Hi All,

Brief diversion from the kinky fun. In recent weeks there have been some high-profile “Don’t vote”/”Vote”/”Vote Labour” debates flying across cyberspace in the UK following a good old rant from Russell Brand as guest editor of the New Statesman saying “I will never vote and I don’t think you should either”.

Robert Webb retorted that you should (and he suggested voting labour).

I think people should vote too, but not because one lot of our current politicians are particularly better than another. If there’s no-one worth voting for, stand yourself.

I think you should vote because democracy is the least-worst system we have ever managed to come up with for how to organise ourselves as a society.

Democracy is the only system where you can entirely change every last little detail of how the country you live in is run… if only you can persuade enough people that it is a good idea to do so.

Let’s think about that for a moment. In the sort of revolution Brand seems to be tacitly suggesting we undertake, you don’t persuade people. Historically, you shoot them. It hasn’t worked out so well when it has been tried in the past, unless the revolution is used to put in place a democracy.

Russell Brand, I hear what you are saying, and I agree with some of it. But to say that the thing that is broken is the very mechanism of peaceful, one-person-one-vote decision making? There I think you are dangerously, dangerously wrong.

It may well be that the current crop of choice on the ballot papers are an indistinguishable omnishambles. That means we need higher quality people with higher quality plans for which we can vote.

All one has to do to change the way the country is run, from top to bottom, is to come up with a good suggestion for how to do it, then persuade people how good an idea it actually is.

That’s all. Not shoot them, bribe them, torture them, imprison them, rob them, run them out of the country, threaten them. Just persuade them that it is a good idea. Then they’ll vote for the idea, or at least indirectly vote for it by voting for people who can implement it. Admittedly you will need to find a few hundred trustworthy people to be in charge of implementing the idea as MP’s. If the idea is that good, surely it will attract enough people willing to work to put it into action?

Organising millions and million of human beings so they can live in close proximity to each other isn’t easy. Our current crop of politicians do seem to be a bit of a shower. But for heaven’s sake let’s not confuse those clowns currently standing with the basic issue of how we decide to organise ourselves.

We can do that by talking, deciding and taking a show of hands. (Democracy).

Or we can do what else, exactly?

Democracy is the one place where my vote really does count the same as everyone else’s. Even with imperfections like a first past the post voting system with constituencies. It doesn’t matter how rich or how ancient the bloodline, one person means one vote and that’s all they get.

By all means, choose not to vote for any of the current bunch. Stand yourself, or find someone you trust and convince them to stand instead. Propose ways of making a more equitable division of our society’s resources. If they’re good ideas, people might actually vote for them.

But say you will NEVER vote, and no-one else should either? How exactly do you propose we make decisions as a society?