Thankfully all of the electioneering is over now, it was a seven week long campaign in Scotland so there were quite a lot of party political broadcasts to dodge in that time. I count myself as being moderately interested in politics, if only to see what lies and excuses they can come up with for their nonsense. I’ve always used my vote, as my own mother did. Quite often my parents went to the poll station and basically cancelled out each other’s votes, but it was still important to them to do it.
So I was absolutely flabbergasted one day last week when I was watching the news and they asked a woman in Northern Ireland who she would be voting for and her reply was – I’ll ask my dad who I should vote for. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t actually heard her say it, she was probably in her late 20s or early 30s, although I have to say I’m rubbish at guessing peoples ages, anyway she wasn’t 18.
To make matters worse my husband told me that a male colleague of his tells his wife who to vote for, because she isn’t political, they are both about 26 years old.
I’m left wondering how common this is in the 21st century. My Granny was one of those women who had to wait until she was 30 before she got the vote and she never missed a chance to use hers. So are we going backwards now with young women taking everything so much for granted that they are quite happy to slip back into such a Victorian attitude?
When I started work it was accepted practice for woment to be given a lower wage for the same work as a man. Then when we went into the European Union things like that had to stop because we had the Equality of the Sexes laws. In the library which I worked in at the time we weren’t allowed to wear trousers, not even smart ones and it was a big thing for us to be able to say to out boss that HE couldn’t stop us from wearing trousers anymore.
It seems that when some women have things too easy they get complacent, but I don’t suppose they really know what it was like in the bad old days of getting treated like an inferior just because you were female. The Suffragettes will be birling in their graves!
I think everyone gets complacent when they have it too easy. Here in the US, we tout democracy, democracy, but our voting percentage is embarrassingly low. I know a lot of people think their vote doesn’t count, and I often agree with them, especially when the elected ignore what their constituency wants. But I think that if you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain about the government! So, of course, I vote!!
Joan,
It’s exactly the same here the turn out is generally terrible for any election. There are a lot of people who don’t vote because they say it just encourages the buggers, but I like to have a good moan about it all, so I vote. We have a rotten voting system too and it isn’t going to get any better now thanks to the idiots who voted against AV in the referendum, many of them want a different system but not that one, but it was a step in the right direction.
If you really want to get my back up, assume that I’m conservative just because my husband is. I see red for days!! I can’t imagine voting lockstep with anyone (of course I’m notoriously strong willed anyway).
Politics drives me bats — here it’s deteriorating into all sorts of nonsense. I simply won’t vote for the rockstars. I want the candidate who has real ideas, not just ideals. Plans, not platitudes. If only that one would run!!!
Pearl,
Me too. We say strong willed – they say argumentative!!
It’s just the same here. Thankfully only a few so called celebs have gone in for politics here and they’ve never been successful. Strangely, Glenda Jackson gave up acting and became an MP years ago but I think she is a decent MP. It’s the candidates who come straight from uni who drive me nuts, they want to run the world and they’ve never lived in the real world