'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe

I've totally failed at posting anything for um... nearly 6 months? That might be a new longest gap between posts. I've got several drafts that I really ought to have posted but for one reason or another didn't - maybe they'll appear, though given past history that's unlikely. Anyway, I'm back, and as there's local elections tomorrow I ought to have a look and see if anyone's worth voting for. Though given that I've received precisely zero flyers through the post, I'm not sure any of the parties are actually interested in being voted for...


First up: Labour are apparently running a Conservative voters meeting? Ah, actually this is a safe space where you can admit that you're going to vote Labour this time.

Next, the Greens are pointing out that everything's terrible - but don't worry, you can trust us to turn everything green. Look, we even got voted council of the year!

Meanwhile the Lib Dems would like you to know that they understand all your problems are the Conservatives' fault. So vote for the best candidate - sorry, best Lib Dem candidate - to fix it!

Finally the Tories are trying to define the word "home". Apparently the definition of "home" is "Tories rule Labour sucks OK"?

There's a set of local elections tomorrow, so I probably ought to work out who to vote for...


First up according to iPlayer is Labour! Basically, everything's too expensive and it's all the Tories' fault. But don't worry, we've got a plan... or rather, we've taken the Green Party's plan and changed the colour scheme.

Next is Alex Salmond's comeback tour in the form of the Alba Party. Basically, everything's too expensive and it's all Westminster's fault. But don't worry, once Scotland is (finally) independent everything will be fine.

The Green's are up next. They've bucked the trend with a Zoom meeting to show off how awesome they are. Somehow they got through it with not a single "you're on mute"!

Now it's the remains of the Lib Dems. Basically, everything's terrible and the Tories' just don't care. But don't worry, we do care!

The Tories now get a chance to defend themselves. They've decided that offence is the best form of defence (and that they can't trust Boris Johnson in front of the camera): vote Tory because Labour and the Lib Dems will ruin everything.

Back to Scotland for the SNP. Basically, everything went wrong and it's all the Tories fault for being untrustworthy. As demonstrated by a spontaneous Tory caber toss.

Last but not least, it's time for Plaid Cymru. It's an uphill struggle with lots of barriers, but if we persevere we can make a difference!


Well. There's a definite theme here among the traditional larger parties of either "attack the Tories!" or "attack everyone else!" (with honourable mention to Alba for "attack England!"). The Greens as usual took a different path, and while their message isn't as starkly delivered as it was in 2019 it's still quite strong - instead of attacking everyone and/or saying what they hope to do, they've pointed out that they can actually achieve change.

So I feel like I should make an election post. I'll keep it simple.

Tomorrow, go and vote!

Seriously, that's it.

Vote for whichever candidate you want to. If you want to vote based on policies, that's fine. If you want to vote tactically, then that's fine. If you want to vote based on the coolest outfit... well, that's also fine. Your vote matters, no matter how you decide.

Or if you can't stand any of them (or think none of them have any fashion sense) then turn up and spoil your ballot instead (a friend who'll be counting them tomorrow evening says "make it amusing"). Spoilt ballots still matter - they're counted.

Most importantly, don't let the Twitter Rage Machine bully you. It's your choice, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Bonus propaganda time! This Thursday it's the MEP elections that the Tories have failed to avoid!

I must confess, normally I've paid little attention to MEP elections. They've usually ended up happening at the same time as local elections and there's been almost no campaigning material specifically for them - I always got the impression that the main UK parties didn't try particularly hard with MEP elections. I've still voted of course, but that's not due to any effort on the part of the political parties.

This time, however, it's all different because of Brexit and has almost morphed into another Brexit referendum. All the parties have Opinions on Brexit (some may as well be single-policy parties!), and roughly summed up they are:

• If you want to be in, vote Lib Dems, Change UK, or Green.
• If you want to be out, vote The Brexit Party or UKIP.
• If you want to shake it all about, vote Labour or Conservative.

Anyway, on to the Party Political Broadcasts and snark! Since last time (a whole three weeks ago), the BBC have changed their website and it's no longer alphabetically sorted, because why do a useful thing when one can do an unhelpful thing? Sigh. Full-text search it is! Oh, and you can't filter the results to just available programmes because again that would be a Useful Thing and we can't have Useful Things.


The Conservatives get to go first because that's the order the results came in. A collection of totally unbiased talking heads try to justify the chaos by saying it's everyone else's fault for playing politics. Oh, and the Maybot turns up to point out how voting Tory is in the national interest.

