the day after the deadline: can the union survive brexit and other deep questions

local councillors HATE him! learn his one weird trick to dominate the pages of the local press

NV: have you found yourself becoming harder left/more militant recently? I dont recall you being so strident. (It a good thing. Not criticising)

I get to vote in a celebrity polling station, since Corbyn became leader, so a camera crew and few photographers kicking about. And one Labour person - not much point in anyone from any other party showing up round here tbh.

One of the many stupid fallacies pedalled by Labour members of all stripes is that voters (and I mean the minority who actually vote in local elections) care about whether their local candidates are centrist or 'moderate' or socialist or whatever. They'll vote according to which party they feel impelled to vote for at national level, driven at least in part by a load of factors that local councillors can't really influence in any case.

There are exceptions to this - Haringey for example, and Kensington & Chelsea is going to be a unique circumstance - but most people will just vote for whoever is wearing the appropriately coloured rosette.

dowd i don't know. i don't think so - i've been somewhere on the Marxian end of the left since I was a teenager, really. i might be getting grumpier and more vocal about it as the prospect of rescuing some kind of civilization from an increasingly atomized, privatized society gets more remote but i think it largely depends on what kind of month i'm having. plus sometimes it's just devilment for fun.

i'm v shortly hopefully taking voluntary redundancy as part of a huge swathe of potential lay-offs and seeing the effect that's having on people less lucky than me might be hyping me up a bit at the moment

There are exceptions to this - Haringey for example, and Kensington & Chelsea is going to be a unique circumstance - but most people will just vote for whoever is wearing the appropriately coloured rosette.

exactly, hence the meaninglessness

Really sorry to hear that NV

for me it's liberating tbh. unfortunately not for many of my colleagues.

Cricklewood Mum OTM

For the past FOUR years we've had no enforcement whatsoever to help the community around our school with that kind of selfish, illegal & dangerous behaviour but out of nowhere, this non sense got requested, approved, funded & installed. Thanks for nothing @CityWestminster -> pic.twitter.com/iBRiykTN9k

— Sylvia #FBPE (@CricklewoodMum) May 2, 2018

what the fuck is that supposed to be

A lot of Jolyons saying they’ve not voted/voted LibDem today.

Grade A pointing opportunity right there xpx

BTW good luck with whatever the future flings at you next NV

i'm getting a yurt and some breeding camels, i shd be good

humping camels shurely

scrawled #FBPE on the ballot paper in my own shit, football's coming home

— Ed Jefferson (@edjeff) May 3, 2018

camels are surprisingly expensive, i blame the Tories

comin' over 'ere, storin' our precious fluids in their 'umps

enough to make you sick, it is

wot's wrong wiv good old-fashioned seaside donkeys, i say

*hoists bosom, sucks on benson & hedges, dies*

All the focus is on K+C and London today obv, but still voted Labour today. Just on the strength that when my candidate recently visited our estate, there was a dead rat on the ginnel. And rather having a photo taken pointing at it with disapproving frown, he got one of his assistants to dispose/eat/burn it or whatever, it was gone! And also he faced off a bunch of ugly-ass Britain First twats outside a mosque a few years back. He's still probably completely corrupt and useless like. But I have developed a probably misplaced liking/electoral loyalty for the fool!

what's his stance on hepatitis?

he is campaigning for daily bottles of hep c for school children, he's one of the good guys!

a rat in every belly, hep c in every bloodstream

30 years ago a child would kick a rat in the street.

I had 2 votes today, normally when that happens I vote Labour with one and Green or some variety of Socialist with the other, but I chucked both to Labour. I looked into the 2 Lab candidates and looks like one is centre-left (but pro-Corbyn) and the other is hard left. That'll do for me. It does seem pretty meaningless but a bad result for Labour will be spun to fuck by the media so they need all the help they can get.

I had 2 votes today

sssshhhh we're supposed to keep our widespread and highly-organised voter fraud a secret

I used my partner's postal vote as well, as she couldn't be arsed voting. But to no great tactical avail tbh, but doing something to stop Tories/LibDems not winning anything is a sort of a win, or making their loss bigger than marginal, if only personally to me.

last sentence didn't make sense, but you know worra mean

yep

Considerably easier to hate the Tories and Lib Dems than love the Labour Party.

'twas ever thus

good luck uk

luv2suppress voters

Voters have been turned away from polling stations in at least two of the five areas trialling the government’s controversial compulsory ID scheme, prompting concerns that some people are being disenfranchised.

Angela Wilkins, the leader of the Labour group on Bromley council in south-east London, one of the boroughs involved in the pilot project, said four polling stations being used for the local elections on Thursday had told her that by 10.30am, they had already turned away five people between them for not having ID.

“By that stage, there had been 25 votes at one of the stations, which could mean just 100 votes cast overall, and already five people turned away,” she said.

“If that turns out to be the case, it’s a much higher rate of people having difficulties than anyone expected.”

grrrrr

I gather it will be another 6-7+ hrs before we can start to expect exit polling and results and the like?

You kidding, it's the UK, it'll take longer than that.

I'm just impatient.

Here's how Home Office officials interpret "hostile environment"

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/03/home-office-official-tells-man-facing-deportation-my-job-is-to-piss-you-off

well, you can't fault the guy's enthusiasm for hostility i guess

I don't think they do exit polls for local elections?

good question, I was too scared to ask!

I just thought there might be this year with historically blue boroughs ready to fall etc.

in London I should add.

I've never been exit polled. There's usually a Lib Dem and a Labour person at the polling station that ask my address so they can cross me off their list, but they've never asked me how I voted.

Wait (furnur here) why do they want your address? Do you give it to them?

It will be private exit polls this year. And a drone sniper shooting anyone who looks like a classic lefty. (facial recognition software used from yesterday's Sun article,yay!)

i never give them my address, some of them go mental. it's beautiful.

I've never been asked my address after voting

why do they ask in the first place? who are these people?