Voting: what you need to know

Ok, it’s Election Day. For some of you, it will be your first time of doing it. Now, I’m in a position to give a bit of an inside track on what happens, which might a)reduce any anxieties and b)convince you it’s worth it and c) show you that It Cannot Be Rigged and that your vote counts. So:

Voting

Hopefully you registered to vote, if you didn’t, spend tomorrow slapping yourself in the face, because dammit, you had the chance and screwed it up. You’ll need to go to your polling station – the one in your polling card. You can’t go to another. You have to go to that one. So, when you go along, you’ll go in and two people will be sat there. You just need to give your name and address to them, which will be checked on the register.

You don’t need ID, and you don’t need your polling card. Assuming all is well, you’ll be given a ballot paper and told to go into one of the polling booths. All you have to do is put a cross [x] in a box. You can make any kind of clear mark, but, for the avoidance of doubt just cross. There’s a pencil provided. Just use it. It’s there because they’re reliable, make a mark, and don’t run out/burst/blob/leak. If it bugs you that much, use a pen you have brought with you. When counting, nobody cares. Oh, and don’t for the love of God, sign your name, make an identifying mark or anything like that or it won’t be counted.

Then, fold it in two, and pop it in a ballot box. Someone will likely help you – at my polling station, they shove it in with a ruler. 
Nobody should bug you, try and canvass you, or really, try and disturb you. It’s against the law to campaign in or near the polling station. Sometimes, local agents may stand nearby and try and ask you when leaving who you voted for. Ignore them. Nobody has the right to know who you voted for but you. 

There’s lots of stupid questions about polling rights and wrongs and they’ve been answered pretty comprehensively here

The polling station will be open until 10:00pm, and if you’re in the line at that time you’ll be allowed to vote. But don’t leave it that late….

Postal votes 

These should already have arrived and be stored safely. If you live nearby and have forgotten to send it, you can take it to your polling station.

I’m ill and can’t make it

Contact your electoral services department. You can organise an official proxy voter for you until 5:00pm.

10:00pm

Right: for the most of you, sit down, pop the BBC on and watch the night unfold. There’ll be an exit poll at 10:00pm. This is an estimation based on asking a select number of voters to indicate secretly to a polling company and the University of Glasgow who they voted for. It’s supposed to give a reasonable indicator of what will happen but they can be wrong (in 1992 they predicted a hung parliament which became a Tory majority)

Counting the votes 

This is where I’ll come in. From 10:00pm, the ballot boxes will be sealed. Methods vary but trust me, they are sealed tight. They are then transported under escort to a designated location – this could be a town hall, a sports centre, or any where big enough. Hundreds of staff will be waiting to count the votes – me included. Now, the process will vary, I would assume, but for us, the first to arrive will likely be the postal votes, which during the day will have been opened and put in a ballot box. The boxes from polling station could take a while to arrive so this is a good chance to get the postal ones done. 

It’s not a case of just counting the votes for each candidate. First, we’ll verify them. This means we need to check that the right number of ballots cast (based on the numbers of ballots issued) matches up. This can take quite a while – in fact, it’s the longest part of the night and explains why, in the majority of places, you don’t get a final result until the early hours, even if verification started at 10:00pm on the dot. The count of votes itself can’t proceed until the numbers are right. Incidentally, as the person doing the verification you don’t know what number you should be getting – you just get told if the number you have is right or wrong by a senior person. 

Verification can be done twice by different teams to make sure that the count is correct. 

The ballots cast at polling stations will then arrive and the same procedure will take place. Only then will the actual counting of votes start – this will typically be well after midnight. The count itself is a pretty quick process – into piles for each candidate and again, the number must match the number cast. Any variance and hey ho, it’s a recount. Only now, as staff, do you begin to see how things are shaping up and this, really, is the exciting bit – though you’re only seeing a small snapshot from the polling station you’re counting.

This is the point that ‘bad and doubtful’ votes are examined. So, ones that have a cross on more than one box, a mark outside of a box, a message written on, a little cartoon drawn or anything like that. These are pored over by candidates and agents and argued over if they think a vote has a definite mark for them (or not). This is really a very small number of votes but every single one may end up counting for something in a tight race. And really, any mark in a box will probably do but for the sake of a few seconds, just draw a damn x, yeah?

Once everything is verified, counted and verified again, the result is announced. However, if it’s a close race, it may be that the candidates ask for a recount, which is the same process again. 

Can this be hacked?

