DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

We got this clown:

It is my view that public services which depend on a 24hr 365 day unpredictable demand cycle are generally unsuited to privatisation

Thanks Nick! I now have a good idea who not to vote for, but still not much the wiser about some of the less obviously nutjobby/out-of-depth candidates. Prob won't vote but depends how many nightmares I have about the UKIP guy who wants guns for every officer tonight.

Several of the Thames Valley lot's first response to the privatisation question was "I have no business connections with these organisations" too. Not sure what to make of that.

got a choice between Prescott, several Tories of various shades, an ex police superintendent and some bloke who looks like he writes a lot of letters to his local newspaper. must set my alarm so i can get to the polling station nice and early.

fuck these are TODAY? i'm not at home right now but i'm 99% sure we haven't received polling cards...so i don't know how to vote, where to vote or who to vote for

oh never mind

There are no elections here
There are no elections for police and crime commissioners taking place in the area you have specified. The London Mayor is the police and crime commissioner for London. The Mayoral elections that were held earlier this year determined the police and crime commissioner for the London area.

I thought we had it bad with our motley selection of string-'em-up nutters and stealth Tories, but your PCC is BORIS

Oh, Thames Valley not only has a nutty UKIP candidate but also a stealth UKIP candidate (former Slough UKIP councillor running as an independent - dude has also run for councillor in a Labour hat and a Tory hat and seems to put himself up for any position going). Woo.

Best Democracy in the World

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TtlVqQzL0Ww/T3nH12r2QZI/AAAAAAAADb4/kSa9x8E213A/s1600/dish-and-dishonesty.jpg

Strong policies for a better Britain.

Looks like they're AV as well. Hard enough to pick one competent candidate from this line-up, let alone two.

lol@ the Thames Valley candidate who lists her PRINCE2 qualification as a reason to vote for her.

But blimey, I'd rather cast a vote and get someone ineffectual than not vote at all and risk a nutter getting in.

I was sort of assuming that Other People would have enough sense not to vote for an obvious nutter (ha), but this stealth UKIP guy has me a bit worried as he has an inoffensive blurb and lists some vaguely relevant-looking experience from his lifetime of getting himself on every local political board going, which may attract some voters who would otherwise go "UKIP, hell no"

emil.y, did you vote in this yet? still no idea who I want to support in this thing

lol@ the Thames Valley candidate who lists her PRINCE2 qualification as a reason to vote for her.

Expired PRINCE2 qualification.

I would vote for her as the candidate whose name sounds most like an ILX display name.

http://www.policeelections.com/candidates/thames-valley/patience-tayo-awe/

if i saw that as an ilx display name i think i'd assume 'inscrutable ilf joke', so yes.

as all of the candidates are mental or incompetent we should've got a few ilxors in the game, how could we lose?

patience: taiwo awesome

as i think i counselled r|t|c last season

I think I'm going to spoil my ballot tbh, tell me what to write on it

UR ALL GAY

I know the results don't mean anything at all, but the LibDems are getting completely annihilated in the PCCs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/nov/16/pcc-election-results-police-crime-commissioners

Ended up voting for the Labour candidate last night btw. Went down at about 9.30 and I'm pretty sure I was the only person they'd seen for an hour, I was like a one-man last minute stampede.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-20358207

^video of them opening an empty ballot box. Turnout was 17%.

Meanwhile UKIP beats LibDems in Corby

Corby by-election result

Andy Sawford (Lab) 17,267 (48.41%, +9.71%)
Christine Emmett (C) 9,476 (26.57%, -15.63%)
Margot Parker (UKIP) 5,108 (14.32%)
Jill Hope (LD) 1,770 (4.96%, -9.48%)

http://pccspoil.tumblr.com/

^ tumblr of spoilt ballots. Sadly the funniest thing I saw on there is that the Surrey UKIP candidate is called Robert Shatwell

Bah, we have a Tory PCC. May as well just have drawn some cocks for the spoilt ballot tumblr. (Not that I thought my first choice had any hope of getting through, or knew anything about him)

If you'd asked me a year ago if election candidates should stop sending reams of useless and annoying leaflets and the poll card should just have a little bit of text saying "Go to this website to read about the candidates" I might have said it sounded like an OK idea (apart from the people who don't have convenient internet access, of course), but in practice I didn't read that bit of the ballot card until I left to vote and just felt pissed off that I was supposed to vote without having received any information whatsoever.

