I've just finished reading an article, a piece of comment by a journalist, name of Daniel Finkelstein, concerning the current mood and uptake of interest by the typical voter of government issues and policies. Here is the link:

[link]

I have a feeling that with all the bleating and handwringing that accompanies low voter turnouts, that we, the voters, will have to suffer through numerous appeals for the health of democracy, voter attendance/interest and community engagement. There will be heart-on-the-sleeve dewy eyed comedians reminding us how stupid it is not to vote, television personalities pointing fingers at developing nations overseas and contemplating with quivering bottom lips the plight of those who don't have our wonderful political system.

I imagine that I will be condescended to perhaps twenty times every day on the internet, in print media, television and over the radio. I will be made to feel like a scab, someone happy to step across the picket line of democracy.

Well what is democracy then? Is it a child hoping for a bone marrow transplant paid for by the donations of the masses? Will our attention make it better? I doubt it.

The system by which we live by sounds like a welfare cheat, taking from so many in so many different ways, promising to change, but always reverting to the banal, the easy and the lazy courses of action. It even seems to whine piteously to those that are more robust, "why do you think it's right to be better than us?", "What makes you so special then?"

Well, I think that the points raised about the gulf between voter uptake and the politicians' views on uptake are a siren sounding for those willing to hear. If I can remember, with clarity, some of the important conversations I have had over the past two years, why can I not remember the outcome of the legal reforms bills that proposed to effectively emasculate the parliament?

It's because nobody is talking to me.

Politicians have achieved their zenith, discussing the world in terms that they (and very few others) can understand. We get 'targets', 'reforms' and 'efficiencies' every day. The words are english, but evidently the meaning is greek to me. We get week long arguments about the percentage of the sector of the ringfenced portion of the spending package of the budget (in real terms) for the next financial period/age/epoch/millenium. I cannot remember this information because it is not, in fact, information. It is a clever device to keep a room full of elected representatives busy without drawing attention to their shortcomings and keeping the voters largely in the dark.

This is why people forget, deride, are apathetic towards politics and political agendas: we are not involved in the conversation. And as your parents no doubt said, it's rude to listen in on someone else when you're not part of the conversation.

So, I guess I should say to anyone listening (and by now I guess I'm down to an audience of me), that there are two roads away from this problem:

1) People begin to converse again and use common measures, common benchmarks for discussing performance and take responsibility for the words they speak. Let the media mediate and the government govern rather than pandering to the next global media policy maker. Escape banality.

2) The red tape slithers into the heads of the government, the filing cabinets overflow with directives and initiatives, the hedges grow higher and the code grows even more impenetrable. The edifice of democracy slowly crumbles like a mummy in the desert air, dessicated, frail and above all, hollow.

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I want to see people talking; it's important. I want someone to make a stupid gesture or a rude joke, or be an ass and have the guts to say, "I'm sorry, I'm not perfect". I don't need any reasoning about tiredness, busy schedules, any of it.

What does it take nowadays for someone to fall on their sword? A scandal about their sexuality? An inappropriate email? They still don't recognise the obvious problem: if you act like it was tawdry and inappropriate the pantomime that is the media milieu will act like a crowd of children, hooting and laughing.

Let them be mean, venal, bitter and rough edged. Let us see our representatives live and learn and grow into their roles, and allow us to grow up with them. But above all, prize those who speak to us and not into the dusty pages of commitee meeting minutes, who are human enough to see those waiting outside in the cold, waiting to come in and chat.