Don't Be Dictated To

My recent post about The Occupy Movement has got me thinking more and more about how we should stand up for what we believe in. One of my pet hates is when people tell me that I shouldn’t be so stubborn, and I should just back down to other people because it makes life easier. Why should I? If everyone did that, laws would never change, technology would never develop, our human rights would be ignored and we'd probably all still be living in caves. A few years ago, I was lucky to work with a young Hungarian woman who had grown up during communist rule. She taught me that when you are fortunate to have freedom, you should use it as much as possible.

For anyone who has been living under a rock the past few weeks and doesn’t know, we had local elections here in the UK on Thursday 3^rd May. For the month running up to the elections, my letter box was bombarded by junk mail from the two main political parties in my neighbourhood. I found the literature from the Welsh Liberal Democrats to be particularly arrogant. First of all, they announced to everyone that they had been ‘running’ Cardiff since 2004. We live in a country that is governed by the National Assembly which, unlike England, is designed so that our politics aren’t about a particular party ruling over us. The Lib Dems then had the cheek to tell us that our only voting options in Roath are the Welsh Lib Dems or the Welsh Labour Party. Wow, I thought, that’s really strange because when I go and vote there are at least another four options on my ballot paper. Surely the fact that we are lucky enough to have the vote in the UK means that we have the choice to vote for whoever we want, otherwise we might as well live under a dictatorship. If every person in my neighbourhood didn’t listen to the propaganda about there ‘only being two political parties in Roath’, that accepted norm would probably soon disappear. So my message is to stand by what you believe in. And remember, it only takes one person to knock the balance the other way.