Diana Abbott for Labour leader!!

I'm a big fan of historical narrative in politics, like the way after George Bush, the next US president had to be either black or female. Despite elections, there was no way an old white guy could be the next president.

So similarly after Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, it just doesn't seem right that the UK Labour Party should have some kind of male leader next, especially not one from the Ed/Miliband Venn.

Initially my money was on Harriet Harman to be the female candidate for Labour Leader, but it makes more sense that Diane Abbott has stepped into the ring.

God knows where I saw it, but some Libertarian blogger mentioned that it only costs £1 to join the Labour Party, so it wouldn't be too difficult to round up the internet masses, join, vote for their favoured candidate then let their membership lapse.

Anyhoo, to this end, I've started a Facebook Group: Join the Labour party just to elect Diane Abbott as Labour Leader!!

You know it makes sense.

The Spice Girls of Westminster

Sometime last week, I was moving house and doing trips in my Smart car from my empty hulk of a house to the storage place, and I heard Kirstie Allsopp on Radio4. She reminds me of a girl I used to know, confident, brazen, bubbly, conservative. Slightly sad eyes, with a child-like innocence. Anyhoo, it was some debate about how there were so few female cabinet ministers in the coalition government, and so few female MPs.

I'm paraphrasing, but Kirstie's point was that being an MP is a male game, there are plenty of women in politics, but they're mostly behind the scenes as lobbyists and researchers and officers, rather than chasing the fame game as MPs. Some sectors are dominated by women, publishing and lobbying she said.

Her point reminded me of some article I read in the Daily Record in 2007 about how grave diggers (a male profession) were paid more than primary school teachers (a female profession). Its not quite as simple as women get paid less than men, rather, people are free to take whichever jobs they want, women don't chose grave digging and so don't earn the same pay.

The thing is, the barriers stopping women from becoming grave diggers and men becoming primary school teachers are different to the barriers stopping women from becoming MPs.

Charlotte Gore has a neat take on the subject of female cabinet ministers.

You know what I’d love? I’d love to be able to write something along the lines of “every single woman who’s a minister or cabinet minister is there out of merit and ability to do the job, rather than tokenism. That matters more than the numbers.”

I’d love to be able to write that… but I’d have to be a fool to believe it. For it to be true, it’d have to be true of every single minister – not just the women. The exception that disproves it, quite obviously, is George Osborne, someone who’s as qualified to be Chancellor as I am.

To become a cabinet minister, you've got to not just personally choose to pursue that career, even if there are all women shortlists and special arrangements for childcare and family friendly flexible working hours, you've still got to get elected, persuading your constituents to vote for you over voting for the other candidates, male or female. Your ability to be elected has to outstrip the electability of your competitors.

Even then you've got to stick at it for more than one length of government.

And then to become a cabinet minister, as Charlotte points out, you've got to become part of the prime minister's trusted circle, you've got to be amongst his best mates. Its not enough to be great at your job, or to have carved out a specialist subject niche, like Housing or Defense. You've got to do that and be mates with the PM.

And clearly these things are difficult to do.

The one strategy that occurs to me, that might get more women into cabinet, rather than having diversity targets or all-women short lists, would be a girl-group, collaboration between the women PPCs or MPs, a gaggle if you will.

So, that in the same way that when Dave is PM you get George as Chancellor, or when Nick is PM you get Vince as Chancellor, you know that when you elect Diana, you get Mary and Florence too, or when you elect Geri, you get Victoria, Emma, Mel and Mel.

Its a brand thing. Some political brands ought to be WOMEN, not a pro-women party or policy, but something self-evidently dominated by women.

Hmm, maybe some folk already do this.

Coalition Venn

Gotta say, I really like this Venn Diagram from The Daily Telegraph
Not sure how up to date it is, but it helps to focus the mind.

