This Is Not A
BLOG!
Date: 18/04/15
Encompassed
I thought that I'd done this before, but if I ever did, I can't find it now.
There's a useful little doobrey at Political Compass which - once you have answered some interesting questions - will show you where you stand politically, and how you match up with the parties standing (or, in the case of UKIP, the FlabDims and the Scotland Regional Office of the Labour Party, staggering) in the forthcoming exercise in fake democracy.
Here's what it says about me:
I'm very pleased about this. I always felt that the old clichés about growing more conservative as you grow older were both over-stated and a way for the utterers of said bromides to excuse the fact that they have sold out. I don't see how - given greater experience of the world as it is owned and controlled today, and seeing, often at close hand, what that leads to - anyone can become less radical with age without them having, in all decency, to give up the pretence of having a functioning conscience.
So, I'll be voting Green then?
Well, no actually.
Although there is - unlike last time - a Green candidate standing this time, and although I have no reason to suspect he is other than a personable lad and as sincere as these things go, the Greens' presence in Wales suffers in my view from one overwhelming obstacle to my support. Namely, that there is actually no Green Party of Wales. Surprisingly, given the day and age, the Greens in Wales are still part of a strange entity calling itself The Green Party Of England And Wales so - unlike its Scottish equivalent - it has little room to formulate policies designed for our country. On top of which, a considerable proportion of the senior figures in that Party's operations here are not only from England, and therefore have come to our country in The Spirit Of The Tee-Pee to live out their own Good Life fantasy on someone else's territory, but the attitudes expressed by some of them do smack more than a little of the Old Colonial (Royston Jones has a post outlining these issues here). So voting for the Greens would be, to my view, as bad as voting for any other party who thinks that my country being a derided or ignored appendage to another one is the best of all possible worlds.
So, if not them, then who? Well, that of course is my business and nobody else's. If I bother to do anything other than 'spoil' my ballot paper of course, which is an option I am still considering.
