Click on the image to enlargeNext week, Biteback is publishing a series of books under the banner WHY VOTE? Each book lays out the main reasons for voting for a particular party. In addition to the volumes covering the Conservatives, Labour and the LibDems there are also books for the SNP, Plaid and the Greens.
Also, David Seymour and Jo Phillips have written a book aimed at the politically apathetic called WHY VOTE: A Guide for Those Who Can't Be Bothered. Jo used to be the editor of Sunday Service on 5 Live and this book is written very much in the humorous vein of that much missed radio programme.
All the books are £6.99 and are around 128 pages long. They are aimed at floating voters and those who simply want to inform themselves better about the policy platforms of the various parties.
If any politics teachers are reading this, the books are ideal to give candidates in mock elections.
You can preorder copies HERE.
* For those sensing a conspiracy against UKIP, I should make it clear that we commissioned them to write a similar book, but they failed to deliver a publishable manuscript in time. And no, we didn't ask the BNP. Go figure.
21 comments:
Now that is a great idea. The why bother to vote book should be in all schools and colleges
Why bother? The system and the people involved are totally corrupt.
I was going to cry fowl about the lack of a UKIP book but then I saw your tiny disclaimer.... I have nothing to post about now.
Excellent. Will you do Dave et al the great kindness of sending round to them one of the "Why vote Conservative?" books so they can tell the rest of us please?
(Also, £6.99 is a bit steep to find out what we should be told for free! ;-) )
Why bother..If you live like most people in "safe seats" and your view is different from the party that has held the seat since the year dot (therefore your vote is irrelevent and doesn't count)
..Oh yes and they are all robbin bar stewards who lie and can't even give a straight answer to questions and treat the electorate with total contempt.
If you'd asked the Pirate Party, I'm sure we could have got you a manuscript.
I have figured.
This booklet seems laudable, except that you have made a political decision to include the Greens and not the BNP
The BNP have overtaken the Greens in popularity in this country, especially since Labour came to power.
In 2007, for example,
BNP fielded 119 candidates and lost 85 deposits.
Greens fielded 203 candidates and lost 179 deposits.
Percentage of votes in seats contested, Green 3.29, BNP 4.19
The Greens are either stagnating or going backwards and the BNP are gaining by the year. They have done this with less than half the expenditure and less than half number of candidates and without the almost blanket daily coverage that the Greens get, either explicitly or implicitly, by the discussion of green issues in the MSM
You book is not therefore an accurate reflection of British voting intention in 2010.
Once again, school children will be propagandized through bias by omission.
(full article: http://wrinkledweasel.blogspot.com/2009/05/does-bnp-have-more-legitimate-electoral.html)
Are the BNP proscribed?
Or are they a legitimate political party in Britain?
Still trying to 'figure'.
....because the police unaccountably frown on the required combination of hemp and lamp-posts.
Frank Field is superb on 'Today' this morning.
We are educating a generation of young people to be unemployed!!!!
The truth. Gordon and the rest of the vegetables (inc Dave) should learn.
What? £6.99 for 128 blank pages?
As to the suggestion these should be is schools...absolutely no no no. There is enough spoon feeding and indoctrination. Once it is in, the Federasts and Fabians will be all over them like a cheap suit making sure it is "correct".
We can vote for Labour, the Lib Dems or the Tories. Respectively, these are an incredibly incompetent left-wing party, a really incompetent left-wing party and a pretty incompetent left-wing party.
Or we could vote for one of the smaller parties but, if you're going to do that, you might as well not show up on polling day because the smaller parties are functionally irrelevant in a first-past-the-post system. This, of course, assumes that you don't live in a safe seat, in which case your vote is irrelevant no matter who you cast it for.
If I vote, I'll vote Conservative. It won't matter because I live in a solid Labour area. I'll won't vote Tory because I'm convinced by the party - truth be told, the party has done nothing to earn my vote and its leadership is weak and cowardly. No, I'll vote Tory (if I vote at all) because Cameron's incompetence will be marginally less than Brown's incompetence and because Cameron, though a weak and insipid man who has no faith in his own party and is devoid of ideals, is at least less openly malicious than Brown.
Understand why no BNP but it would have been nice to see. The inquiring mind I have meant I read their manifesto and boy did it confirm what a crock they are. If they had written a book it would have been a giggle with their insane ramblings. Also would have confirmed that they are not a right wing party but very much of the left, closer to Socialism/Communism than most realise. And do we really want every man owning a rifle, seriously that is what they proposed.
I thought the book Why vote Labour was only one page
oh come on iain. its only worth voting if you are lucky to live in a marginal constituency......
It's ok, the BNP booklet would;ve just been a bloke with an ill-fitting shirt crying and masturbating simultaneously, with a copy of Mein Kampf by his side.
The tories book, on the other hand, is 128 scribbled together pictures of green trees, p&p for that is a further £50 to goes to an unnamed international trust, exzactly whose trust is, I admit, unknown.
Real question, why no Cameron foreword for the Tory book?
"Why bother? The system and the people involved are totally corrupt."
Nope. The system and the people might be partially corrupt, but for Parliament to be totally corrupt would require you to demonstrate that each and every MP is corrupt, that every single founding principle of Parliament was currupt, and that the idea of democracy was corrupt.
I'm guessing you can't do that, right?
"The Greens are either stagnating or going backwards and the BNP are gaining by the year." -- "Wrinkled Weasel"
In the 2009 European elections, the Green vote increased by c. twice the factor that the BNP vote increased. Due to an idiosynracy of the voting system, of course, they failed to gain any actual seats from it. But it's nonsense to suggest that the Greens are "stagnating" when they not only continue to get far more votes in the EU elections, but also see their vote increase by a greater factor.
"oh come on iain. its only worth voting if you are lucky to live in a marginal constituency......"
Nonsense. Though FPTP is indeed an indefensible system for other reasons, the simple fact is that your vote has exactly the same effect in a marginal constituency as it does in a safe one. The difference is in the votes of other people around you -- mainly, that more people disagree with you. Tough luck, I'm afraid.
Why should anyone consider voting for the useless, pointless Tories? May as well keep the current Labour party in.
The only way to increase the turnout is for voters to register their disgust by voting for NONE OF THE ABOVE
Q summed it up brilliantly
We can vote for Labour, the Lib Dems or the Tories. Respectively, these are an incredibly incompetent left-wing party, a really incompetent left-wing party and a pretty incompetent left-wing party.
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