Democracy

I can feel a little buzz inside me right now. As I type I'm watching BBC News 24 with my Dad and Boris Johnson has just been elected Mayor of London. Over the space of the last two days the Conservative Party has just won a very substantial proportion of the local election vote nationally and can now lay claim to the London Mayor.

Now, before I go on here. This is not a big, lavish pro-Conservative post. I do have a certain tendancy to support the men in blue these days, but this is not an Conservative fan club, nor does their victory specifically leave me with a buzz.

Rather, I feel that with the Conservatives registering a level of success and Labour apparently in a slump, politics and the political process is coming alive a little. Sure, I still live in a place where I can pretty much gurantee my vote counts for nothing unless I vote for Labour, but it aint half interesting when the government no longer seems all powerful, all sweeping, as it did most recently under Tony Blair. Now it seems that the voter, the average man and woman on the street has some influence with the peeps in London and that we aren't a mere commodity that is easily ignored.

To recognise that fact makes me all the more thankful that the Lord has blessed this country in so many ways. To be in a land that inspite of all the ways in which we seem to be in decline gives its people the ability to influence their government is a great joy. I was in the polling station yesterday and while it was obvious that the turn out would be verging on the pathetic and that the place was deserted I was so thankful that I could go in and vote, aided by two friendly assistants and not face oppression and intimidation. It is a great blessing.

So, there you go. Democracy. Not perfect, and not sure to solve things we want to be solved, but it is a blessing from the Lord.