My flabber has once again been gasted by the idiocy of the government.

The following article recently appeared in the DAILY TELEGRAPH,

Government Digital Service

Expats: help us test a new service

by John Waterworth on 23/10/2013

We need your help to test one of our services.

One goal of the Individual Electoral Registration project is to allow people to register online at GOV.UK. We hope that the new service will make it easier for overseas voters in particular to register and exercise their voting rights.

We are now looking for expats to try out a prototype of the new service, to see how well it works for them and to see how we can improve it.

Testing days

Our testing partner is recruiting participants for testing days in the Oxford area on Thursday 31 October and in London on Tuesday 17 December. The testing sessions take up to 45 minutes.

If you are a British citizen who normally lives overseas, and you are visiting the UK on either of those dates we would love to have you come and try out the new service.

Please contact Sarah Tynan to book a place on the Oxford testing day, and contact Kelley Frizelle to book a place on the London testing day.

My flabber has once again been gasted by the idiocy of a government initiative. I fail to understand how you can expect to find enough, or indeed any prospective Expat Voters either in Oxford or London at the time specified.
Why not ask Expat Voters in the various counties of the EU to test out the system. We are now virtually all online, and communicating via blogs  - websites  -  flyers, -Newsletters, and English language newspapers

It is appalling that because I choose to live within Europe, that I have no right to vote in my mother country which is itself part of the Union. This should be a fundamental right granted to every UK National. The whole point of The European Union is to allow Europeans free movement and reside in whichever European Country they might choose without becoming disenfranchised. This is an injustice that should be addressed not just by the British Government but also in The European Parliament as a matter of extreme urgency.

The arrogance of this government knows no bounds, in launching “Tests” in two English cities to test a new service to determine whether or not you can make it more practical for UK citizens living on the continent of Europe to vote in UK elections, and expect expats who just happen to be there on two specific days to participate.

Clearly, they are hoping for failure so that they can declare that  “Because of lack of interest from expats this experiment has been cancelled”.

The 15 year rule is one of the most odious and obnoxious laws ever to be passed and enacted to descriminate against British citizens throughout the world, and flies in the face of British governments who have sent our troops throughout the world to fight for democracy

This is further proof of a government who seems hell bent on disenfranchising its citizens who work and live overseas, and further disregards them simply because they have no voice. It falls into the same category as the governments wriggling over Winter Fuel Payments, when they employ massaged statistics and data to pursue an argument for the elimination of our winter fuel allowance and skirt around the ECHR ruling.

This test sounds as though it was dreamed up by the same civil servant who uses the tropical territories of Guadeloupe and Reunion to increase the average temperature of France to avoid paying Winter Fuel Payment.