On public spending

This morning I went to the shops to get some coffee, I didn't have quite enough change, so I had to use my credit card, and sadly there's a minimum spend on credit cards, so I had to buy some more stuff. Its a shame cos I'm trying to save my pennies at the moment, with being unemployed and everything.

Anyhoo, over on the BBC website there's a story about how Charles Moore refused to pay his TV licence as a protest against Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand's Sachsgate phonecall.

He went on: "The question was, how to protest. Normally if you don't like a service or a political party, you can at least withdraw your custom and choose another. With the BBC, there is no such option.

"So disobedience seemed the logical response... when my licence fee came up for renewal, I would pay the sum instead to Help the Aged, out of respect for Andrew Sachs. Until Ross was sacked, I would keep my television and go on watching it."

Sadly this sort of thing is forbidden, c'est interdit, and Mr Moore was fined £262.

Its a similar thing with public spending and taxes. Mark Wallace of the TaxPayers Alliance made a similar point the other day in an article on ConservativeHome

Councils are at best semi-accountable at the moment. Every year, or three or even four years I get a vote on who my councillor is. Even then, many of their policies are not decided by elected councillors. In between elections, I am legally compelled at the threat of prosecution to hand over as much money as they demand.

Compare this to private business. Every time I go shopping, I take part in a referendum on which supplier I give my money too. Even better, it is a referendum of a population of one – me. At any time, if I get a dodgy product, poor customer service or an unreasonable price hike, I am free to withdraw my business from any one of the thousands of different companies I deal with in my day to day life. I don’t get outvoted by others, and if I choose to reject Heinz beans as far too expensive, they cannot serve me with court papers demanding I hand them money regardless.

Does Mr Myers still think that Kensington & Chelsea is more accountable than a private business?

This is the really good reason why councils should be more transparent than private companies: if voters are only given a choice about their council service once every year or more, then they deserve as much information as possible to inform that decision. If taxpayers are to be forced to hand over their money, then the very least councils can do in return is show us how it is spent.

I prefer to decide how to spend my own money (or when to save it) myself.

Yon Facebook group 'Tories have no MANDATE to rule Scotland' and their hypothetical counterpart group, 'Labour have no MANDATE to rule England', it all comes down to the same thing, how aligned are you with the UK's political system.

If the party you voted for doesn't form the government,
do they have any right to spend your money?

Clearly under the current system, the answer is yes, they (the winners) have the right, can raise taxes (or lower them) as much as they decide, and them allocate resources in any way they see fit. Any protests against the current system comes down to this, you think your judgment of how to allocate resources is better than those who have been elected.

God knows what I'm trying to say here, probably something about how the government of the last 13 years has been trying to extract as much money as possible from our pockets, keeping them in power isn't going to change that policy.

If you think you could better allocate resources then electing a party that lets you keep more money in your pocket is the wisest course.

Pitchforks

Although Prime Minister Gordon Brown may have fled the capital to his home turf, the Labour government is still in place, in a manner of speaking Gordon Brown is still in Downing Street. Its a nice image, the thought of a mob, armed with pitchforks and burning torches, marching down Whitehall to Downing Street to oust the defeated leader.

So I almost attended a protest at the weekend, a hastily organised affair, that later I read about on Twitter. It was odd though, the mob with placards aloft didn't march on Labour, they marched on the Lib Dem HQ and then the Conservative HQ.

Sure, they were protesting for electoral reform, but it didn't quite make sense in my head. The people they were shouting at had only been elected the day before, yet already the mob were protesting. Had the mob somehow elected the wrong people? Already?

Back to Copenhagen, when tens of thousands of protestors descended on the environmental talks, tens of thousands of activists from all over the world. Did it make any difference to the handful of world leaders who were inside discussing what measures they were to take to tackle climate change? I doubt it.

If climate change is anthropogenic, then there's only a couple of countries responsible, the top five polluters responsible for 90% of emissions, all the other countries are essentially the same as the mob outside, posturing to no end.

