Are you voting?

The media loves visions of crumbling civilisations, thrives on prophesies of a brain-dead, zombielike populace and peppers its letters pages with elegies for a lost world of intelligence and passion. We smear tales of woe around like an over eager toddler with access to jam and clean washing.

And the noughties was dominated by wailing and gnashing over falling voting figures, and cries that a population spoon-fed on Big Brother and Botox had finally abandoned all pretence that they were engaging any more than three brain cells at one time.

But really – things aren’t that bad. There’s a load of bollocks spewed around about how we all vote more during Big Brother than we do during a parliamentary election. Only around six million votes were cast in the UK’s 2004 finale, and over twenty seven million were cast in the general election a year later. Across Europe, voter turnout in elections is generally high. The average voter turnout across the continent is around 66%.

The connection is there – people are switched on to politics. Yet bring up anything vaguely parliamentary in polite conversation and one is most likely to be met with a stony silence. I discovered this whilst in full spate about Eton’s very own Pillsbury Dough Idiot David Cameron. I was at a student barbeque amongst Politics, Sociology, Economics and Philosophy Students. Mid-rant I noticed no-one was making eye contact. Silence reigned as I stuttered to a halt. You could have cut the atmosphere with a spatula. A few sausages sizzled and the conversation returned to who wanted brown sauce.

Fervent political discourse seems to be an activity on a popularity par with train-spotting. Mention the P word and there is instant eye rolling, awkward twitching and hasty offers to get the next round in. The simple pleasure of a good old fashioned, glass banging rant is considered solely in conjunction with the town drunk.

A man who got people talking about politics: Barack Obama

But why? Why are citizens who are quite willing to make the journey to the polling station unprepared to engage in discussion with their friends, colleagues and peers? We might get an answer if we look at what gets people interested – and voting – in the first place. The highest voting turnouts seem to be when people think – or are led to think – that they can bring about change. The sole word in the vocabulary of the 2008 US election was change. When Czechoslovakia recorded a nearly 100% turnout rate it was after the Velvet Revolution. There were high voter turnouts across the board after the Second World War.

So people are really only interested when they think that their vote, or opinion, matters. And who can blame them? The whole operation is so corrupt and disheartening nowadays that it’s only an idiot who wastes time even thinking about any of it. When change seems possible – when it looks like things are looking up – that’s when people want to talk about politics. And change rarely seems possible. Even when it does, what good does ear-bashing and ranting with your companions do?

If change was brought about thanks to late night conversations and eager sixth formers, Barack Obama would have taken quite a different path. Even a staunch defender of the back garden soap box (and I include myself here) has to admit that letting off steam about foreign policy is hardly going to reduce the number of bombs detonated in Kabul.

But it’s still fun, right? We all love to let off steam? Rant and yell and rave and – oh.

Because that’s it. That’s the problem. We don’t like to talk about politics because we don’t talk about politics. We may start off calm and collected, interestedly listening to the opposition’s point of view. We may politely nod whilst the person we always thought was a reasonable and like minded friend reveals themselves as a bigot of the lowest order. But we all end up screaming and ranting and raving, losing all sense of eloquence and grammar as the person arguing with us morphs into everything that the world has ever done wrong in our lifetime, and they become responsible for everything from the recession to the cretin who wouldn’t extend our overdraft this morning. Many a friendship has been stretched to breaking point by political debate, and the more sensible amongst us understandably therefore avoid it like the plague.

So there we have it. A bit of New Year’s Joy. An article that doesn’t smear around woe. We’re not all brain-dead, zombie like clones who would rather watch Big Brother than read a newspaper. We’re animalistic, screaming balls of fury who can’t keep our tempers when slightly provoked. Isn’t that nice?