Support General Election Night

I appreciate I am being a total anorak here, but how many of you have expereinced the highs and lows and delights of a General Election Night? That one night every 4 to 5 years where you are at a Count, or at home in front of the TV, eagerly awaiting the results coming in thick and fast. That illicit feeling of being up way past your bedtime because you are going to bed in the morning and even then have only three hours sleep! Wanting to see live those shock seat changes, your heroes win, your villains lose. You cheer, you cry, and if you lose you weep and mourn for the country you love, but know that in five years things could well be different and honour restored! All of this (or rather most of it), compacted into about seven hours non stop during one night.

You watch with your friends, your opponents. You feel the drama and all of that helps make the night exciting! I wouldn't dare say it's even as good as sex, but my goodness, outside anything involving that kind of excitment, its one of the best thrills you can have! ;-)

So one has to ask, could one have that same tension and fun during the day? When you are busy at work, when you have few friends and comrades around to share the joy and pain! I doubt it. So it is that many of us across the political board have reacted with dismay to the news that general election nights are possibly coming to an end.

I can see the practical reasons, but we have managed to cope so far and I hope that the powers that be change their minds soon. Many of us activists need to be with our friends and fellow activists during those moments, we also need the thrill and the charge in the same way football fanatics like to be near the news around 4:30 on a Saturday afternoon. Lets help campaign to keep general election nights!