{"id":540,"date":"2006-07-31T13:47:25","date_gmt":"2006-07-31T12:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/index.php\/archive\/mark-thomas-on-voting-green\/"},"modified":"2006-07-31T13:47:25","modified_gmt":"2006-07-31T12:47:25","slug":"mark-thomas-on-voting-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/archive\/mark-thomas-on-voting-green\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Thomas on Voting Green"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fascinating interview in Metro the other day, with the always engaging comedian-turned-activist Mark Thomas. He&#8217;s a Green Party supporter, and like me often gets fools asking &#8216;Isn&#8217;t that a wasted vote, though?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>My response is usually to point out that no votes for the Greens are wasted: they&#8217;re all counted and recorded forever, and are USED to help the party know they&#8217;re doing the right thing, to indicate that people actually want something to change. An election is officially announced as a Notice Of Poll, because it&#8217;s THE poll. So to vote for one of the big parties purely because they&#8217;re more likely to win is like voting for your favourite film from a choice of two, where neither is really you.  What&#8217;s the point of voting for something you don&#8217;t entirely like? A vote for Least Worst rather than what you really, actually want. THAT&#8217;S a wasted vote. As is not voting at all.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Thomas puts it better: <\/p>\n<p>MT: I&#8217;m a Green Party voter.<br \/>\nMETRO: Doesn&#8217;t that seem like a wasted vote?<br \/>\nMT: Not unless you say what you want, you&#8217;re not gonna get it. I&#8217;m not gonna play the game of &#8216;let&#8217;s vote for who came second in the throat-cutting competition&#8217;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fascinating interview in Metro the other day, with the always engaging comedian-turned-activist Mark Thomas. He&#8217;s a Green Party supporter, and like me often gets fools asking &#8216;Isn&#8217;t that a wasted vote, though?&#8217; My response is usually to point out that no votes for the Greens are wasted: they&#8217;re all counted and recorded forever, and are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}