European election postal ballots arrive ...

Received my ballot papers today for the elections which hardly anyone wanted - for British seats in the next European parliament.

The North West Region ballot paper is, shall we say, interesting.

One or two good people on the paper - pleased to see my good friend Kevin Beaty, a farmer from Cumbria who was Leader of Eden District Council up until last week's elections, took the number two place on the Conservative ticket, the highest slot available to anyone not a sitting MEP. 

And although I do not share his view on a people's vote, sitting MEP Saj Karim has worked extremely hard and effectively for all the people of the North West for more than a decade and taken up many important causes that not enough other politicians have paid attention to.

But for the rest, I am struck by how many truly egregious candidates are standing. In that respect think it is literally the most horrifying ballot paper I have seen in my life - even worse than the previous two North West European  ballot papers which included BNP chairman Nick Griffin (who to our shame was actually elected in 2009. That's probably why Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is standing here under his usual alias of Tommy Robinson.)

More on this to follow ...  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more