The beauty of democracy is that your vote is worth the same as mine, yet you don't care enough to even try and understand the issues at stake. Like most elections, I expect the result will be swung by the uneducated who are sold scare stories about how awful the other side is. This is why elections are great big sales programs and also why most people are put off. They say they want to understand the real issues but do nothing to read around the subject and hence suffer the bafflement of spin from politicians who are people with alternate vested interests.
Its all too sad to contemplate.
Seeing as you're accusing people not caring enough, let me educate you on this misinformed idea you have about 'beautiful democracy and what it actually is, and, ask why you don't care enough about democracy to take the time to understand what it is your talking about.
The 'democracy' you speak of is a myth. We live in a country that espouses democracy; which allows one man one vote and then perverts that principle through a corrupt and outdated electoral system which favours in a number of ways the two big parties, Labour and Conservative. The first main obstacle to a true democracy is the lack proportional representation. As it stands we have electoral 'areas' that historically the two parties have manipulated to their own ends in order to secure representatives in parliament. What this means is that electoral percentage wise, no governing party ever has a particularly good mandate to govern. Very often a government is dictating UK policy with mandate of around 30% of the population; that's hardly 'democracy' by any stretch of the imagination. These parties don't want to give you true democracy through proportional representation because then they would lose control and not be able to dominate parliament whilst governing without a proper mandate.
Parliament is an outdated; still observing rules and rituals that were relevant 100 years ago but not today. It's anachronistic and badly in need of drastic overhaul if we are to see anything resembling true democracy. The party whip is a system whereby 'enforcers' either offer inducements or even threaten other party members to vote according to official party policy. That is to say, MPs are not allowed to vote according to conscience but have to comply with party policy, or else, more 'democracy' in action. In a true democracy every MP would be allowed to vote with their conscience on every vote. Basically this 'democratic' system as practised in parliament is tribal. It will always be tribal but at least under proportional representation interests would be served to other than the two dominant parties, each of which is as bad as the other.
Then there are the lobbyists, what a can of worms that is as recent scandals and unfulfilled promises to rectify the problem have shown. Nothing very 'democratic' about a system that allows corporate greed to interfere and cause bias in the system.
Then there's the corruption of cronyism. A good example came to light in the last couple of days. Amazon has been pursued (for ten years!) for unpaid taxes and has just agreed to cough up £130 odd million, except we now find it's actually less than £100 million because £33 million relates to a separate matter (so more lies from Osborne and Cameron). So what so you do with these multi national tax avoiders that are screwing you and me over by not paying tax? Well, Amazon is a good example. With a UK revenue of £5.3 billion and £11.9 million tax ((0.002 of it's revenue) you punish one of it's directors, by making Doug Gurr, president of Amazon China a non executive director of Works and Pensions. He must be gutted.
Returning to 'democracy in action'. Recently there was a furore about the fact that the House of Lords (don't get me started on what an elitist and anachronistic institution that is) voted against a government bill which forced it to be returned to the commons for amendment. There was big talk of curbing the powers of the Lords. What most people are not aware of is that there are certain established protocols for introducing major legislation change, but this government, not satisfied with that, and because of it's slim majority, has been subverting these established procedures in order to push/rush unpopular legislation through parliament in a decidedly undemocratic way. This resulted in a slap on the wrist from the House of Lords which the government didn't like.
This is your “beautiful democracy” in action. So what exactly is the value of your vote and mine in this miasmic mess?
