So, as you all know, next week Thursday, if you want to exercise your one-person, one-vote secret ballot, you will need to prove who you are before you are handed a ballot paper with some photo ID… These are:
• Passports
• Driving licences
• Older or Disabled Person’s bus passes
• Oyster 60+ cards
But NOT a young person’s rail photo card… (so all you youngsters getting your rail discount, that’s your lot…travel for cheap but don’t try and vote).
As you can imagine, the progressive parties (Labour, LibDems, Greens) are not in favour of this and to be honest, you can see from that list that it does look suspiciously like a demographic that is more likely to vote Tory… but who am I to cast aspersions on the Government to “protect the integrity of the ballot box”.
Though if you registered to vote by post, you don’t need any of these things… and to be honest, any school kid worth their salt can easily reproduce mums signature and provide her date of birth (all the security you need) and vote for the Monster Raving Loony Party (if you are in one of the nine wards they are contesting this year).
Now you might be forgiven to think that with these measures being introduced, there is large scale voter fraud going on that the Government is cracking down on… you can picture it… busloads of WI members showing up to cast fraudulent votes and swing the election, jam spoon in one hand, pencil in the other. Not so, since 2018 there has been the grand total of nine convictions for election fraud… so arguably, not really a priority considering other crimes.
Which brings me on to one of my favourite topics… allegations of Councillors taking bribes for planning permission… Now, I spent years on a planning committee, and I can assure you no one ever tried to bribe me… maybe I just have an honest face… but I don’t actually know of anyone stupid enough to try and bribe a Councillor or a Councillor being even more stupid and taking a bribe. The last (and only) time google tells me this happened was in 2009 when a Councillor went to prison for a year for taking a 500 quid bribe.
But of course, there are a chorus on NIMBYs out there who immediately play judge, jury and executioner if a Councillor dares to support a planning application that they don’t agree with (usually because they fear it will negatively affect their house price).
Thankfully we still live in a healthy and corrupt free democracy and outside of election times, you do get Councillors making planning decisions on the merits of the application rather than bending with wind coming out of the mouths of the shouting NIMBYs!
Next week we’ll have a serious look at what the election results will mean for every party.
Until then,
Henry
