How stupid are members of the current government?

This stupid 

(Jeremy Hunt posted a picture on social media of his wife about to fill out her postal ballot paper with the caption: "Marriage safe got the wife's vote." It's an offence to "pressurise or induce a postal voter, or indeed any voter, to make their information available. It can also be an offence to obtain and share information about how someone else has voted.")

And now we have a Labour candidate betting against himself in his own constituency. This is not technically illegal (no insider trading, so to speak), but still utterly moronic in the current climate. Pleased to see he was immediately suspended and his £100k donation to Labour is to be returned.

It makes you wonder if people really know what they are voting for

 

Stircrazy wrote:

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A thought-provoing article in today's Standard by Tom Newton Dunn.   My favourite bit comes at the end:

What I'd most like to do is vote for None of the Above, to publicly register my dissatisfaction with the lot of them. But I can't do that because None of the Above isn't on the ballot paper. In the United States it is, because you can write in the name of whoever you want and it must be counted.

Just imagine how many of us would vote "None of the Above" this time round if we could. Hundreds of thousands? Millions? And if we did, what a powerful instruction that would send to Westminster that politics simply must be done differently.

What I can still do is the next best thing. I can spoil my ballot by writing None of the Above on it anyway. Sure, it will only be seen by one or two tellers, but all spoilt ballots must be counted and added to a column of their own, and their number read out by every returning officer.

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 I have attended several counts and all the spoilt ballot papers are set aside till just before the announcement as their numbers are usually so small as to not affect the result. They broadly fall into 3 categories. People who write a comment, people who indicate their voting intention incorrectly and people who identify themselves. All are seen by candidates and agents present at the count and the returning officer explains them all. The 2nd groups votes are usually counted but not the others.

Another interesting piece by Tom Newton Dunn from last month (only just come across it).  I particularly like the description of that oily sleazebag, Jenrick.

Farage is an MP. Wtf.

Good thing about living in NZ is that it's daytime when the results are trickling through.

ETA: Suella, really!?????

-- Edited by Blue_Belle on Friday 5th of July 2024 03:07:16 AM

Really unimpressed with the comments of our tennis players, by the way, before the event:

www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/03/emma-raducanu-claims-ignorance-of-general-election-and-says-she-will-lie-in

For Emma to supposedly be wanting to go to Oxford, and to say she doesn't know that yesterday was election day. Either she's an idiot or she's lying.

And the others are no better.

Only Harriet gave a comment that you can relate to

I find that really poor; the very least they could have said, as role models, was: "I'm not going to talk about politics directly, but elections are important events and it'd be great if young people went and voted"