Glenrothes : Ghosts Vote By Post

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2009

Glenrothes : Ghosts Vote By Post

There appear to be hanging chad issues in Glenrothes, where surprisingly Labour, the underdogs, held the seat with a 6,737 majority against a strong SNP effort.

The Courier, a local newspaper, isreporting that the records have gone missing.

In December the SNP in Glenrothes applied to the sheriff court to obtain a copy of the marked electoral register—on which officials in polling stations score out voters as they register to vote. It is the official record of who presented themselves to vote.

Candidates and their agents are allowed to see a copy of the register, which records only who voted and not how they voted.

However, after repeated requests for the document last month, Councillor John Beare, the convener of the SNP Central Fife constituency, has been told that it has gone missing.

Mike Smithson over at PoliticalBetting.com remarks that the "startling thing about Glenrothes was the massive increase in postal votes compared with the general election - up four-fold if I recall correctly. It all sounds fishy." Quite.

Vince Gets Aggressive

Vince Cable, writing in the Guardian this morning, has his usual mixed-bag of platitudes and soundbites on corporate taxation. He wants to widen the base, raise the take, simplify and cut corporate taxation. Fantastic, Guido wants world peace and to help children as well, just like any other beauty contestant. Vince also says;

"there is a strong case for a more aggressive approach to tax avoidance. The systematic and widespread avoidance of stamp duty land tax by corporate vehicles can be stopped quickly."

Does he mean corporations like GMG Hazel Acquisition 1 Limited, set up in the Caymans Isles where the corporation tax rate is zero? This corporate vehicle allowed the Guardian Media Group to dodge stamp duty saving itself a mere £600,000. Surely not?

Incidentally, do you think when Cable was Shell's chief economist, he pestered the board to drop all their tax base narrowing, take reducing, complex corporate tax dodging?Aggression, Guido suspects, has come late to Vince...

Obama Bitterly Disappoints Liberals

The Guardianistas will have to revert to anti-Americanism, the Messiah is a very naughty boy. Sure he is closing Gitmo, but he isn't going soft on theWar on Terror the Networks of Terror Inducers. Fresh from signing the Executive Order barring former lobbyists from joining his Administration, he exempted a Raytheon defence contractor lobbyist, allowing William Lynn to become Deputy Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon - his old customer base. Obama has signed a few Executive Orders which, it is widely reported in the U.S. press, authorise and expand on the policy of extra-ordinary rendition.

He certainly left a few legalistic get-out clauses in the new Executive Orders covering the issue. So if you have no hard evidence that would stand up in court, are squeamish about drowning and electrocution, or too much of a bleeding heart to do old fashioned beating of prisoners yourself, just render them to some foreign dungeon in the back of a CIA contractor's plane. The military-industrial complex has just had a new makeover.