Why vote?

There will be a general election in the UK by summer 2010. I probably won't bother voting. Here's why.

For those of you who don't know, I guess I should explain what general elections are and how they work.

In the UK, the control of the government is held by the party that wins the most seats in a nationwide poll. The poll must happen at least once every five years, but the government can choose the date.

The election is to select members of parliament, 645 of them, each one representing one constituency, a geographical area.

Here's the first problem, and one reason why voting is probably a waste of time for me. I live in central London, in a constituency that is predominantly Conservative. Under almost all conceivable outcomes, the Conservative candidate will win by a large majority. My vote might slightly reduce this large majority but since the opposition will be divided between the two other main parties (Labour and Liberal Democrat in this case) there is no chance of a change. A Conservative MP will be elected to this constituency regardless.

This voting system means that the ratio of votes for the different parties is not accurately reflected in the number of MPs elected for that party. A proportional voting system would fix this but there's no chance of this happening as the only way it could be changed is by the government, which pretty much by definition, does not see such a change to be in its best interest.

So much for democracy.

The second problem is that MPs and Parliament itself seems to be completely useless. Parliament repeatedly fails to hold the executive to account. Perhaps the most egregious example is the Iraq war. Parliamentary debate on the Iraq war was 7 hours. For the vote on banning fox hunting, it was 700 hours. I know foxes are important to some people but are they really more important than the lives of at least 85,000 Iraqis (and probably far, far more). What a farce.

MPs in general just vote along party lines. If that is all they do, there is little or no value in having them there.

Since MPs fail to stop the Government from doing stupid things, what are they useful for? One response is that they work tirelessly (we are told) in the interests of their local constituents. Well, perhaps. Perhaps beefing up the powers of Citizens Advice Bureaux would provide a more cost effective substitute.

Third reason. Holidays. MPs seem to spend most of their time on holiday. Last year, they took 24 days for Christmas and this summer, they went into recess on 21st July and returned to work in 12th October. I see no evidence that they do anything of value during the recess but it appears we carry on paying their salaries regardless.

Fourth reason. Expenses. Enough has been written about the expenses scandal already.

So that's why I probably won't bother voting. OK?