Next up, Greens! They're trying to convince everyone that the MEP elections do matter, really, honestly. Look, we even outnumber the Lib Dems! And we're green!

Labour on the other hand have a new film trailer full of gratuitous slow-mo. Showing in cinemas 23rd May, only Labour can save you from Theresa May's deal! We're not sure how, but we'll think of something!

According to UKIP it's all so simple: we voted to leave, and therefore we must leave. And by "leave" we mean "rage quit". Now. Or else.

Now for the Lib Dems. This time they get sidetracked by the glory days of the coalition, before realising that it is indeed MEP election time. Only the Lib Dems can stop Brexit! Oh, and we'll improve the economy and stuff.

Plaid Cymru have dug through their toy chest to put their clip together. The conclusion: everything is Westminster's fault.

New party on the block, Change UK, want to shake up politics with change! Change all the parties! We'll even let you change your mind on Brexit! Bring it on, Brexit Party!

Finally it's the turn of the SNP's latest film, A Tale of Two Cities. Or Two Parliaments. Or something. We'll let you know once Westminster stops ignoring us.


I wrote that list at the top before watching those clips, but looking back on it... yeah, that about sums it up. Labour haven't a clue what they want, and the Tories appear to have a clue except they're merrily self-destructing. The Greens, bizarrely, have moved from being another joke party to actually making a serious effort now - compare the current clips with earlier instalments (such as the Race to Number 10 board game from 2017 or their boy band music video of 2015).

It's local election time for some here in Blighty, which means it's time for another collection of Party Political Broadcasts for me to snark at! This is a bit late as I forgot about them because the local council isn't up for election.

The BBC's making them increasingly awkward to find but I think I've managed to track them down by puzzling through the iPlayer filters - at the time of posting they're listed in the middle of this page. At least the BBC actually understand that "A-Z" is a useful sort order! Anyway, on with the nonsense...


This time I started with the Conservatives... and predictably it's all about how terrible Labour and the Lib Dems are at running local councils and how awesome Tory councils are at building ALL THE THINGS. With a bonus cameo from the Maybot telling everyone how clear the choice is.

Labour are using a charity donation advert to point out that austerity isn't over, and only Labour has the courage to fix things by spending money. Oh, and Labour will build ALL THE THINGS as well (with a notable lack of Corbyn).

The Liberal Democrats are no longer the 3rd biggest at Parliament (they're what, 4th or 5th these days), and so start by taking the opportunity to reminisce about their glory days before getting sidetracked with Brexit. Eventually they realise that the MEP elections aren't for another month.

UKIP only have a regional clip this time, for Northern Ireland of all places. They use a management presentation to rant about NI politics and say how they'll make everything a priority.

The Greens, unusually, have a serious broadcast about changing ALL THE THINGS. Hopefully.

Nothing from Plaid Cymru or the SNP, and it's probably too soon to expect anything from Change UK (the new Lib Dems?) or The Brexit Party (Nigel Farage's comeback tour).


It's an unusual pile of clips. Local elections are always different here - it's much more about local issues and much less about central government, and historically parties beyond the main two (Labour/Tory) do a lot better in local elections. It's common for a local council to end up with no overall control and no-one really has a problem with it (unlike the coalition government of 2010 which confused everyone). Even so, there were surprises - Lib Dems have gone all-in on stopping Brexit, while the Greens actually pointed that they were taking things seriously for a change. Labour and the Tories didn't disappoint though with their traditional mutual blaming of each other for everything.


Well the polls closed half an hour ago and with it only being local elections there's no posses of students frantically counting votes to be first to declare, so it'll be tomorrow before we get any idea how the votes have swung. It could make for an interesting preview of the upcoming MEP elections...

Spoiler alert: the exit poll is in, and it's hilarious:

Conservative: 314
Labour: 266
SNP: 34
Lib Dem: 14

So no-one is predicted a majority (326 seats are needed)... and for added hilarity Labour+SNP+LibDem = 314, the same as the Tories. The only even remotely likely coalition for a majority is Con+LibDem, but I don't see that happening given how it worked out for the Lib Dems last time.

That said, the SNP prediction is apparently very iffy so it could still all change. I wonder what sort of result I'll wake up to tomorrow?

