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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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).

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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?

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And here's our next best after Oxford, Brighton and Hastings:Southampton: http://www.southampton.gov.uk/Images/Southampton%20Area%20Result_tcm46-357779.pdfCanterbury: https://www.canterbury.gov.uk/your-council/voting-elections/european-parliamentary-election/Lewes: http://www.lewes.gov.uk/council/21933.aspLewes (beat the BNP again) is particularly impressive as this was not one of the places where we had Royal Mail deliver our leaflets, only a couple of thousand distributed by a member (one of our candidates) and a sympathiser.After that it's Dover, Shepway, Eastbourne (!), Milton Keynes. Reading was a disappointment.

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Here's the result for Brighton:http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/content/council-and-democracy/voting-and-elections/european-parliamentary-electionsIt's not actually our best in terms of percentage (Oxford was) but it's the best-looking one, in terms of absolute numbers and beating the three main nasty minor parties (BNP, Christians, English Democrats).

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Here's another place where we did much better than average (in fact more than two times better): Hastings on the South Coast.http://www.hastings.gov.uk/decisions_democracy/voting_petitioning_having_your_say/elections_voting/electionresults/?elecdate=22052014&electype=europeanThis is one of the areas where Royal Mail distributed our leaflet to all households and is the scene of Robert Tressell's The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (though he called it Mugsborough).

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Here is the result from the Oxford Local Counting Area:http://www.oxford.gov.uk/Library/Documents/Elections/Declaration%20of%20results.pdfNote that, as well as us getting more votes than the BNP and the equally nasty "English Democrats" ("English jobs for English workers"), even the LibDems got more votes than UKIP as Claudia pointed out. Sounds like an oasis of sanity where parties lose votes if they shout "immigrants out".

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