Friday 5 June 2009

The ghosts of elections past

MANY Euro polling stations in Northern Ireland were noteworthy for the tumbleweed rolling past the ballot boxes.

For years and years politicians on all sides of the divide have been calling for all sorts of parity with mainland UK: parity of expenditure, parity of service provision and so on. Now we have European parity of apathy with the rest of the UK.

What has been the cause of the malaise? Why have so many decided that marking the numbers in the boxes is no longer an option?

This time there were no football matches clashing with polling; the weather was good; and politics haven’t been off the headlines locally for the past 12 weeks both locally and nationally.

Perhaps that was the cause. Only true political anoraks can seriously enjoy watching politicians making excuses day in and day out.

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