It's becoming increasingly hard to find the election propaganda these days. In 2005 the BBC had a fairly decent setup with RealPlayer, but that doesn't work anymore since all the browser writers have decided to kill all plugins with fire (nevermind that they're actually useful...).

In 2010 the BBC had a page listing all the broadcasts with links to individual pages, which is not quite as nice to use but does the job.

In 2015 they shuffled the broadcasts in with all the other Election 2015 reports.

In 2017... it appears the only way is to search for "Party Election Broadcasts General Election" in iPlayer and hope something sensible appears. Importantly, I must not add "2017" unless I only want to see the NI parties in the results. And when I do find the video to watch, I have to click four different links to play it (first link goes to a programme page, then "Watch now" goes to the episode page, then the play icon on that asks if I have a BBC account or a TV Licence, and finally I can actually watch the thing).


I can't help but think that so much of the modern internet is one step forwards, two steps back. Especially the current trend to replacing any sort of index or listing with a search box that doesn't understand boolean operators or quotes and returns results in an apparently random order.


Anyway, I've finally found them and so it's time to work out which party to vote for (again). It's surprisingly tricky this time round - all of them have terminally stupid proposals in their manifestos, most of them have surprisingly sensible ideas as well, and none of them come out particularly on top. And that's before you start considering tactical voting (since the most important thing is obviously to stop the Evil Tories, nevermind who wins as a result) or the fact that your preferred party might not even be standing as part of a pact (the Greens are staying out of some constituencies to help Labour or the Lib Dems, while UKIP are doing the same to help the Conservatives). It almost makes one want to give up on the whole thing and vote for the Monster Raving Loony Party...


So. I shall begin with Labour... who say it's all terrible these days but if you vote Labour they can fix everything and make a society that works for everyone.

On the other hand the Conservatives point out that it's all about Brexit and whoever wins has to make Brexit work. Somehow. Oh, and if the Tories win they'll also make a society that works for everyone.

The Liberal Democrats want to make it clear that there is another choice, and while no-one knows what will happen next the Lib Dems can give you lots of choices.

UKIP are trying to work out what everyone's thinking so they can say what they think everyone's thinking. And you can't trust Labour or the Tories because they're clearly in cahoots with each other.

The Greens have their latest board game on show - The Race To Number 10! Don't forget, in this game, nobody wins!

Plaid Cymru are worried that no-one even knows Wales exists, so they plan to invade Westminster to stop marauding Labour and Tory governments accidentally invading Wales.

Finally, the SNP are all about how awesome Scotland is, and how to keep Scotland awesome they must also invade Westminster to stop marauding Tory governments deliberately invading Scotland.


It's a rather depressing set of videos. The theme is definitely "everything's terrible, but if you vote for us then we might make things slightly less terrible" (except for the SNP who claim it's merely England where everything's terrible).

Crikey. Nothing I saw in the run-up to the election predicted an outright victory for anyone.

I was hoping for another coalition myself. All three major parties (or should I say the two major parties and a now-minor party) had downright stupid policies in their manifestos, so with luck combining two of them would have diluted the stupidity somewhat.

Still, at least UKIP haven't got any more seats.

Today's achievement was voting for a police & crime comissioner. Now, most of you have probably been reading about the US election, which is actually a cunningly disguised multiple choice test with no correct answers. UK elections are much simpler:

To vote, you wander up to your polling station and give your polling card to the election officer (if you forgot your card, you just tell them your name and address. In-person fraud is so un-British that it just doesn't happen). They look up your name in a list, go "boggyb, right?" and record that you've turned up. They then give you a ballot paper.

You take this ballot paper and head off to one of the booths. Most UK elections use the first past the post system which means that to vote you put an X next to the candidate you want. The police & crime commissioner election used the supplementary vote for a change, which means you put an X in column 1 for your favourite candidate and if you wish an X in column 2 for your second favourite candidate. If there's multiple elections happening (the usual combination is local and general), you get one paper per election. Simples!

You then fold the paper in half and drop it in the ballot box. Officially you're supposed to show the back of it (with the ballot number) to the election officer, but the ones here have never been interested in that.

That's it. Later on at 10pm they will stop handing out ballot papers, and once everyone who's got one has voted the boxes will be sealed and taken somewhere to be counted. There they will be leisurely hand-counted and a result usually declared mid-morning the next day (unless you're Sunderland, in which case a small army of students will frantically count them in an attempt to be the first location to declare a result).