Back to the protest mobs, I marched against the war in Iraq back in the day, but I can't march for electoral reform. Iraq was a binary issue, against the war or not. But electoral reform is a rich tapestry.

Personally, I think equalising constituency sizes is far more important than PR, STV, AV or FPTP. Others feel that PR is the issue worth breaking the stability of a nation for, STV has its merits.

But it's all burocracy, admin, red tape and paperwork. There are more important and urgent issues to address in the UK today. Electoral reform is merely a 'would be nice to have' issue. Jesus, how long did Labour spend trying to ban fox hunting?

Stuart Sharpe stuck a wee line at the end of his last blogpost which I feel is very profound:-

I would be fascinated to hear evidence that proportional voting systems directly contribute to improved social or economic outcomes in other countries.

So how did we do

A number of friendly bloggers and twitterers were standing in the election, lets have a quick look at what political upsets they caused.

Old Holborn (Ind)
Cambridge - 7th - 145 votes (0.3%)
Mark Wadsworth (UKIP)
Uxbridge & Ruislip - 5th - 1,234 (2.7%)
Martin Cullip (Libertarian)
Sutton and Cheam - 9th - 41 votes (0.1%)
Nic Coome (Libertarian)
Devizes - 7th - 141 votes (0.3%)
Anna Arrowsmith (LibDem)
Gravesham - 3rd - 6,293 votes (13.3%)

Fair dos to Mark Wadsworth and Anna Arrowsmith, for getting four digits, but they did have their parties' brands to draw people to the cause, so its kind of like cheating.

Gotta say, its all a bit pathetic for the Libertarians. I can just imagine Devil's Kitchen doing his own Downfall rant, for fucks sake 41 votes and 141 votes, I got more than that when I stood for president at Strathclyde University, twice, naked, with adverts that read "Don't just vote for him, Worship him".

But Old Holborn's 145 votes, that's complete pish too, he's an internet celebrity and maverick of the political blogging scene and he's barely rounded up the guys from the pub.

Its just a bit disappointing. Like there are some who'll say well done for taking party, for trying to make a difference, but that's far too generous considering the result.

Back to Strathclyde University 2000 and 2001, when I stood in the student union elections, the first time round I campaigned hard for weeks and secured 172 votes, the winner got around 8,000, the next years I stood in the elections again, but this time didn't bother to campaign, I just stayed in bed, and got 255 votes. Doing nothing was more successful than doing something, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Ashamed of being Labour not a one-off

I thought it could just be a one-off the other day when I discovered that despire there being no mention of it on his leaflet, that Brent North PPC Barry Gardiner is the Labour candidate, but chucking out a pile of rubbish from the kitchen, I find another of his leaflets from a few weeks ago, still with no mention of his Labour membership.


Its not even the Labour red colour scheme, just some weird mix of other party's colours, UKIP's purple, the Green's green and LibDem's yellow.

Having said that, there is a little bit of Red, and the death knell for Labour candidates, he's got a picture of himself with out-going Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Has he not read Guido? What kind of politician doesn't read Guido?

How can Labour not win?

I could be a little late on this, but there was a big old fuss the other week general electionland after the first Leaders Debate where the LibDems got a bounce, became the most popular party and still ended up the third biggest party in parliament.

Folk were asking, or more like demonstrating how Labour could come third in the popular vote but still be the biggest party. The BBC's Election Seat Calculation proved its worth, but its missing something.

In the Euro elections the other years, UKIP came out of nowhere and trounced Labour, but they're nowhere to be seen in this General Election. Maybe they'll get some seats, just one or two, maybe they get a few more. Maybe the media has got it wrong, this isn't a three horse race, and we're got the rainbow of political parties and coalitions is going to be the only way forward from now on.

Anyhoo, here's the Election Seat Calculator showing how Labour could come fourth in the popular vote and still be the biggest party.


The 'Other' segement could easily contain a larger party like UKIP or the Greens, or one of those regional parties. If that's not clear evidence of the need for electoral reform, I dunno what is. Although in my own naive way, I reckon its just a case of balancing constituency sizes a wee bit, and just the Electoral Commission needing to get their act together.

