Lindy Kato (Writer)

Count Binface, at the Glee Club, Birmingham (2024) courtesy Jpdfive

I have certain rules that my brain should obey. Do not think about politics is one of them. There isn’t anything wrong with politics but because my brain ranges at the speed of the TVG (train à grande vitesse) out of Paris (OK, maybe these days more Rusty from Starlight Express) to the outer edges of the universe and beyond … oh brain, you’ve done it again and now I’m with a band from my childhood playing “One Step Beyond“, I end up with too many colliding waves in my brain. There are two relevant things about this though, my mokopuna (grandchild) plays the saxophone and politics has become madness (the name of the group).

Since my brain specialises in defiance, and the launch of the final book in my trilogy is tomorrow (and here is a link Acts of Defiance), it has wandered into politics. Mostly because it seems there are elections everywhere and the newspapers are saying that AI is influencing the outcomes and according to Trump – anyone he doesn’t like is interfering and not in his favour. He might find it’s a disintegrating fan base issue.

Voting was simple when I was a child. I thought there were only two parties in the UK (which wasn’t true). Mum would vote conservative and Dad voted labour and every election they would attempt to persuade one another that as they were each cancelling the others vote, they should both not bother. It never happened since they knew the other would sneak out and vote, so for ever their votes cancelled out.

Politics livened up as far as I was concerned in 1982, when Screaming Lord Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow (he was neither of these things) formed the Monster Raving Loony Party. These days I’m not loyal to any party and I generally do a bit of research before I decide. Here in New Zealand, you get two votes, one for the candidate you want to represent your area, and one for a party. The party vote doesn’t have to be for the party of your candidate. Last time it landed us with three parties in power as a coalition. This is the danger; you get parties that almost no one wants that have too big a say in the running of the country.

This week is our chance to fix it, but the polls are showing that it’s tight and it’ll end in a flurry of phone calls to political friends of each of the main parties who will then give loads of concessions to make more buddies than the ‘other’ side. I’m no longer sure who ‘other’ is. There are two main parties, labour and national, but I’m not even sure how major they are any more. I wonder if they could both be ousted by all the parties with the least votes (they must be over a 5% threshold) banding together. It’s an idle thought because they have seriously opposing views. This is why my brain is banned from politics, and also what to do with a lotto ticket win (easily fixed by not buying lotto tickets).

However, it isn’t just little old NZ. I have learned (from the UK Guardian) that Muslim Bedouin women have upset the Israeli leadership (now on rockier ground) by voting when they previously didn’t know they had the right. The Knesset is even more of a mess than New Zealand with eleven parties making up parliament and no party has ever had enough seats to govern alone. Naturally Netanyahu has accused the Bedouin of fraud, but the fact of the matter is that they are allowed to vote in a national election (even women) but because many live in unregistered villages, they don’t have polling stations. It is illegal to organise transport, so Jewish women just happened to connect with their Bedouin sisters to see if they needed a ride to polling stations. These were protected by Jewish men because if they were protected by Bedouin men, then the police would have the urge to intervene and arrest them for something. There is clearly an underground dissatisfaction that has enabled a legal shift in Israel. I’m pretty sure you can’t blame AI for this because these people don’t have water and electricity let alone ‘Big Brother’ in their lives.

Australia has had four (five if you include Tony Abbott) prime ministers in the last ten years, and they are also in election season. The UK has had seven and since “intergalactic space warrior” Count Binface won 27% of the vote in the recent Clacton by-election I’m not convinced politics is in any better state there.

Lula has won in Brazil (we care because the rainforest serves us all). Trump favoured Bolsonaro and mysteriously the social media platforms did too. Lula complained to Meta who denied bias but acknowledged there were technical failures. US social media platforms, spreading disinformation and fearmongering, are suspected of having caused left-wing defeats in Chile, Columbia and Peru. This matters to us all as well because Trump wants a ‘Shield of the Americas’, but Lula isn’t likely to play ball (until Trump buys him). Then once Trump has Greenland, oh and Canada … OK brain, you can stop right there because now you are spiralling into world domination and I won’t have it. I’ve always maintained we will trash the planet ourselves or be taken out by a virus, I’m not having a megalomaniac theory in my head as well.

Voting is important. People have given their lives so that we can. YOUR voice is often all you have and as someone whose voice was stolen for years (see Bleak Expectations), it matters. Clearly – I need more cake before I can sort my voting strategy.