He began as a music journalist in South Yorkshire, hired predominantly to put his continuous breaking and entering of the club circuit to a profitable and worthwhile cause. He has since written for Soundbites, Sandman and Crack magazines alongside the University Newspaper the Terrace Star.

 

 

 

 

 

“If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote — who did not even leave the house on Election Day — am in no way responsible for what these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created.” – George Carlin, RIP.

 

On the 3rd of July 2008, MPs pooled their intellects to decide once and for all whether MPs should still get loads of money or not. “Ay” was the dominant response. There’s a comforting immunity in being your own hangman.

 

Eleven months on, and the tirade of public cynicism sounds incessant. The public claw at their TV screens like juvenile chimps for a justice that seems comparatively measly alongside oppressive laws and illegal wars.

 

If I were to calculate one inevitable outcome of this disproportionately lamented scandal and Daily Telegraph bill-payer it would be the sudden upsurge in Euro-optimism, albeit an optimism riddled and punctured by Great British archetypal “my religion is Jedi” sarcasm.

 

Apparently intent on exorcising the ghostly spectre of Greed from our politicians’ leathery flesh, old man of the mountain and pub-chat dogmatist, Nick Griffin insists, “There’s no protest vote like a British National Party protest vote, because all the others are in it together”. In what together, Nick? Parliament? Perhaps in their belief in the existence of the holocaust?

 

Treated with all the verve and gravity of a Crawley by-election, the 27 state European Parliament will represent over 500,000,000 citizens, who no doubt just crave to be subjugated to the political influence of hooligans in neckties.

 

Such lethargic cock-eyed summaries of the BNP are less than productive, I know, but a mass misplaced protest vin the name of mild annoyance is as great a dishonour to this land as the cultural stake currently contracted to Simon Cowell.

 

I think what really bites me about the BNP, Pokémon, and the I-Pod is their shameless targeting of suggestible young people.

 A friend of mine became entangled in the nationalist trawler net at a ripe young age. “I wasn’t really thinking for myself at thetime.” He told me, “They get you when you’re young… they manipulate you.”

 

There will be millions of first time voters coming to the elections on the 4th of June, and I’m far from convinced that such a number could fall under the thrall of a moth-eaten Peter Kay looking demagogue like Griffin in today’s image obsessed environment. That is, short of a Gok Wan makeover and Mark Ronson vocal remix.

 

No, a far more likely result – representative of the moods of modern youth – would be a mass voter turn-in. That is, a day in bed. No amount of sensationalist media uproar could shake the political apathy that entombs today’s teenagers. You can’t even vote by text message!!

As far as the conveniently timed distraction from serious decision making that is the expenses scandal goes, I give you the words of Mr Stephen Fry, “I’ve cheated expenses, I’ve fiddled things.”

And if Commons Speaker Michael Martin presented a light-hearted and witty infotainment panel show perhaps he could have kept his scalp as well….

The great flaw in Griffin’s plan is that although many angry and disillusioned young adults may be prey to notions of nationalism and sympathetic towards anti-immigration, they’ll never take it seriously enough to turn up and vote.

 

The London G20 demonstrations back in April revealed this much to us: The children of the revolution are just aching to be in Facebook photos.

 

For real success, Griffin should dress up as Ronald MacDonald and hang around Topshop doing the robot. Members of the public, on the other hand, should take cover from the befuddling rhetoric of opportunist greed-heads, and avoid pre-Third Reich impulse voting.

 

Jesus warned of false idols, and he wasn’t just talking about Milli Vanilli.