There's a general election fast approaching here in England. As a result, voting fever seems to have swept the nation. But I don't vote, and it irritates me when people cannot understand that. So why don't I?
First and foremost, I really don't care about it. Seriously. I have faith in any of the three potential leaders to... well... lead. Everyone's saying Gordon Brown was an awful PM, but I really didn't distinguish him, Tony Blair, and that bloke before Blair that scarily resembled the IT assistant at my old high school.
I don't want to be caught up in arguments related to it. They're boring, stupid, and get you absolutely nowhere. You always know that whenever someone asks "Who're you voting for?", it's more likely than not that your reply will be greeted with an immediate, long, pointless argument about why your opinion is wrong and why you need to vote for [x] instead. As I've seen happen with friends, these arguments never persuade you. Ever. If anything, they make you MORE against the people they like because they all seem like such dicks about it!
If I'm pressured into voting, the people I voted for win, then they cock things up, I'll be getting blamed by friends that voted otherwise. Again, cannot be bothered.
Everyone just tries to stuff it down my throats. Not just talking about voting friends here. We get The Mirror, a newspaper that seems intent on putting down the Conservative party in any means possible (including a remarkably pathetic "Don't Get Conned", with the "o" of "Conned" replaced with David Cameron's face). And there are billboards all around the UK which just have cheesy, smirking MPs smiling for a photograph. How am I meant to make a decision of my own when everyone else is doing it for me, and not giving me anything with which to make a logical decision myself?
And lastly, something which has been touched on in the previous points, it just causes arguments. It's like religion - its primary purpose seems to be to divide people and have them fight each other. The main difference between religion and politics is that, unfortunately, politics can be proven to exist. Everything else is the same - a single authoritative figure that embellishes truths and seems to be great when (s)he probably isn't, a group of followers comprised of a balance between people that actually believe in what the higher up is saying, and people that are just brainless sheep or simply trying to fit in.
So sod politics. That voting slip will make a good bonfire starter for when I can incinerate more of my junk later today.
EDIT: A YEAR ON
There's a point I forgot to touch on when I wrote this last year. I've heard a lot of people mention that "if you don't vote, you can't complain". This too, to me, is bollocks. I assume the point behind this is "you can't complain about [party 1] if you didn't vote for [party 2]. But this isn't what I'm doing. Just because I can poke fun at [party 1] doesn't mean I think [party 2] would have been better, or even as good. For all I know, they could have been absolutely dire.I've nothing against other people voting, don't get me wrong. I just don't want any part of it.