Agreeing with a Tory politician

This has never happened to me before. I was listening to Nicholas Soames on the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 (he happens to be the grandson of Winston Churchill) and he said he was ashamed of the fact that the British electorate has returned two British National Party representatives to the European Parliament. I too am ashamed. Over a million people in this country chose to vote for what is essentially a fascist political party. I can only hope that this was a protest against the recent disaster that has been the British parliament and that it will be the highlight of the BNP's political existence, and they will swiftly return to the marginalised obscurity that is the only place for such opinions. I was quite annoyed by Jeremy Vine's interview with one of the new BNP MEP's, he did not pin him down about their policies, harped on about his brief membership of the National Front when a teenager and allowed him to get away with claiming not to know much about the policies and practices of the party because he had only been a member for 3 years.

Other than it being my 18 year old twins' first voting experience, which they undertook with some relish, going out at 7am to vote before going to work and college, I fear there was little to celebrate in the recent results. As an anarchist poster from the early 80's used to reliably announce: "Don't vote, it only encourages them!" Apparently (according to my sister's partner Geoff) Plato has some significant observations on the subject of democracy. We were discussing the world's environmental problems over lunch when I visited recently and I pointed out that democracy will not necessarily have a way to solve them as long term solutions are needed and the inevitable changes of policy that result from democracy mean that there will not be such long term commitment to any solutions, and that was basically part of the conclusion that Plato came to on the subject. Sometimes I wish I had the time to read such deep stuff as Plato, maybe one day I will.

(I am not sure about introducing politics to my blog. I had been mostly keeping away from contentious stuff as I do tend to have an opinion about everything and I worry that it could turn into an opinionated rant if I am not very careful. So I will try to keep it to a minimum and go back to the felt tomorrow.)