walking & talking all over again

April 25, 2012

Night Mayor

I am, it's fair to say, no psephologist. Still, I can't help looking at the London Elects [1] booklet that arrived today with a vaguely analytic, but probably more jaded, eye.

Note, for example, that the London Assembly has 25 members, of which 14 are elected on a constituency basis and 11 London-wide. The major parties are putting up 11 London-wide candidates plus local candidates in each consistency. (For some reason the Conservatives have 12 floating candidates in addition to their 14 constituency ones. Presumably their last place nominee, Christopher David Hampsheir, is some kind of work experience intern -- or else someone in Conservative Central Office is showing their customary disregard for basic arithmetic).

Most of the fringe parties, on the other hand, are fielding few or no constituency candidates and instead putting all of their rotten eggs into the London-wide basket. In particular, the Christian Peoples Alliance (no apostrophes allowed) have a full 25 candidates on the London-wide roster, presumably on the basis that a disappointment shared is a disappointment halved. Or something. Clearly these imbeciles have no chance at all in any actual constituency and they're just hoping to mop up the residual city-wide moron vote. But you would hope that even the most mathematically inept of Christian dipsticks would recognise that they cannot hope to elect more fundamentalist berks to office than there exist offices for the said fundamentalist berks to be elected to. Then again, these are the sort of people who like to legislate the value of π, so perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that they consistently outperform two short planks in the World Thickness Championships.

Also notable is that notorious Little Englander Europhobe pissflaps UKIP, while owning up to their city-wide candidates, are polling in the constituency (and indeed mayoral) elections under the grindingly disingenuous tag Fresh Choice for London; thereby loudly announcing to us all that they think we're completely fucking stupid. I would like to imagine they are wrong, but you know...

Finally, I am thankful not to live in the constituency of Havering and Redbridge. For some reason those poor berks are not only being subjected to the usual rogues' gallery of emetic twits but also representatives from the BNP, the National Front Putting Britain First [2], the English Democrats Putting England First [2], the aforementioned UKIP masquerade Fresh Choice for London and some nutter running as the "Residents' Association of London". As if to prove that satire is not dead, the Lib Dems (may their name live in infamy forever for simpering complicity in the rape and murder of the NHS) are contesting this same seat with a candidate who is actually called Islam. So that'll be a sensible contest, then, and certainly not a dispiriting circus of racism and stupidity. The very idea.

Posted by matt at April 25, 2012 4:14 PM