UK local elections 2021

[Mandy Lifeboats]

15 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

I’m not really expecting you to have the answer here, it’s just that you might be the only person that can vouch that there is even a rule book. So I sort of linked it.

But what would be the result of a candidate being missed off the ballot paper. But not just a candidate, the incumbent. Up in north Wales they appear to think they’ve got around the problem by telling people they could write her name in, down the bottom.

Apparently her name was also missing from some postal ballot forms.

She’s loathsome, and I can’t imagine she’d have won again. The fact nobody appears to have noticed she was missing from the postal ballot suggests there wasn’t exactly a tsunami of support. But that’s got to be a re run for that seat, hasn’t it?

 

 

I can give you an answer but not one that's definitive.  

Anything could happen during the polling process and you cannot have a rule to cover every eventuality.  In this circumstances an emergency print of ballot papers would be obtained to replace the incorrect ballots.  Until they arrived I would advise people of the error and ask them to annotate the ballot paper with the relevant name/party if they wished to vote for them.  

As to what would happen.........it depends how many people were impacted and for how long.    This is then considered against the margin of victory. 

If a candidate felt the result was unfair a court could order a re run.  But in most seats the problem is unlikely to be large enough and last long enough to really change the result.  

Presiding Officers keep figures on the number of votes for every hour of the day.  So if the ballot papers were wrong for the first 4 hours of the day I could say exactly how many people got the wrong paper.  If that was 150 and the losing candidate lost by 301 its unlikely anything would be done.  

 

[Wainy316]

Annoying how the media are saying what a shocking blow for Labour the Hartlepool result is.  I mean, it is a blow but it's hardly shocking, we've known it's been coming for weeks.

[Wainy316]

Here's a rarity...

 

[rjw63]

Hope that nob Andy Street doesn't get mayor again.

Last bloke to blow his own trumpet as much was Ron Jeremy.

[Demitri_C]

3 hours ago, mjmooney said:

If the cap fits... 

What about if they don't like caps? 1

[Chindie]

4 minutes ago, rjw63 said:

Hope that nob Andy Street doesn't get mayor again.

Last bloke to blow his own trumpet as much was Ron Jeremy.

I've got a letter on the side I need to open. I'm expecting him to turn up shortly.

[Demitri_C]

3 hours ago, Ingram85 said:

I didn’t say all people who voted Tory are horrible. But I’d wager most if not all horrible people voted Tory. Hang on, am I Will Self?

We have had this debate before. We have millions of people in this country. On bicks analysis 500-1000 isnt alot of people so whats 20-40 people on VT 

It doesnt come down to how intelligent you are how you vote. You cant keep blaming the voters. At some point you have to start blaming the opposition. If you had a strong labour party boris would have had the floor wiped with him as he such a buffoon.

[Dodgyknees]

18 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

We have had this debate before. We have millions of people in this country. On bicks analysis 500-1000 isnt alot of people so whats 20-40 people on VT 

It doesnt come down to how intelligent you are how you vote. You cant keep blaming the voters. At some point you have to start blaming the opposition. If you had a strong labour party boris would have had the floor wiped with him as he such a buffoon.

We need a strong and independent media before as can even think of changes being made.

[lapal_fan]

21 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

We have had this debate before. We have millions of people in this country. On bicks analysis 500-1000 isnt alot of people so whats 20-40 people on VT 

It doesnt come down to how intelligent you are how you vote. You cant keep blaming the voters. At some point you have to start blaming the opposition. If you had a strong labour party boris would have had the floor wiped with him as he such a buffoon.

I think it's two things and @avfcDJ is on the money on one of them - the media.  

Now the media is in an extremely precarious position, because erm, the internet exists and everyone has a platform to voice opinion and who the **** gives a shit about what the BBC/The Sun/The Guardian/The Times/The Daily Mail think?  So then, to keep themselves in jobs, the reporters and journo's have to make their news artificially "bigger, better and more important" than @steve on twitter with a million followers.  So a story becomes more extreme, the opinions of the readers becomes more extreme but the actual incident/thing happened was relatively mundane.

The media will only become worse as the readership declines, because the writers will become more sensationalist to keep your waning attention - it's a never ending circle to the bottom.  

I think the other point is one party are far better at manipulating the media than the other party.  The Tories are really good at pushing their chosen narrative, even in spite of REALLY.OBVIOUS.SHORTCOMINGS, like Johnson fathering half of London's children, the government not getting involved more in taking down buildings which house thousands of people, despite being very dangerous, Brexit only happening because David Cameron (and the party) wanted another year or two in power (also guessing which way the vote would go wrong entirely), May being a disaster generally, the backstabbing to get Johnson in and the sheer inaction last Feb towards Covid when we had a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY to be the model country for how to tackle it - then spending loads of the countries cash paying people not to work, when we all could have been back in work had we had a 2/4 weeks of shutdown to get rid of the thing, closing boarders etc - I mean.. that's a pretty comprehensive list of **** ups in the last 5 years - and yet we still have people voting for their party - BECAUSE THEY'RE GOOD AT PUSHING THEIR NARRITIVES and Labour cannot control it. 

It'll keep happening too, until Brad Pitt or Denzel Washington equivalents come along and "out cool" the Tories like Blair did in 97. 

[darrenm]

14 minutes ago, avfcDJ said:

We need a strong and independent media before as can even think of changes being made.

Labour in 2017 and 2019 pledged part 2 of the Leveson inquiry which is why the papers threw everything at them, mainly the leader.

[chrisp65]

34 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

We have had this debate before. We have millions of people in this country. On bicks analysis 500-1000 isnt alot of people so whats 20-40 people on VT 

It doesnt come down to how intelligent you are how you vote. You cant keep blaming the voters. At some point you have to start blaming the opposition. If you had a strong labour party boris would have had the floor wiped with him as he such a buffoon.