If that is the new system, then some brightly-coloured leaflets the first time round to tell everyone that's how it works now wouldn't have gone amiss. Or maybe it was hoped that as few people as possible would bother to vote, in which case, job done.

h8 living in tory crim land

Kevin Hurley, independent "Zero Tolerance" candidate, is elected on second count in Surrey.

At least he won't 'jack' your body...

dealt with crime and anti-social elements from walking the beat in London and Surrey to writing the National Policing Plan for Iraq.

just looking at the Surrey result and the only person who Robert Shatwell managed to shat well on was gosh, who'd have guessed it, the poor old LibDem guy

Tories lost their deposit in Manchester byelection, Lib Dems lost theirs in Corby. Hohoho.

:)

Totally did not know that electing Sheriffs was Only an American Thing.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/uk/freud-poor-should-take-more-risks-16241291.html

"We've got the circumstances now where... people who are poorer should be prepared to take the biggest risks - they've got least to lose.

"We have, through our welfare system, created a system which has made them reluctant to take risks so we need to turn that on its head and make the system predictable so that people will take those risks. I think we have a dreadful welfare system."

people think i'm joking or being some dumbass extremist when i say cunts like this need killing. i'm not.

the lower orders needs an enterprise culture

in nigeria, a young impoverished working class man is prepared to borrow £10,000,000 and offer nothing but his can-do spirit as security

what the shitting titting bastard fuck

and belfast telegraph? nothing against them lovely people i'm sure but this should be fucking drudgesiren newsflash in mile high skywriting across the country.

that quote isn't even in the guardian article.

gaping in horror

He's referred to the disabled as 'stock' before, in the context of moving people from one benefits system to another.

"We have, through our welfare system, created a system which has made them reluctant to take risks so we need to turn that on its head and make the system predictable so that people will take those risks.

"I think we have a dreadful welfare system."

He added: "You know, the incapacity benefits, the lone parents, the people who are self-employed for year after year and only earn hundreds of pounds or a few thousand pounds, the people waiting for their work ability assessment then not going to it - all kinds of areas where people are able to have a lifestyle off benefits and actually off conditionality."

I think you don't have to be the corpse to go to a funeral

Guys we shld be pretty careful before taking on an investment banker who sometimes gets shouted at

Don't usually rate or link to Toynbee but this is important:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/22/2013-boom-year-bailiffs-slum-landlords

A lot of the standard Westminster gossip seems to suggest that Cameron tried to gently shuffle Ian Duncan Smith out of work and pensions last year but bottled actually forcing it, which suggests that Universal Credit is going to be a bigger clusterfuck than most people anticipate.

I mean we actually DO have a dreadful welfare system, it's overly complex and confusing to the people who actually have to rely on it, money isn't always going to the places where it's needed most, and the whole system appears to be geared towards catching people out as much as helping them. But there's no way I want any "solution" from this lot.

there's no way I want as welfare minister a guy who thinks that someone right on the poverty line (where all you have left to lose is your home, health and life) has less to lose than the successful risk-taker who may be at risk of losing his second home or holiday villa if he takes another risk. I don't even want that sort of cunt in parliament, tbh

I'm finding it harder and harder to muster feelings about this government more complex and subtle than just wishing slow painful and debilitating death upon them.

and stet otm

No one has less to lose than a corpse, I suppose.

Vote Liberal Democrat.

Quite a few more corpses already as a result of these welfare reforms, and more to come... roll up, roll up undertakers!