In all honesty, I fail to see how this could be done on a scale to do any significant damage and so many checks and controls are in place it’s very difficult to the point of being almost impossible, at least in terms of the counting and verification. This is all done at top speed overnight and heck, like anyone has time to rub any pencil marks out etc. There’s such a huge number of randomly selected people and recounting by an equally random selection of people. What I’m saying is, the simple system of many bits of paper and many independently scrutinised people produces a fair and transparent result. 

It’s also worth pointing out that the count is also viewed by a huge number of independent persons: the presiding officer, the media, the candidates, the candidates’ agents and representatives of the local parties who act as scruntineeers. These people stand directly opposite the count staff to ensure no funny business goes on, though they can’t distract the staff in any way. When the count is in progress, if they think a ballot has gone on the wrong pile they will attract the attention of the senior staff and point it out. 

Also, during verification, they’ll be keeping an eye on the number of votes to estimate turnout and try to get a sense of if it looks good or bad for their candidate. In the days of social media, this is why you might get rumours quite early on of something big doing down in constituency x or y, for example. 

Does my vote count?

Oh my, yes it does. If you live in a marginal constituency it counts a lot – one local election earlier this month came down to the drawing of straws as it was a tie. Ed Balls lost Morley and Outwood in 2015 by a few hundred votes. Byron Davies in the Gower holds the seat by just twenty seven votes. The First Past the Post system we use means a winner can be declared by a single vote. 

And, if you live in a safe seat -Theresa May has a majority of 29,000 in Maidenhead – then your vote counts too. Even a reduction in a majority can really affect the future of a seat, and an MP with a smaller majority has to work a lot harder to keep their seat and needs to really reflect the views of their constituents. So, even in these cases, you can end up with a harder working representative and you set the scene for the next election too. 

Conclusion

Elections matter, and here we have (to me) a really awesome system that makes sure your vote counts, that it’s counted and verified fairly and that a result is done by the time the sun comes up. All I can say beyond that is – use your vote. Many people died for you to have it, and one moment of your time in a polling booth can help change the direction of a nation.

See you after the sunrise….

The (not) coming Apocalypse

Ok, time for a hot take on the election at my special ELECTION 2017 HOT TAKE DESK. And in proper blogging style, we’ll do this in a trite question and answer format

Here I am at my Hot Take Desk

Oh will we?

Yes, we will. Suck it up, buttercup.

Twat.

Shut up, you only exist in a handy question format. Don’t fudge the rules.

So, what’s happening?

The Prime Minister has called for a General Election, which will be held on the 8th June. 

But – WHY?!

Well, that’s a good question with a very easy answer. It’s a bloody good time for her to do that, and because she can. And to preempt the next question, it’s a good time because:

1. May has a slim majority, and the conditions are right to increase that now.
2. The opposition in the form of the Labour Party is an absolute shitshow of the first rank, with a leader that has somehow managed to be amazingly unpopular with his own side, never mind the rest of the country. It’s also a party that has managed to alienate its metropolitan support by being not enough against Brexit, and the same with its traditional support by not being in favour of it enough. 
3. The opposition in the form of UKIP is deceased and its replacement in the form of the Patriotic Alliance is not yet formed
4. Brexit will take longer than two years, and the scheduled election was due to happen just as that process should be coming to a head.
5. Apropos of Brexit, very little of substance will happen over the summer due to elections in France and Germany which may well mean a change in the EU’s position anyway.
6. Also apropos of Brexit, it is possible that the economic position post Brexit will, to coin a phrase, be fucking dreadful, and that’s not a good position to go to the country in.
7. Also apropos Brexit, the amount of legislation that will need to be passed during the process will be momentus and she will need as compliant a legislature as possible – not least because she now needs Parliament’s assent to pass any final deal.
8. The opposition in the form of everybody else will be just as irrelevant.
9. It will help to dampen down any further fervour for Indyref 2 and mean, if an when that happens in 2020, she’s only fighting that battle and not a combined general election/Indyref fight.
10. There is the looming possibility of up to 30 MPs being embroiled in an election expenses scandal.
11. Teresa May wants to win an election and put the whole ‘unelected PM’ stuff to bed. 

Basically, all the big signs point to GO NOW or forever repent. Remember, Gordon Brown had a similar opportunity in 2007 which he ducked and regretted, big time. 

So what will this mean?

Most likely, and right now, a very easy win for the Toried with an increased majority of anything between 70 and 140 seats, depending on which polls you believe. For context their current majority is 12.

That said – a lot can and will happen in the next 8 weeks. At this point in 2010, you wouldn’t have given the Lib Dems great odds anoint being in Government, for example. 

