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  • in reply to: Euroelections 2014: South East Region #99652
    ALB
    Keymaster

    I'm not sure where the figure of contesting 50 seats to qualify for a election broadcast has come from (maybe it was once the case) but the current Ofcom rules on political broadcasts state:

    Quote:
    Other registered parties if they are contesting one sixth or more of the seats up for election in the case of first-past-the-post, multi-constituency elections such as a General Election.

    There are currently 650 MPs. One-sixth of this is 109.Frankly, I don't think we could do this, even if we relaxed the Rule about candidates standing in single-member constituencies having to have passed the Speakers Test.  Incidentally, the Rule currently says that in multi-member constituencies only one of the candidates has to have and in fact in the South East Region only one of the 10 had. Despite this 7 of the others were interviewed or wrote statement or letters to the press. They were quite capable of expressing the socialist case. After all, we have no leaders. The Speakers Test is essentially a test of knowledge and could probably be done away with (it already has for everything else) but one lesson of this election is the need to train members to answer questions on radio and TV.In any event, I don't think the PEB itself had much more than symbolic significance. It wasn't it that brought in hits to our website, but its posting on Youtube.  We could still do this even if we didn't qualify for one (as I can't see us doing). Also, the television interview with one of our candidates on the BBC2 Daily Politics Show will have been seen by many more than saw our PEB on the two occasions when it was broadcast.Obviously we have to follow-up our Euroelection campaign at the General Election by contesting seats in the areas we contested. The results, both in terms of votes and responses, identify Oxford and Brighton as must-contests. Also in Wales Swansea. Others such as Reading, Canterbury or Cardiff or Rhondda could be added.Outside the areas where we contested, we could do, say, 3 in London, and, taking into account where we have people on the ground (I think Brian has a valid point here), one in Norwich, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Lancaster, Doncaster, Sunderland, Glasgow and Edinburgh. That would be 19 or 20 as a realistic maximum figure. That would still be 4 times the largest number of seats we have contested before. I don't think that in practice we would reach that figure. Try convincing the branches in the North West and Scotland to engage in election activity !Looking beyond the 2015 general election, there's regional assembly elections in London, Wales and Scotland in 2016. These are easier to manage except there's no free postal distribution in them.If you want to think big there's the London Mayor election in 2016. It costs £10,000 to stand but every elector in London gets a booklet with statements from all the candidates. Here's the one from 2012. That's more than 5.4 million. We've never covered that number before. It's 4 times what we've just done. The "Independent Working Class Association" took advantage of this in 2004 mayor elections. But, since we are against the principle of elected mayors, could we contest these?Two other points. Candidates wouldn't have to be their own agents. And if we put up the same candidate in different constituencies we'd look silly (but we wouldn't need to as we could easily find 20 candidates. In fact, with the local elections in London and the Euroelections, we just fielded 17).

    in reply to: Euroelections 2014: South East Region #99637
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Actually it's 114, but still 8th best out of 67. It was the Roman Party, campaigning for more recognition for what the Romans did for Britain, that got that but he was a local candidate.Results here too: http://www.reading.gov.uk/council/elections-and-voting/election-results/european-election-results-2014/

    in reply to: Euroelections 2014: Wales Region #101419
    ALB
    Keymaster

    For the record, here are the other two articles that appeared in the Powys County Times.From Friday 1 May:To enlarge click here.From  Friday15 MayTo enlarge click here.

    in reply to: Grillo #92286
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Grillo likes Farage and UKIP:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10862817/Nigel-Farage-is-no-racist-says-Italys-Beppe-Grillo-in-defence-of-possible-Ukip-alliance.htmlHow is this possible? Doesn't he realised that they are not much more than breakaway Tories? If he doesn't some of the others in the Five Star Movement seem to.

    in reply to: Left Unity.org / People’s Assembly #93472
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Thanks. They'll probably correct it themselves. There's another error in their report and that is that in Southampton ex-Labour councillor Keith Morrell was re-elected as a TUSC candidate. He stood as an Independent. See:http://www.southampton.gov.uk/Images/All_tcm46-357556.pdfScroll down to Coxford ward, noting on the way and after that in every other ward there was a candidate standing as TUSC. Could it be that Councillor Morrell thought that this label would be a vote loser?I like their obituary on the welcome demise of the ineffable No2EU.

    in reply to: Left Unity.org / People’s Assembly #93469
    ALB
    Keymaster
    alanjjohnstone wrote:
    The WW also got confused on our vote in the Euro-election, that somebody can rectify.

