I spend half my time in England and half in France. Unlike Tricia I have not jumped ship and gone native. I maintain stronger links with the UK which includes paying taxes and remaining signed-up with the NHS. Under the doctrine of ‘no taxation without representation’ I want to stay on the electoral register so that I can vote in general and local elections as well as referendums.
In days gone by only land owners could vote, indeed one still needs an address and I have several. I have half shares in a chicken ranch in France, a similar arrangement on a house in Brighton which is let out to pay for the chicken ranch and a garage in Hove where I keep stuff that I need for work. I also have some wonderful friends whose hospitality I abuse with regularity, sometimes for extended periods. Pete Leopard also allows me to use his home as an accommodation address for my mail. When it comes to a place to lay my head, keep possessions and pay my taxes from I am spoiled for choice.
However because I do not pay council tax or have a rent book, the electoral system only has one category which will allow me to remain on the electoral register, and that is ‘homeless’. The official term is voting under a ‘declaration of local connection’ and is for people voting in an area where they are not resident. It covers a number of situations but the form used to apply for such consideration is referred to by the bureaucrats as a ‘homeless’ form - because that is what it says at the top:
At some level most people living in England are aware of ‘the homeless’. These are the lumpen proletariat who rattle plastic cups outside the supermarket, the drinkers on park benches, the bundles of rags huddled in doorways and living under flyovers. Some of them may not be technically homeless but they certainly have the shitty end of the stick. To be included among them as a technicality is an interesting position and while it is nothing like actually being homeless, it has given me a new perspective.
On one hand I distinguish myself from those with no home by being very comfortably off, doing a job I (for the most part) enjoy and am paid for, having family and friends and an abundance of sticks that have never experienced excrement at either end. On the other hand every time I have to deal with the electoral system I have to describe myself as homeless and for a few seconds I am treated as ‘homeless’. It does only last for the time it takes me to explain my situation and then I am treated as ‘normal’.
In 1969 the age of majority was reduced from 21 and I was one of the first people to vote at 18. I was politically ignorant and the political debate, carried out interminably on the Home Service which was a permanent fixture in our kitchen, seemed unfathomable. I knew I did not like the Tories, but that was easy. The Prime Minister, Harold Wilson (who lived in our street) behaved like an arrogant jerk and I found his behaviour very unpleasant. The other grey men of the Labour Party were equally uninspiring. For example Tony Benn, one of the few politicians who has proved to have any integrity, was Postmaster General and had just closed down the pirate radio stations. To add insult to injury he also imposed Radio One on us. (You had to be there to truly appreciate the banality of the main stream DJs) and at the time I hated the man.
This only left the Liberals. And they had one policy which appealed to me – proportional representation. As a very politically immature 18 year old, it was the only political issue that really registered with me. So for the first time I voted for a lost cause. When I came out of the polling station I was interviewed by BBC World Service who were doing a report on the reduced age of majority. Over 40 years later I am still embarrassed by the inarticulacy of my responses to the interviewers questions, which boiled down to the idea that all politicians are much the same and could not be trusted. Of course a few years later Thatcher and Blair would start a 30 year process which would confirm this view. The difference being that back then I was just covering up my ignorance of the differences between parties and individuals.
I have voted in every election since and usually for a candidate committed to proportional representation. The only time I have voted for a winning party was Labour in 1997. While I said at the time I would have voted for a cockroach if it got rid of the Tories, I was unaware of how close I had come to doing something very similar in helping Tony Blair into Downing Street - but I digress
Last year I was in France during the General Election and having registered as homeless, my friend Keith voted on my behalf by proxy. Keith and I voted for the Green candidate Caroline Lucas who won the Brighton Pavilion seat. It is easy to write off all politicians as power mad, self-serving tossers but I have every faith that Caroline will remain a well-balanced and thoroughly honourable representative of the people.
This year I timed my return to the UK to vote in the referendum on AV. Sadly I knew it was a waste of time.
Nick Clegg had made such a hash of it that there was no way it was going to happen. He had been thoroughly bum-fucked by Cameron and the Eton Rifles and to add to the crap-quotient he seemed to like it. He only showed any spirit in the last few days but by then the news agenda which had been flooded with Royal Wedding effluvia, became swamped by the assassination of Osama Bin Laden.
Even on the day of the vote the red tops were either drooling over the royal wedding or salivating over Osam.
The rest of the press were helping condem electoral reform for another 'generation' (what ever that is supposed to mean).
The Daily Mail was bleating it usual ‘make them afraid’ line
But I was to be thwarted…
End of Part 1 – to be continued
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