Tweet of the Month - Special Election Edition

 These were so good they deserved their own category! 

Thing Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold....

That they do, Yeats, that they do...

A Green councillor in Hackney has quit within days of winning his seat because he was voted in against electoral rules.James Tilden was elected to represent Hackney Central ward with 1,681 votes following the council elections last Thursday (May 7), but his party failed to realise this breached electoral law before making him their official candidate.As a primary school teacher in the one of the borough's community schools, Mr Tilden is legally an employee of Hackney Council. Under Section 80 of the Local Government Act 1972, teachers cannot become a member of a local authority if they are employed by or their job is confirmed by the same local authority.

Meanwhile:

Scotland Yard has been urged by the Tories to investigate Zack Polanski after he admitted he failed to pay council tax while living on a houseboat in east London. The Green Party leader was branded a 'hypocrite' after he apologised on Monday for the 'unintentional mistake' and said he had 'immediately taken steps to pay any council tax' owed. The Conservatives and Labour have both referred Mr Polanski, who is a member of the London Assembly, to the City Hall sleaze watchdog over his council tax arrangements.

Are we uniquely blessed in this country with hapless politicians? What happened to the apparatus of state and local government that’s paid well to oversee the process and stop this sort of thing happening?

Mind you, with the current incumbent of No 10 clinging on like a limpet despite everything, are the Greens really the worst of a bad bunch?

A Reminder...

...of what the local elections should have been all about, courtsey of Matt

The Morning After…

Well, as I write this, it’s 5:15am, I'm just sipping my morning cuppa, and enough of the results are in that we know that, as predicted, Labour have suffered crushing defeat in their traditional heartlands, and Starmer’s political career is now measured in days, if not hours.

 TGIF! 

It's not all good news (it never is), the Green Party looks to have picked up too many seats for my liking, and what replaces Starmer is poroably even worse. 

Update: sadly, my area remaind solidly Labour despite (or perhaps because of?) the huge demographic change it's endured over the recent years?

It's D-Day!

Local elections, and a chance for people to cast a vote to give the people in charge a good kicking. but don't forget! 

Don't draw a cock on your ballot paper - last time, one got into No 10!

And never, ever vote Green!

My polling station is just two streets over, a short walk away so passport in hand I'll take a stroll on this, the last day of my impromptu holiday, and do my civic duty.

Update: A much longer walk than I’d thought - my local one is usually in a school, but the schools are all open, so it had been switched to a church hall several streets away. And to rub it in, on the walk there I passed another polling station in a community hall, much nearer! And inevitably, not the usual polling station means not the usual polling staff, three black women, and when I gave my address the one operating the iPad said she couldn’t find it, until I leaned over and pointed it out on the sheet of streets on the desk in front of her!

A Laughing Stock...

 

...but some deluded fools will still vote for him, Matt! 

And Will Be Full Of As Much Trash...

...and  smell as sweet, eh, Matt?