You don’t need a strong Labour Party not to vote tory.

All you have to do to not vote tory, and this is a little life hack I learned some time ago, is not put an ‘x’ in the tory box on a ballot paper.

You have to actively vote tory, there is no excuse other than you wanted to.

[HanoiVillan]

a story in three parts

1

2

3

It would take a heart of stone etc

[darrenm]

There was an incredible graph shown on Sky News about half an hour ago that showed local election results back to 1935. Every single time the governing party lost seats. Until this one single time. 

Congratulations, Keir. Record breaker.

[blandy]

3 hours ago, MessiWillSignForVilla said:

The problem Labour have is that those that wanted Corbyn out are essentially the inverse of the public, right leaning economically, left leaning socially,

I liked your post, but that bit, not so much. Part of his dis-appeal was not around economics, but around patriotism, for want of a better word. For some reason that passes me by, the majority of the Country loves the Royals and venerates the flag. Corbyn was seen as "not on board" with that type of stuff. And then there was stuff like the Novochok thing in Salisbury and his fairly inept  handling of Labours response to that- it gave the impression to many of being more believing of Russia than the UK. And while anti-semitism was over-stated, it was real, it was there. He/Labour handled that awfully. Many also didn't like his/Labour's Brexit stance (whatever the hell it was). And finally he didn't ever, remotely look like he was a leader with his own party behind him. It doesn't really matter whether it was his fault, or the party's fault for not backing him - Corbyn under Labour became monumentally divided. The good he did - membership and so on doesn't hold any merit with the non-membership public voters. It's way more than just those wanting him out being right leaning economically. 

[bannedfromHandV]

43 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

You don’t need a strong Labour Party not to vote tory.

All you have to do to not vote tory, and this is a little life hack I learned some time ago, is not put an ‘x’ in the tory box on a ballot paper.

You have to actively vote tory, there is no excuse other than you wanted to.

Exactly, abstain if needs be but don’t cross the box because Labur wud du wurs 

It was wholly predictable with the current good news story of the vaccination rollout.

[ml1dch]

Maybe these are the sorts of lessons to learn...

 

 

[sharkyvilla]

What was the turnout like?  I have to confess I didn't vote yesterday, I wonder whether this is just a case of more Tory-leaning people bothering to vote making things look slightly worse than things actually are.

[Demitri_C]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

You don’t need a strong Labour Party not to vote tory.

All you have to do to not vote tory, and this is a little life hack I learned some time ago, is not put an ‘x’ in the tory box on a ballot paper.

You have to actively vote tory, there is no excuse other than you wanted to.

Why would you put a x on a usless labour party? Seriously you hate the conservatives that much you would just vote a useless labour in? If i had a useless conservative party and  a useless labour party i would either not vote or go for the greens or lib dems pending on what their manifesto says.

I dont agree with this at all. You need a opposition party to put trust in like how an above poster said with blair did when he took over.

Its not as simple as putting a x in a box. Even the unions who are die hard labour dont agree with what you are saying labour have lost their indentity. 

Edited May 7, 2021 by Demitri_C

[Demitri_C]

1 hour ago, lapal_fan said:

I think it's two things and @avfcDJ is on the money on one of them - the media.  

Now the media is in an extremely precarious position, because erm, the internet exists and everyone has a platform to voice opinion and who the **** gives a shit about what the BBC/The Sun/The Guardian/The Times/The Daily Mail think?  So then, to keep themselves in jobs, the reporters and journo's have to make their news artificially "bigger, better and more important" than @steve on twitter with a million followers.  So a story becomes more extreme, the opinions of the readers becomes more extreme but the actual incident/thing happened was relatively mundane.

The media will only become worse as the readership declines, because the writers will become more sensationalist to keep your waning attention - it's a never ending circle to the bottom.  

I think the other point is one party are far better at manipulating the media than the other party.  The Tories are really good at pushing their chosen narrative, even in spite of REALLY.OBVIOUS.SHORTCOMINGS, like Johnson fathering half of London's children, the government not getting involved more in taking down buildings which house thousands of people, despite being very dangerous, Brexit only happening because David Cameron (and the party) wanted another year or two in power (also guessing which way the vote would go wrong entirely), May being a disaster generally, the backstabbing to get Johnson in and the sheer inaction last Feb towards Covid when we had a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY to be the model country for how to tackle it - then spending loads of the countries cash paying people not to work, when we all could have been back in work had we had a 2/4 weeks of shutdown to get rid of the thing, closing boarders etc - I mean.. that's a pretty comprehensive list of **** ups in the last 5 years - and yet we still have people voting for their party - BECAUSE THEY'RE GOOD AT PUSHING THEIR NARRITIVES and Labour cannot control it. 

It'll keep happening too, until Brad Pitt or Denzel Washington equivalents come along and "out cool" the Tories like Blair did in 97. 

I dont read the media to be honest ot doesnt influence my decision when i vote.  However i accept there are those that do.

 

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, Demitri_C said:

Why would you put a x on a usless labour party? Seriously you hate the conservatives that much you would just vote a useless labour in? If i had a useless conservative party and  a useless labour party i would either not vote or go for the greens or lib dems pending on what their manifesto says.

I dont agree with this at all. You need a opposition party to put trust in like how an above poster said with blair did when he took over.

Its not as simple as putting a x in a box. Even the unions who are die hard labour dont agree with what you are saying labour have lost their indentity. 

I don’t think you’ve read my post. 

Look, if there was another ballot tomorrow, and you had three options:

1 do nothing

2 vote to eat a small shit sandwich

3 vote to eat a shit sandwich produced by Eric Pickles

 

which would you do?