Is there any good news for Labour?

That depends on how you look at things. For Corbynites – not really. If this plays out as expected, he’ll almost certainly be gone on June 9th. So, for non Corbynites, there’ll be a new leader, very likely a fresh approach and a rebuilding process for 2022. Or, fuelled by a grassroots movement among the youth, a Tory expense scandal, more airtime due to May dodging the TV debates and the favourable climate he somehow managed to manufacture during both his selection processes, he’ll be PM.  I’d say it’s currently 70/30 against that happening but you never know.

Right now they’d happily take Mike Yarwood for the job

Lib Dems?
Will have a good one, and pick up quite a few seats – assuming they play a solidly anti Brexit card, and Tim Farron manages to shake off the (slightly unwarranted) ‘homosexuality is a sin’ issues. 

What about the right?
Ah, and here’s the really interesting issue. For a start, don’t bother about UKIP. Assuming Farage doesn’t come back, it’s had it, and without Arron Banks and his money behind it, it can’t finance a proper campaign.  Crucially though, its replacement in the Patriotic Alliance hasn’t been formed – the last I saw, it was going to select policies by ‘direct democracy’ in September and probably start to therefore back the death penalty or something. They don’t have the infrastructure, time or candidates to do this in June. This leaves Farage both a) desperate and b) stranded in Strasbourg doing a talk show and c) sorry, you’ll have to excuse me while I stop laughing. Does he go for it? Does he sit it out till 2020 and possibly watch his only chance at being elected pass by? I’m sure we’ll find out soon.

UPDATE: Farage has refused to stand. I am too busy laughing to comment.

To save you all a picture of Himself, here’s one another giant arse on BBC premises

So is the apocalypse coming?
Right now? No. And is anyone can see further than the next election, they’re a liar. 

Strap in everyone. It’s going to be quite the ride.

The Coming Apocolypse

This is a blog that will hopefully be wrong. Hopefully, in a few years time, I’ll be able to add a postscript here showing how wrong I was, and this post will be hilarious footnote in political wrongheadedness.

Until then – this is the story of how Nigel Farage becomes Deputy Prime Minister in 2020.

It’s May the 6th, 2020. Teresa May returns to 10 Downing Street, apparently victorious. But a deal needs to be cut. Polls in 2017 – pre Article 50 – were forecasting an easy win for the Tories. A shambolic Labour Party in opposition, determined to be a party of opposition yet unable to do anything but oppose itself, a small but vociferous SNP bloc, and a Liberal movement in the Lib Dems that had been safely neutered via its association with the Cameron Government and its willingness to accept all the blame, but not fight for any of the credit. In 2017, this would have been a landslide. But not today.

But Teresa May had spent the last few years making deals. And it was time to make a new one. And the only offer on the table came from That Man. And he wanted one thing – high office. And what else could she offer? Deputy PM. It had killed off Clegg. Maybe it would kill Him off too.

There are lots of elements that will need to come together to make this situation come true – but I honestly believe they are all already in position ready to see Britain lurch as far to the right as America did in 2016.

Article 50

The obvious factor will be our negotiations to leave the EU. Teresa May does not hold her own destiny in her hands, bur rather in the hands of 27 other states. For Teresa May to survive 2020, she needs to come back with a deal, and, to put it bluntly, she won’t get one. We need to show we’re winning, 27 other states need to show we are losing. If May comes out of the negotiations in 2019 with anything less that a minted deal for the UK, then she’s in trouble.. But there’s a key here – ANY deal will infuriate the right. If we walk away on WTO terms, they’ll be angry once the loss of financial services, business and trade kicks in. Too soft and she angers the right, too harash and pig headed and she angers the left AND the right, outraged at the damage to the vital financial services sector. Europe, the perennial sore of the Tory Party, will be its undoing as so many times before.

Banks’ Right

For those unaware, the major donor the UKIP is a charming man by the name of Aaron Banks – and thanks to a tangle with his kind, I got msyelf embroield in a right old shitstorm on Twitter last year. He’s also the major funder behind grim anti-EU outfit, Leave.EU. Most of the awful stories from the EU referendum came via Leave.EU, and they’re still very much at it these days. The key thing here is the relationship between Banks and UKIP – it’s dead. Banks has relasied how effective Leave.EU’s model was in the referendum – strong on social media, strong on reactionary news, negative/attack dog rhetoric and loose on actual fact. It was modelled heavily on the US way of campaigning, and managed to galvanise a grassroots campaign (effectivly gamifying campaign work) and control the news cycle. Remember during the referendm how all the stories were ‘Remain reacts to Leave statement x’? Bingo.