Ashamed of something in Brent North

The letterbox in my new house fills up daily, never stuff for me, just junk mail, stuff for previous residents and those election leaflets.

I glance at the candidates, read what they have to offer, and chuck the leaflet in the bin. It wasn't until a few moment ago that I discovered my incumbent MP was Barry Gardiner, he's been the Labour MP round here since 1997.


Which is odd cos I thought he was standing as an independent, his leaflet says nothing about which party he belongs to.


Is he ashamed of being the Labour candidate?

Maybe it doesn't matter which party he belongs to, he's his own man, able to make his own choices in parliament. Its possible, but sadly this isn't the case. According to The Public Whip website, in the past 13 years, he's only voted against the whip 13 times, out of 2601 votes.

So, after supporting Labour policies in the House of Commons 99.5% of the time he's now trying to hide the fact that he's the Labour candidate

VoteMatch Trends

The jury's still out on how biased VoteMatch is. Its this website, you answers your questions and based on policies and your priorities it tells you which parety is your best match in teh general election.

After reading Mark Pack's piece about polling, I thought I have a look at how VoteMatch fares over time on Twitter, checking out which parties people are saying VoteMatch recommends for them.



Looks like Twitter folk like teh LibDems.

Is VoteMatch biased?

eeeh,that Iain Dale, he had a blogpost about a site called VoteMatch, you answers yer questions and it tells you who you should vote for. That Iain Dale reckons its a bit biased.

I have taken their test five times now. Four out of the five times I came out decidedly UKIP. It was only when I took it and pretended to be David Cameron that I came out majority Conservative. Even then it was touch and go. I wonder if other Conservatives have found the same.

If you go through the questions, of course there are overlaps between parties, but it seems to be that some answers may have been incorrectly weighted. Even when I answered the test giving what I would call "mainstream Conservative" answers, I still come out as marginally UKIP.

I reckoned it was a bit bias too, me and the missus are at different ends of the political spectrum, but we ended up with similar results. So I gets onto Twitter and mouthed off about it, and a few moments later I get a response from @VoteMatch.

They suggested I searched Twitter to see what other people were reporting. So I did and I made me a pie chart of the last fews day's worth of people who took the test and then posted on Twitter.

Looks like its not particularly biased towards UKIP, if anything it would be biased towards the Lib Dems, or possibly there are more Lib Dems on Twitter than in real life.

I get Iain Dale's thing about conservative space being more weighted towards UKIP than the Conservatives. But on the other hand, they did mighty well in the last EU elections, maybe it is that sort of proportion this time round too.

You see on VoteMatch, you get to chose which parties you're likely to consider voting and which you aren't, which is why hardly anyone reports that VoteMatch suggested the BNP or Labour, cos very few people who are one Twitter would consider voting for those parties, but most Tories would at least consider UKIP.

**UPDATRE**
Days pass, its Monday now, and I'm still checking twitter for updates about VoteMatch and building up a pie chart using Google's graphs API.

I know, ts crazy, Labour are in fourth place.

However there are entertaining grumbles on Twitter,


rather neatly slapped down by @VoteMatch themselves.


So is there a neat way of quantifying how reliable each party is at following up its own manifesto policies and pledges? Or just messy ways that involve wading through dozens of parliamentary votes?

Death Disco - Notting Hill Arts Club

Decisions are made by those who turn up. History is written by the winners. There's no such thing as a free lunch, unless you're a goldfish.

This evening (or last night, depending on your perspective) I'm in darkest Notting Hill, at Alan McGee's Death Disco. You know how you find yersel chatting to random people at parties, then you bump into them time and time again and cos they're in a band you inevitably go to one of their shows, well here I am.

Three bands on tonight, my acquaintance's band are headlining, on stage at 22:45.

I have to get up for work six hours later.

