Today I am writing to you in my capacity of leader of the Pet Dogs Democratic Party to urge you to vote in today’s referendum. All you dogs, it is your responsibilities to mark a cross on behalf of your owner to help them ensure they put it in the right box. Now of course it is important that I don’t tell you which way to vote, but how many Members of Parliament do we have at the moment? Precisely none. And what chance do we dogs have of being elected under the present system? None whatsoever. Now ‘first past the post’ might favour us over humans in a race across 200 metres or even over a mile or two. We have four legs and can move pretty quickly when there is a strong enough reason, but we aren’t talking about that. We are talking about our opportunity to have a voice in the political process and the current system is rigged against us. We have support across the whole country. There are educated dogs in every constituency who see our party as the way forward, however our votes count for nothing because we are standing against humans who are all too ready to protect their own self interest.
There are humans out there who are distorting the truth by trying to say the introduction of the alternative vote system would give us more than one vote. I only wish they were right. What it gives us is our first vote being recognised and counted as meaningful. It gives a voice to those of us who have been ignored for too long. We may not achieve enough MPs to form the next government completely from the Pet Dogs Democratic Party, but what we will have is the opportunity to voice our policies and hopefully have some of them adopted in exchange for our support in other areas. There is nothing wrong with a coalition government where parties have to listen to each other’s views rather than having one party steamrollering proceedings because with less then half the votes cast they have won more than half the seats in the House of Commons. So today I am calling on all the dogs of Britain to lead your humans to the polling station and point them in the right direction of where to mark their cross. Do it for the future of dogs and the chance for the Pet Dogs Democratic Party to be heard.
Alfie Dog with a little help from Rosemary J Kind alfie@Alfiedog.me.uk