This blog has taken me ages to write, mainly because the news keeps changing and leaping ahead. Since I started writing this paragraph, Andy Wigmore, one of Banks’ ‘Bad Boys of Brexit’ has published an image for the ‘Patriotic Alliance’. This will be a new movement, presumably bankrolled by Banks and the other major UKIP funders now that UKIP has served its function. They have three years to kill UKIP off, and the quickest way to do that is to cut its funding and watch it wither on the vine, for the majority of UKIP’s support based, the major attraction was Farage – and he’ll be the major driver behind the new Patritoic Alliance. It won’t have a leader, as such. It will be a collection of, I assume, ‘independent’ candidates, broadly signing up a general formula but with as much latitude as possible within that to, basically, win. So, hospital under threat? They’ll support it. Hospital bosses wasteful? They’ll oppose it. Whatever works.
There will be basic things they will sign up to – immigration control, tax cuts, small public sector, Lords reform, high defence spending etc. The main benefit, if you can call it that, is that it can be whatever it wants and as it won’t be per se a party, it can disown what it wants. 

One constant millstone around Farages neck was the shitness of his company – a bunch of swivel eyed pasty racists – who couldn’t help dropping embarrassing gaffes like hot racist pasties. No matter how much he played his ‘Normal man of the people’ act, some local councillor from Clacton would pop up and say that Britain was better when marmalade pots had Golliwogs on them. This movement won’t care about that, it doesn’t want council seats – it will train it’s eyes squarely on 2020. Whatever it claims to do, whatever it says it’s for, it has only one goal -get Farage elected. The rest is just a handy tool to the very special brand of electoral trolling he specialises in. 
Will it work? Banks has already said it will be about 200 candidates, in seats with ‘unpopular’ MPs. So, for that, read black, female, left wing etc etc. It aims to raise the age of MPs to at least 40, and abolish the House of Lords. It will be scary. It will hate the young, the disabled, the liberal, the fair and the just. If you are not white, male, rich and over 40, it will not just refuse to represent you, it will actively hate you.

And it will do so well, it will get somewhere in the region of 40 seats. It will elect Farage after a campaign of utter sewer level vitriol. And it will prop up a Tory government with a leader so spineless and in need of support, she will end up governed by the gabby, fag breathed, frog eyed loser sat next to her.

What’s the point of Labour?

By 2020, Labour will be dead. Corbyn will not go anywhere, and the very special leadership election system established by Ed Miliband means that he can’t be effectively removed as the membership is very much in the pocket of Momentum. There’s very little to add here. Without a major change in Labour, it’s toast, ad the Lib Dems have such a long road to go on the get back to where they came from, they’re toast too. 

Your choice in 2020 will be the right, the further right, a dead duck or a donkey.

The great imponderable – Scotland

We now know that the SNP are officially looking for Indyref2. May has to give ground here – though that said, electorally, Scotland is dead Tory territory, is basically an SNP stronghold, and can’t get any more. Westminster can say no to another Referendum, and this is exactly kind of great imponderable decision on which Prime Ministers are made. How does May react? The spirit of the Westminster/Scotland means that UK Gov would probably agree to another Referendum but the bone of contention will be when this should be held – and in this, are the problems. May has two options – during the Brexit negotiations, or in the run up to a General Eelction when she wants to appear a strong, committed and successful leade, and, by that point, may have very little to work on barring whatever deal we end up with. Losing Scotland in a Referendum that UK Gov can’t really prepare for or fight would bring on an immediate General Election in the middle of the Brexit negotiations, and after that, I’d say all bets are off for what happens next

Citation Needed Live: treading softly on my dreams

Just a quick blog post, really to say thank you to you all in more than 140 characters.

And if this scared you, imagine how I felt. Photo: @FreddieH_

It’s hard to say how much the Citation Needed Live Show on Saturday meant to me – I won’t speak on behalf of the other fellers here – as I genuinely don’t have the vocabulary to do so. It’s hard to imagine that when we started in the URY sweaty radio bunker  (that’s me and Tom, though I’d hasten that I just happened to be there at the start) we’d still be going 12 years later, and playing to a packed audience in a massive hall in London. For info, here’s me in the early days of the original Tech Diff singing on our version of ‘Band Aid 2’ from 2004, which featured a brilliant Brian Blessed impression from me.