The database state is bad enough, but here at the cool Notting Hill Arts Club, they demand photo ID at the door then scan it "So we know who's inside". My attractive young ladyfriend mutters something about being stored in a database. The guy on the door overhears and denies there's any database involved. So the point of scanning is?

I'm not taking an international flight. I'm not opening a new bank account. I'm not even taking photos of iconic landmarks in the proximity of a PCSO. I'm just trying to get in to a shitty little indie club night, so why do I need to show my papers?

I don't care that its not the doorman's fault, just management policy, or an alternative to form 696, or the Met Police policy or the local authority or health and safety for our own protection. It stinks.

Its understandable how such a system was introduced, someone clearly though we were living in East Germany. But how to turn it round? How to get rid of having to have you papers scanned for visiting an indie club?

When the management told the doorman, he should have said no fucking way. When the punters told McGee, he should have said no fucking way. When the police/authority/health and safety told the management they should have said no fucking way. When the powers that be sat in a meeting and decided it, the room should have rose up and said no fucking way. Whoever suggested it should have been sacked on the spot, escorted from the building, dowsed in petrol and set fire to, caught on camera, uploaded to YouTube and tagged accordingly.

Maybe I'm being hypocritical with my love of gig-tracking and Songkick. But I do those things by choice, not everyone does. Its linked to my Twitter and Facebook with my permission. God knows what the Notting Hill Arts Club's Clubscan is connected to, but no one asked me.

"Excuse me sir, do you mind if we scan your ID before entry?" That would have been an improvement.

Anyhoo, the entry process left a bad taste in the mouth and if this review ends up grim, that's why. Mr McGee, your precious Labour government have cultivated this, you must share responsibility.

Last time I was here was for a Scottish mob, Q Without U, they were okay, it must have been over a year ago. My ladyfriend was last here before the English smoking ban, the vibe is different. Hear that McGee, your mob have broken it. They've broken it all.

First band on are This Is Munich. One of their piano lines sounds just like Pocketbooks' Autumn Leaves, but the rest of it has Suede vocals, leaning a little towards Bowie. Geneva? I bet the keyboard player cites Coldplay as an influence, he was inspired to form the band after seeing Coldplay at Wembley Arena.

Scratchy samples of 1940s 33s. Then the guitar, bass and drums kick in again, epic soaring lead guitar. Aw man, I used to be able to remember exactly who these guys sound like, now after 543 gigs, its all a blur, a companion suggests The Kills. I think I once saw Coldplay third on the bill at King Tuts.

Tonight, This Is Munich are an odd looking bunch, nineties clothes, stupid hair. They were very competent, they certainly knew how to play their instruments.

Not sure what the deal is with Death Disco, is Alan McGee here? If he's not, it either cos he's too old or cos he's mourning the death of Michael Foot, either way, he's a cunt.

Next up are/is Sangeeta, some keyboard girl with drum-guitar-bass backing. Jazzy rock Kate Bush or Lapsus Linguae for another gender I reckon. Feist and PJ Harvey reckons my attractive young ladyfriend, she's on the money with the latter.

Love the plinky plonk piano at the end of every song. Extra points cos she sure can holler and cos the guitar sound is huge.

The audience are a bit disinterested, chatting throughout over their glasses of house red and tins of Red Stripe.

The headliners, Wonderful World of Cactapuss, take to the stage, spending 24 minutes setting up a vast array of keyboards, effects boxes and colour-changing chicken lights. Truly they are gods.

"Good evenin' earthlin's"

Are they London's answer to Air or Daft Punk. Great big crunchy rhythms, stuff you can not only get your teeth into, but could probably build a shithouse out of, if necessary.

Earlier the two of them were discussing their flashing LED specs, genuine artifacts from the eighties, do they even make them any more. Mark, the one on the left, had dropped his pair on the floor so they were now held together with masking tape.

