webofevil | Democracy inaction II

Once again I find myself citing Britain’s Most Reasonable Man (

strictlytrue), but, as ever, he makes a good point: the main parties, especially in a general election, wouldn’t dream of trying anything like a major postal vote scam. It would be an insane endeavour. They’d never get away with it. The sheer scale of the undertaking would require the involvement of a huge number of complicit party members, all of them ruthless, conscienceless, and at the very least competent. It would also mean there could be not a single fuckup, or the entire fraud would be blown open and the party tarnished for ever.

That isn’t to say that local branches of the majors might not be open to the idea; in local council elections, for example, which tend anyway to be more unpleasant and corrupt than the nationals, where voter turnout is minuscule and someone’s seat on the council might be decided by as few as 20 votes, the idea of fraud is not only tempting but actually feasible.

However, should it turn out that the problems I mentioned are the result of a systematic campaign and not just appalling administrative blunders (and frankly it’s a miracle that elections are as well administered as they are), I’m willing to put actual money on it not being the work of any of the major parties, but instead on some local activist nutters on behalf of the No Flavourings On Peanuts party, or similar.

The same goes for George Galloway’s thundering denunciations of Tower Hamlets’ electoral roll as being “so shot through with errors and anomalies... as to be almost meaningless”. For someone who keeps banging on about the decades he has spent in British politics, he seems curiously never actually to have seen or worked from an electoral roll, or he’d have known that by their very nature they’re inaccurate; people move, move again, die, emigrate, immigrate, and rarely with a thought to updating their details on the register. Could it have been just yet another chance to make himself out to be the only honest man in a sea of LIARS? Or a pre-emptive strike in case one or two of Respect’s votes are questioned in the future?

In ENTIRELY UNRELATED news, who on earth is Holy Moly talking about here?

Imagine if you worked for an accountancy practice in Glasgow, which dealt with oil company accounts.

Imagine if you were contacted by someone wanting to know if your company could look after some property rights in the Middle East.

Imagine if it turned out Iraqi deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz had gifted a number of oil fields to a certain British representative of the people.

Imagine if that lucky person couldn’t look for investors to assist with exploiting the oil because of sanctions, and had lost a tidy little pension in the desert since Coalition tanks went in.

Wouldn’t that be *fucking weird*?

“Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you hatta al-nasr, hatta al-nasr, hatta Bethnal Green.”