I've been cheated!

by Lena Lindsay

What a mess!

After all the fuss over the last few weeks, we end up with a hung parliament.

And to add more fuel to the fire has Brown resigned in a bid to tactically keep Labour’s power in parliament as the Tories looked ever more likely to be the rulers of Westminster.

Did I vote? No.

Do you I think the whole voting system is a joke? Yes.

I have been voting for as long as I have been able to - 7 years, but this year was the first that I lived away from home and of course the system of registration has to be difficult, doesn’t it?

Far from being a simple process of filling in a form online, you then have to deal with the incompetence of Royal Mail’s postage system that resulted in my registration form being lost.

When I debated about the whereabouts of my ballot card, a response of none registration was not what I wanted to hear.

In situations like this and the disorganisation of other parties that contributed to my basic human right being seized, doesn’t my payment of £130 council tax a month permit me to exercise my right as a British citizen to vote?

Never being one to discuss my vote, I believe that everyone has the right to vote for who they want, however, I was red faced and felt an anger boil inside me to discover some people voting for a smaller independent parties because they didn't understand the policies of the Conservatives, Labour or Liberal Democrats (the only front runners in politics), and that their vote "didn't matter"

For them, instead of educating themselves on the three main parties policies and finding a party that they agreed with the most, they in a sense, through sheer laziness wasted an opportunity that some people have died for.

No doubt the next time I sit down with them in a pub a listen to them moan about not being able to find a job or the unfairness of the middle class societies compared to that of the working class, I will find it hard to hold my tongue.

Politics is a tricky business, and no more tricky than we can see now. But is it not our right to vote wherever and whoever we are? And more so, do we not owe it to ourselves to know the basics about the parties that are running our country? Not just for us, but for our children also?

I for one, I am a lucky working class woman that Labour gave the one opportunity of higher education to. However, with the hung parliament still looming large and all three parties still playing under-hand games of chess pawning for power, at the moment the only one loosing out is us and I bet in no time at all those people that that didnt take the elections seriously will be wishing they had played their game right and used their vote wisely.