Pollsters announce (or rather they occasionally let slip) that a large proportion of the adult population of the UK don't know that a referendum is to be held to decide on voting systems for general elections. Of those who do know, a large proportion don't intend to vote and another large proportion (not necessarily the same people) don't know how the Alternative Vote system works.
Rather than go off in a middle-class strop about the stupidity of the masses and "if they can't be bothered to understand they shouldn't even have the vote"...
I have some idea of how stupid I am, and who among us has never voted on something we don't fully understand?
...I will simply make a few observations.
- Some people somehow contrive to be unaware of even the headlines of current news.
- To some people, politics is somewhere between a criminal racket and a game which is of no interest to them.
Put like that, it's easy to understand. I have no idea what's going on in the world of reality television and I consider investment banking to be somewhere between a criminal racket and a game which is of no interest to me. My interests are obviously the right ones and other people's are simply depressing, but I have no right to criticise.
