Voting Day

This was weird.

The voting hall was very well hidden from view. There was no one around. Apparently out of 480 people listed to vote, only 43 had turned up - and it was six in the evening!

It reminded me of those pictures from the Ukraine of people turning up to queue facing militia men with Kalashnikovs, or of people in Iraq being given the vote for the first time ever and turning up in their hundreds despite the threat from terrorists.

It does seem as though we take our freedoms here very much for granted, and perhaps we only come to value them when they are truly under threat - which is rather ironic, as I think that the UK is one of the most repressed and controlled states in Europe.

It's certainly one of the states with the most surveillance and controls on free speech. My American friends are appalled at how little freedom the Press has these days, and how little we seem to care!

Perhaps as long as we have cheap beer at the weekend, cheap flights abroad and utter crap like X-Factor to numb our brains into mindless submission, we are being fooled into thinking we've got all a modern society could possibly want or need. How utterly demoralising if that is the case.

Once again, I repeat the phrase Strange Days. We commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War, where millions died in the name of freedom.

And now we are more slaves to unseen masters in Europe than ever before!

Where are we going?