They're not voting because...
- I'll get added to the electoral role...
I'll get added to the electoral role and that means my useless local council will know who to chase for Council Tax. (It's happened to me before) - So if I don't register (and so don't vote) I don't get a large bill. Sure ..I'd like to vote but not if it's going to cost me hundreds of pounds.
written 8th Apr 2005
Responses
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Anonymous replies: So you are not voting because you are a thief.
At least you are honest about that.
Council tax is not a charge you have to pay in order to vote, it is your contribution to the local services that you use. It covers anything from schools to road repairs to rubbish collections to civic improvements to public transport to street lighting to social care and on and on.
When you don't pay you are thieving from your friends, family and neighbours, not to mention the other couple of hundred thousand people served by your local authority who are paying.
I am delighted that you don't vote.
written 8th Apr 2005 -
Anonymous replies: I think it's important to realise that while taxes are legitimate and necesary to provide essential services that council workers and politicians that authorise themselves to take large amounts of money out of the public purse for "fact finding missions", unecesary expenses and fat wage packets are really the people that should make you angry, not the people who are just hacked off with the state of play.
Of course benefit fraud adverts dont tend to make a point of how much public money actually goes to services we really need and what goes elsewhere.
written 8th Apr 2005 -
Anonymous replies: Ah but that's the point - if i get angry with the politicians I'll vote against them. I even have the choice to stand against them if I wish. I, like you, am not disenfranchised. Disenchantment is not the same as disenfranchisement.
Not paying taxes maybe a legitimate form of protest when you have no democratic input into the way they are spent and how they are raised, but in this country we do have a say - however crude a vote may seem. Not paying your taxes - council tax or otherwise - is theft and I will always be 'hacked off' by thieves, whoever they are, and especially when they are stealing from me, directly or indirectly.
Furthermore the general level of cynicism against politicians is boring. You get the politicians you deserve. Yes there are bad politicians, and there are incompetent politicians, but there are plenty of good hard working politicians too. Being hacked off with one or two is not sufficient reason to tar them all with the same brush.
written 8th Apr 2005
