electal system rather than first past the post which we have in the UK. This means the percentage of votes roughly works out as the percentage of seats given to political parties, an arguably fairer system. This gives smaller parties a much better chance of gaining representation and having their voices heard.

Which brings me on to my next point, VOTE GREEN. This party are slowly gaining more support and rightly so. They are honest, hard working and want to achieve actual change as their lead candidate in the Eastern Region Rupert Read shows by constantly campaigning and raising awareness. I read his blog occasionally (http://rupertsread.blogspot.com) which is a very insightful read. They are campaigning for many issues which most people would agree with but the larger parties tend to ignore in their ‘Green New Deal’. Basic things such as a living wage, green energy for all and affordable homes. The Green Party by gaining more votes and therefore getting more MEPs in the European Parliament will be able to create awareness about important issues and in turn affect real change.

I’ve skimmed over a lot the issues I’ve written about but please comment, I’d love to Know what other people have to say about what I’ve written.