The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!


Dwight D. Eisenhower

My friend Lee Smallwood has been running a series of blog posts as we build up to the United Kingdom General Election on how the three main parties are fairing in terms of conversations on social media platforms (blogs, forums, micro-blogs etc). You can read these on Lee’s blog at http://lee.smallwood.ws.

One of Lee’s most recent posts (Have you decided) suggested that there was a substantial body of online conversations that indicated that nearly 46% of eligible voters would not vote. I ‘re-tweeted’ this post and added a question as to why so many people may not take up their democratic right. What particularly irks me about this situation is that here in the UK we have the right to vote, we have political and social freedom; a right that was fought for by our forefathers. There are many people in the world who are literally dying to obtain this right. I have written a blog post for Lee with my thoughts as to why people don’t vote and how that situation might be changed. You can read that on Lee’s blog – Why people don’t vote

Here, I would like to consider choice. We have in the United Kingdom the democratic right to decide whether to register to vote or not; if we register we then have the choice whether to vote or not. We have the freedom to choose, with that freedom of choice comes responsibility. With every choice that we make comes some form of
consequence, this could be positive or negative. For whatever reason they may have, those people who exercise their democratic freedom not to vote must accept their part in the election of the next Government; They may say they did not vote and that they do not support the Government or their policies, but through their choice they have passively allowed that situation to arise – the consequence of their inaction. They must accept that responsibility.

I urge those who are in that may be in the 46% above to accept the responsibility that comes with the choices that you have, value the democratic rights that you have. Rights that people in countries around the world that are run by despots, tyrants and juntas are fighting and dying for