Spoil Vote In Action

Rage Against The Machine - The Spoil Vote Effect

This weeks music headlines have made me more happy and proud to be British than I have in many a year, but I just hope that its significant is not lost on the masses.

For as long as I can remember, the fight for the UK Christmas No. 1 song at the top of the charts has always been a close battle between perhaps two or three songs, with the rest so far behind as to not be considered also-rans.

The choices will normally be one current pop group, one in-form solo artist and maybe a dodgy charity organised song, but all of them will have invested thousands if not millions in advertising and promoting their songs and ensure it will have been shoved down our throats the second that Halloween is over.

Sadly this pretty much became a one horse affair when the x-Factor came along and hijacked the race as it's winner was pretty much guaranteed the top spot, them winning through the 'popular vote' barely days before the Christmas week starts.

However as anyone with real nouse and intelligence could tell you, the show itself is firmly rigged from the get go, with many great artists not even being given an on screen audition and adding insult to injury allowing a number of dodgy contestants to be deftly escorted through to the final to increase viewing and to seal how the shows final voting will go.

So the fact that a zero budget facebook group managed to prevent yet another manufactured pop idol be gifted the coveted Christmas No 1. spot, was a big fuck you to the establishment and to Simon Cowell, or at least that is how it what is was meant to be.

But why should I care so much and feel so proud that an American sourced internet online community helping a 17 year old American re-release top the UK charts, well because it has shown that the British public do have a choice, a real choice.

You see, for far too long we have been blindly going down dead end alleys, purely because on so many key issues we have been lied to and tricked into making a string of bad choices and all because we were publicly only offered two or three choices and all seemed bad.

It is like a standard 4 option questionnaire that asks you, do you want to be killed by a) a speeding car, b) a cancer, c) a rebellious teenager or d) a foreign terrorist? The very obvious answer is e) none of the above, I want to live a happy and healthy life thank you very much, but that wasn't an option you could choose.

Yes, for far too long we have allowed our blinkered eyes to only see the choices set down for us, instead of taking time out and thinking for ourselves what we really want.

What I like so much about this is that up until early December the media, tv and newspapers were all saying that whoever won the X-Factor would have the chat No 1. and only a Svengali or long odds gambler would have bet against it, as that is all that our options appeared to be. So when along came the facebook group that offered us an alternate choice I am so glad that so many people jumped at the chance to say that they too wanted a extra e) option all of their own and that their choices has been made for them long enough.

Now this kind of thing is unlikely to be repeated on a regular basis, and I'm not suggestting that we allow facebook groups to dictate our options any more than the we should the tv or radio, but I am hoping that the fact that 'we do always have a choice AND more than one choice, no matter how last minute or left field it might appear to be', is not lost in the confusion and celebration.

I mean, how liberating it would be on a public general election day, if everyone was to realise that a spoiled vote meant infinitely more than just not bothering to turn up. Equally, that if enough "other" candidates get elected then there would be sufficient reason to keep out any of the existing political parties, parties that clearly only exist to support themselves and their expensive lifestyles.