Oddly enough, we didn’t chart

This was a time, I recall, when we got really excited if we had all of 6 listeners.

Anyway, Saturday.

It’s not an exaggeration to say I was really very nervy about Saturday. My previous stage activity was limited to the Heavy Woollen Scout Gangshow in 1993 (‘My Mummy is One in a Million’ is still a winner at any good Bhar Mitzvah). And we’d never done the show to anyone but ourselves before!  As I’m sure we’ve said before, we record about 35-40 minutes per episode, of which you see about 15-18. That’s a lot of stuff that goes on the floor. And now, we had to entertain a lot of people who had given up money and, most importantly, time, to come and see us. We all had our own way of prepping during the warmup, but I spent most of it on the stairs outside the Green Room swearing quietly. Thankfully, the fire doors were alarmed and also, I didn’t want to let you down.

But what can I say? I wasn’t ready for the outpouring of noise, love, smiles, appreciation, kindness and well, happiness to see us when we walked out. I’m not used to that. It’s the kind of crowd you normally only see at your funeral, so it was nice to get the obituaries out of the way while I’m still alive. Amongst it all, I remember thinking to myself, They’re smiling. And then, of course, I just switched on, made a crap quip and away we went.

I spent some of the journey back up thinking about why I felt so odd afterwards. I wasn’t the popular kid at school.  I didn’t get picked for the football team. I sat in the corner and read books. I wrote silly little stories. I bumbled round in my own little world. I volunteered in the school library and became obsessed with British TV telefantasy. A large crowd of people usually meant other people were going to kick the shit out of me. Those of you that know me will know how hyper-self-critical I am. Basically, I don’t think I was in any way emotionally wired to deal with a crowd of people enjoying what I do.  But – what a way to learn how to handle the feels, as the kids say.

Someone said that we didn’t have an audience on Saturday – we made a network. I can’t make a call on that. What I saw was a sea of people that by and large hadn’t met before but were there because of our mucking about. And it was lovely!

Thank you so much for all the lovely words, the hugs, the photos, the biscuits and everything else.You made a daft, 30-something git emotionally happy.

Certainly never expected to see that. Photo:@FreddieH_

On Bond.

The release of the latest Bond fiilm – Skyfall – has got me thinking about Bond again. It sort of fills a hole between Doctor Who seasons (well, in an even numbered year).

I’ve come up with a -mostly bobbins – theory to explain one annoying yet constant point that niggles me whenever I watch any number of them. How come Bond looks, sounds, and acts different when the main actor changes?

I think they tried to make out it was the same guy for a time – certainly there was a planned scene where Lazenby was to have plastic surgery to explain why Bond looked a bit different. But assuming that Bond would be that same age as Sean Connery, that made it ludicrous even by Licence to Kill that it was the same guy. He’d be claiming his pension!

I know the books have made more of an effort to stay true to the ‘same man’ philosophy but in the films? I just don’t buy it.

So, here’s Gary’s Bobbins Bond Bet: it’s a codename, passed from man to man.

There’s already some precedent for this in the film MI6. M has changed from Bernard ‘pass the sherry’ Lee; to Robert ‘Paddington Bear’ Brown, to Judi ‘Time Goes By’ Dench. Q has changed from Peter Burton, to Desmond Llewellyn; to John Cleese and now Ben Wishaw.

Why not Bond? I know this isn’t the most astounding of revelations, but it’ll give me something to ruminate on in the wee small hours….

Why always me?

Why another blog?

Why does the world need another blog? And – even if it does – why does it need one from me? There’s no answer to those questions. In all honesty, the world doesn’t need another blog. There’s millions of them in the world amounting to a wall of opinion, noise and comment, and frankly only about 1% of them are interesting. Bloggers, it seems to me, have a bit of an attitude sometimes. Yes, it’s publishing, but really – who cares? So really, this blog will never change the world. It’ll never bring down a government, change a business or cause a revolution. Sorry.

So why a blog for me? I tweet a bit (@garybrannan or @gbrannanarchive, depending on what side of me interests you more) and yes, I Facebook (but that’s for friends only, thanks). Sometimes, in the wee small hours of the morning, I find myself having long, drawn out thoughts. Sometimes about archives. Sometimes about politics or current affairs. Or sometimes about the ins and outs of Doctor Who continuity.

 So maybe, that’s what this is for – a means for me to record my longer thoughts. If it makes you laugh once or twice, well – that’s bonus enough for me.

Hello world!

First post.  I expect to hear the crashing of bottles of Asti Spumante on the bows SOON.