Finally, for the first time this evening the crowd start moving, the place is packed and the kids are making weird shapes. Tall chap in the middle casting some shoulder moves, heavily make-uped girls on the right doing the cheekbone thrust, and front left a couple who've been snogging throughout, really face-chewing stuff.

In fourteen years time, this'll be the soundtrack to the Hull Olympics.

Thrills and Spills in Norwich North

I've only ever once vote for a party which won it's election and that was the other week, so most of what's happened anywhere in politics is not my fault at all. I just need to be clear on that.

There's a by-election in Norwich North, Labour cove Ian Gobson was given the boot by his local party becuase of expense claims, so now we have a whole jolly pool of candidates hoping to win the seat.

Ladbrokes lists the candidates and their odds of winning at time of writing as follows:-

Conservative - 1/9
Labour - 6/1
Greens - 16/1
Craig Murray - 25/1
Ian Gibson - 33/1
Lib Dems - 33/1
UKIP - 100/1
BNP - 200/1
Bill Holden - 200/1
Libertarian Party - 500/1
Official Monster Raving Loony - 1000/1

I can't vote in this election, but if I could I have to toss a coin to chose between Craig Murray and the Libertarians.

They're both in the Libertarian end of the political spectrum, Craig Murray having a better blogging presence to the LPUK candidate Thomas Burridge.

Craig Murray's by-election blog posts are entertaining, just raving at being ignored. Local schools and public building are illegally shutting him out and the BBC are prioritising the BNP over him, admittedly he received 5% in his last election and the BNP edged ahead of him with 6.2% in their last election, so maybe the BBC have a point. I reckon he ought to have more photies of him in Norwich on the internet, and photies where he's smiling, he looks so glum in everything google sniffs out.

He is, however, the rector of Dundee University, but for some reason hasn't been invited to a UCU sponsored candidate's debate on education. There's a wee spat about it on his blog, with Matt Waddup from the UCU, Craig says he's going to gatecrash it anyway and challenges the organisers to get the polis to drag him away. That could be some great publicity.

I really want the LPUK candidate to do well and beat his party's last election result of 6.9%, but I'm somewhat disappointed by his blog and his twitter updates being so occasional. Sure, there's a couple of posts on the LPUK blog, but its not quite the same. Also, it'd be nice if there were Norwich tags there. I couldn't find any photies of him lying around on the internet, maybe he's just too young to leave much of a snail trail online.

The Tory candidate Chloe Smith has a spectacularly boring blog, but its updated regularly, and has nice photies of her out and about in Norwich, if I was a Norwegian(?) I'd think it was nice and friendly. Although the comments facility appears to be knackered so there's no feedback or comment.

Eating wax

I just noticed that the fucking rodenty chaps have been gnawing at this candle I have on my desk. Why on earth would a rat eat a candle?

It makes no sense.

I can't take it.

I need to move out, I need to sleep.

For hours yesterday evening and last night I was listening to IainDale's election webcasty radioshow thing on Playradio. It was jolly nice, a kind of friendly affair with messages being read out and people phoning in and analysis of all the county counts and people trying to do sums and moaning about crap BBC and Sky and other broadcasters.

Once or twice I posted tweets with the required hashtag, and I thinnk I got them read out on the radio. Eep, its like internet fame.

It did take a few seconds for me to realise he was reading out my tweet though, my twitter nick is @illandancient, like the name of this blog without any spaces, so I know how its pronounced, it just doesn't roll off the tongue so well, irland anci-ent.

I think I came across in the snapshot tweet as being a bit of a ingrate moaner. I had a wee existential crisis thinking about it.

I am a bit of a moaner. It used to be my job, my skill, something useful. Now it just annoys my attractive young ladyfriend, and on thinking about its, it annoyed most of my previous attractive young ladyfriends.

Bah.

My job used to be some kind of test engineer at a hi-fi company. They'd give me prototypes and I'd churn out a list of everything that was wrong with it. If it didn't read discs, if it was the wrong colour or scratched easily, if the user manual was frustrating, if it got too warm, if I could electrocute myself with it. Exhaustative lists of everything that was wrong.