    What did they say and where exactly?

    in reply to: Euroelections 2014: South East Region #99632
    ALB
    Keymaster

    This from this week's Private Eye is probably a breach of copyright but too good to be missed. Click here to enlarge:Four Party members are identifiable and they actually said the words attributed to them.

    in reply to: Euroelections 2014: South East Region #99631
    ALB
    Keymaster
    gnome wrote:
    We even did surprisingly well in Tunbridge Wells  And as already mentioned even better in Medway and Canterbury…http://www.yourtunbridgewells.co.uk/news/european_election_results_by_district_ukip_top_in_all_but_one_1_3616632

    The Regional Returning Officer has supplied a spreadsheet giving the full results for all 67 "local counting areas", which were the local councils in the area. They confirm that in all but three of the councils covering the 20 Westminister parliament constituencies we targetted with free postal distribution we did better than average.(The three where we didn't were the Kent constituencies of Folkestone, Maidstone & the Weald and Sittingbourne & Sheppey).One curiosity is why we should have received a higher percentage in Eastbourne, Worthing, Runnymede, Surrey Heath, Cherwell (Banbury) were none of our leaflets were distributed except 200 in Banbury.  We also did better in Basingstoke, Ashford and Thanet where members and sympathisers only distributed a few thousand. In general we did best in Oxfordshire and worst in the rural parts of Surrey and Hamphshire.So receiving our election manifesto does make a difference to the number of votes we get, but of course we were not in it for the votes but for the contacts and the general publicity. The TV, radio and press contacts have been recorded here (though there will be some press publicity we are unaware of). Our standing was also discussed on the internet discussion forums RevLeft, Urban 75 and Libcom.As to contacts, these are still being collated, in fact still coming in, but  the count so far is:50 telephone requests for more information35 email requests15 letter requestsThis means that we are now sending out an extra 100 copies of the Socialist Standard each month. Applications to join are also up.There were also 20 or so other email replies and 10 letters, some of which we were hostile or abusive (one nutcase sending us a tile to our Freepost address) but most we were genuine disagreements. These are being replied to by the Enquiries Committee.We also know that we received 150 or so hits on our website from the South East leaflet, 150 from our election video (though mostly from Youtube rather than the broadcast itself) and 25 from the Wales leaflet. Some of these will also have emailed, but we will have missed some because our website was slow or down during the key period just after out leaflets had handed on people's doormats.

    in reply to: Euroelections 2014: South East Region #99625
    ALB
    Keymaster
    jondwhite wrote:
    The CPGB-PCC urged support for the SPGB too.

    But they didn't argue our case and in fact urged people to support other parties in other places and other elections. Of course we should thank the Oxford Corresponding Society for distributing our leaflets and arguing our case and maintain friendly contact with them. End of.

    in reply to: Euroelections 2014: Wales Region #101416
    ALB
    Keymaster

    True, the SNP have transformed themselves from Tartan Tories into Tartan Reformists but has Alex Salmon ever spoken in these terms as the current leader of Plaid Cymru, Leanne Wood has:http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/mar/23/leanne-wood-wales-plaid-cymru

    Quote:
    "Socialism is an old-fashioned word and for some people an offputting word. But I describe myself as a socialist. Plaid Cymru has socialism in our aims, to create a decent socialist world."

    She's right. The word "socialism/sosialaeth" does occur in its constitution as one of its aims:http://www.plaidcymru.org/uploads/Cyfansoddiad_Nov_2012.pdfOf course they are not socialists but at least they are not afraid of the word.

    in reply to: Euroelections 2014: South East Region #99623
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Members and others have got to buy this week's Private Eye (out today) to see the cartoon report of West London's Euroelection meeting. It's accurate and quite funny.

    in reply to: Euroelections 2014: South East Region #99621
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Just checked and see we also did relatively well in Portsmouth (7th out of 67 for us in terms of percentage, after Oxford, Brighton, Hastings, Canterbury, Lewes and Southampton). Maybe this had something to do with the comrade who put and defended our position in the comments section of the local newspaper (as well as Royal Mail's delivery of our manifesto to half the households there). Scroll down to the comments section here to see the comrade's two contributions:http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/local/european-elections-the-full-rundown-1-6070283

    in reply to: Podemos in Spain #101632
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Our man in Spain, Alberto, is already on to this. By co-incidence he phoned yesterday to say he had arranged to meet Pablo Iglesias and ask him why the new party only criticised corruption, etc but never mentioned capitalism. No doubt he will be reporting back. In the meantime we can contact them via their website.At first glance they seem to be similar to the Your Voice Party that stood in the South east Region in the recent Euroelections, i.e. no particular policy except that any policy should be decided democratically by the citizens through referendums and the internet (isn't that what the Pirate Party advocates too?). But immensely more succesful in terms of votes. They got 1.245.948 compared to Your Voice's 2932.

    in reply to: Euroelections 2014: South East Region #99619
    ALB
    Keymaster
    alanjjohnstone wrote:
    Can i ask how much we spent – the cost of standing, the leaflets and video and how much each individual vote cost us. (exclude the candidates travelling expenses to hustings etc).

    We spent about £15,000 in the campaign in the SE Region (£10,000 for 984,000 leaflets + £5000 deposit) and about £11,600 In Wales (£2750 for the election video, £3850 for 342,000 leaflets + £5000 deposit).Standing entitled us to free postal distribution of our election leaflet and, in Wales, to an election broadcast on BBC and ITV (on different days).

    in reply to: Euroelections 2014: South East Region #99617
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Can you tell those of us who are not subscribers to RevLeft what the result was (it says you have to register to see it). Did the ICC recommend spoiling the ballot box?

Viewing 15 posts - 8,221 through 8,235 (of 10,278 total)