Showing posts with label vote. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vote. Show all posts

Monday, 31 October 2016

Donald Trump's normalisation by the media transcends the election



Trump is going to win. It is nauseating to state this and there will be no comfort in being correct. Win or lose, hard-headedness now helps prepare for what is to come after the media's fetishisation of this box-office charlatan.


The are signs that this won't be a walk in the park for Hilary Clinton. Firstly, the polls and betting all predicted a loss for Brexit and look what happened. The parallels with June's EU referendum are evident with the so-called establishment status quo against the perceived outsider. Of course most people know a born-into-privilege son of millionaires is hardly an outsider. 

Michael Moore also puts forward a strong case for a Trump victory. Saying things that desperate people want to hear is a tactic especially as in their euphoria they probably never even consider it could be deception.




Moore mentions the role of the media who pandered to his chest-beating audience for ratings, clicks & profile. Trump, the extreme narcissist was an advertisers dream. An election in which not much over half the electorate vote has become a TV execs dream. Pandora's Box was torn open by gleeful corporate media and to hell with the long term as long as everyone got their payday. A mentality replicated in the 2008 banking crash that helped sow the seeds for



The fact is from the very beginning it was obvious he represented millions of racists, from the dangerously bigoted to far right psychopaths. His poll numbers jumped every time he vilified another group — never his own clique of course. The default male  dominated media failed to frame his extremism in a responsible manner. Yet we get coverage as cartoonish as its subject.

There was little scratching below the surface towards the causes that propels him. We shouldn’t be relying on a random brave Muslim woman  to part-expose this sad American reality. Serious news organisations with their massive reach and resources should be aching to provide further context into a massively popular global story. And so it has rarely been more apparent that the gaze of scrutiny belongs overwhelmingly to those unable to grasp the threat he represents, some of whom will probably be spluttering into their privilege right now.



Wednesday, 11 November 2015

Tory tactics on voter registration are eroding democracy

Firstly, please register to vote here if you haven't done so. It's as important as it's ever been:



In 2009 the tories changed the way voters are registered so it is up to the individual rather than the head of a household. It was done under the pretence of stopping electoral fraud despite hardly any cases of this. This means that millions will drop off the register. Millions who wouldn't vote tory.

Electoral Reform Society campaign

For such an important democratic change there has been no TV campaign. A recent pension campaign saw Iain Duncan Smith spend £8.5 million of tax-payers money advertising it. 

As a student I was not informed enough to know about the voting process - a complete failure of the school system in a supposedly proud democracy. Being only just past 18 I had never voted before. Luckily universities would register students on mass. Under these rules there is a huge risk that many will be too busy to remember while studying, worrying about finances and generally being students. Those who move house or don't have mortgages with the insecurity of private rented accommodation are also at massive risk. The trend is that it's poorer people who are disproportionately affected. Facts reveal the tories' ulterior motive to gerrymander elections

Voters must be registered by December 1st 2015. The original date for registration was December 2016 but opportunistic self-serving tories rushed the date forward in the summer to deny a voice to those they care little about. Even the independent Electoral Commission has attacked these government manoeuvrings.

The conservatives want to rig their chances at elections next year by introducing the new system when there was no great call for it. This means registered voters will have to re-register if they want to choose the new London Mayor and Scottish & Welsh parliament next year. Why the haste? Of potentially even greater concern are boundary changes, rejected under the coalition (missing the Lib Dems yet?) but since a tory majority they are to become law in 2018 for the following election. These will be based on the electoral register of next month and therefore favour Cameron & co. if non-tories have dropped off the list. These changes are to make each constituency equal size yet shockingly they disregard non-registered voters.

Now to counter blatant tory manipulation the race is on register as many as possible before the coming in a matter of weeks. Labour are leading the charge here. With our antiquated broken voting system it is more important than ever to get involved in the democratic process while vested interests try and engineer a monopoly of power.


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