That was the first step and I was great at it. The second step was to go through my list and cross out everything that wasn't trivial or unimportant, or unfixable. We'd try and fix everything that was left on the list.

At a later date we'd always have the list of things we knew about and didn't fix and why we didn't fix them and people could fix them in new ways that they couldn't before. This was great. This was a good way to get things done.

I was brilliant at my job.

But now, being unemployed, I'm just a moany, nit-picking annoying person, and its incredibly frustrating.

Sorry, I'll try not to so much.

Rodents

At the moment my flat has a rodent problem. Its not so much that I'm scared of mice and rats, just that I find it impossible to sleep if I can hear them, so I got about half an hour's sleep last night, I'm pretty crabby and irritable today and almost got asked to leave Borders this morning for shouting at someone who was being difficult with politics.

Anyhoo, I voted the other day in the EU electiony thing, and for possibly the first time in my entire voting life the party I voted for won some seats, that'll be UKIP.

Personally I think that the UK shouldn't be part of the European Union and UKIP are the most agreeable party that take this stance. There are other parties that want the UK out of the EU, but they are disagreeable.

When it comes to election time, it shouldn't be a matter of politicians persuading you to vote for them, or making you change you mind and your beliefs to vote for them, I reckon it should just be a case of voting of the party that most closely matches your own views.

Anyhoo, my friend who I was bickering with accusingly asked why I voted for UKIP, and I started to explain the previous paragraph.

But the thing is, my friend hadn't himself voted. Like about 65% of the UK electorate. Congratulations, his position was in the majority. But it doesn't count.

You can moan about parties that you don't support winning seats, but it seems a bit hollow. Sure, those 65% can smugly say that they didn't vote for the whichever party they find disagreeable, but that's not how the voting system works. Not voting doesn't count.

I think my point is that its not fair to moan about people voting for specific parties you find disagreeable, its small-minded and wrong-headed to think that everyone should vote for only parties you agree with, the way we get neat bits of progress it to have a wide variety of opinions round the table, on the agenda to discuss, that's a good thing.

The biggest failing is where the majority of people, the winning opinion isn't on the agenda, they don't count.

"I didn't like any of the parties on the ballot paper, so I didn't vote." in my opinion, its a crap excuse. You gotta find the one that matches your opinion the closest, even if they're a country mile from your own exact preferences*. Otherwise the parties on the ballot paper you find most disagreeable will win.

*you're never going to find a party that 100% matches your own views, unless you stand yourself.

Round up of election voting problems

I'll keep updating this list as I find stuff.

Torn postal ballots

Observers watching which boxes are marked before counting

Ballot papers folded to obscure UKIP and late alphabet parties

Ballot boxes too small for 3 foot ballot papers

Its back to my old bug-tracking days, keeping tabs on every bug and fault to ensure they are resolved, eventually.

Exciting times

Crikey,

Nationalist bid to force election

The SNP and Plaid Cymru have joined forces in an effort to try to force a general election.

The two parties are to table a motion next week calling for the dissolution of Parliament.

Gordon Brown has rejected Tory and Lib Dem calls for an election saying he wants to sort out the expenses system.

The motion comes two days before the European and English local elections and in the wake of a damaging series of revelations about MP expenses claims.

It will be the first time MPs will have a chance to formally express their support for an immediate election and could increase the pressure on Mr Brown to go to the country.

The SNP said they would be tabling their opposition day motion on Wednesday afternoon, giving MPs an opportunity to debate it in the Commons.

They are stressing that it is not a motion of "no confidence" in the government but that it could spark a general election, if enough MPs supported it.

...

The last Labour government was brought down by an SNP "no confidence" motion in 1979, although the then Prime Minister James Callaghan did not have a working Parliamentary majority, unlike Gordon Brown.

H/T Anna Raccoon