I seem to be in the mood for a rant and a ramble. Origin? Lets see...
There seems to be a repetitive theme of hopelessness. First instance within UK voting. Many people had given up on Tory and Labour by the time of the last election. So the LibDem's did get an unusual shot at power. Only to blow it badly. They don't seem to have any influence at all in British politics at the moment other than to be the Tory lap dog.
Shift over to America. Obama's initial popularity surge based on the initial virtues of truth and integrity are crumbling. Guantanamo is still there despite his pledge to disband it. His attempts to make taxation more evenly spread not just thwarted but derided by a hysterical right wing. On top of that. Goldman Sachs is a main sponsor for both Democrat and Republican.
See? That hopeless feeling I was getting at? Let's expand it a bit. Tesco. A fairly large number of reasonably well educated people in the UK now know that Tesco is a major tax evader with multiple Cayman Island accounts. They also know Tesco refused to even consider Jamie Oliver's caged chicken demands. They also know Tesco takes on unpaid labour thanks to the Tory 'work to welfare' insanity. And they may also remember Tesco was probably the only advertiser in News of the World to not pull it's ads before the paper was axed by Murdoch.
What do such well educated people do about it? Nothing. They continue to shop there and claim it's convenient. Now ok. Tesco does have a vast empire of supermarkets, mini-markets, petrol station shops and all the rest of it. Granted, sometimes it's almost unavoidable that you are going to end up grabbing that pint of milk and some petrol at a Tesco outlet sooner or later. But all the rest of the time? Really? For your main weekly shop? Every week? Why?
APATHY.
The real reason why there's no point voting anymore is voter apathy, nicely demonstrated by that "Yeah I know Tesco is crap, but I go there anyway, I can't change anything. (shrug)" attitude.
We did at one point have a socialist leaning Labour party who did provide an alternative to right wing Tory policy. But apathy of voters leads this to get messed up. As each election passes, more of the disenfranchised anarchist / socialist / left wing voter types simply don't bother.
Step up to the vote evolution. So what happens? The remaining voters are mainly right wing, so a party wanting to gain power fights for those votes. Sod you lefty types, you can't be bothered to vote, so why appeal to you?
Give it a few cycles of election and wooohooo well done all you apathetic voters! Now there really is bugger all point voting, because all the main parties are going after all the same right wing voters with the same agenda, same manifesto, same disdain for any left leaning political values.
Self fulfilling prophecy or what? Slow clap from me. Well done. Not voting at all really worked out well for you didn't it?