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This appeared on one of the Better Together sites yesterday, and to be fair, was taken down pretty quickly. But clearly someone thought it was a good idea to encourage people to move house so they could vote against Scotland's independence, pretty much regardless of whether they had any other reason for coming here.
The second part is a bit more worrying though...
"POSTAL VOTING SHOULD BE STRAIGHT FORWARD (sic) FOR THOSE WITH FAMILY OR FRIENDS ALREADY HERE."
Does that mean what I think it means?
If it does then the dirty tricks campaign has stepped up a gear. It's not illegal to lie or obfuscate. (If it were Johann Lamont would now be in police custody after yesterday's speech). But arranging postal voting scams from friends or relatives from the United Kingdom, as this poster appears to urge, is illegal. And this is not some 'by-the-way' comment. Someone designed that poster. Someone put it up on their web page.
I've long thought that we need to invite international observers to scrutinize the referendum results. Now it seems to me a necessity.
Could we honestly trust the UK authorities to 'out' a programme of (for example) scam postal voting, if ignoring it meant that they kept their hands on our oil, and natural resources, and David Cameron didn't go down in history as the prime minister that lost Scotland?
Funny I was thinking something similar Tris.
ReplyDeleteThe last few elections have seen a significant rise in postal voting. More over there have been a rise in postal voting application forms being delivered by Labour where the RETURN ADDRESS is THEIR HQ in Glasgow! Now WHY would anyone wanting a postal vote need to return their postal vote application form to LABOUR?
They did change their address at last election. In my case if I wanted a postal vote the return address was Labour offices in DUMFRIES!!! Why Dumfries Labour office why not Election Returning officer in Dumfries?
In my view Labour and alleged postal vote questions runs hand in hand!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.labour.org.uk/register_to_vote
or we will do it for you ha ha ha
Don't miss out on your chance to vote and have a say in who runs the country.
Your right to vote
You can vote in UK parliamentary elections once you are on the electoral register and provided that you are also:
• 18 years of age or over on polling day
• a British citizen, or be a Commonwealth citizen or a citizen of the Irish Republic (and resident in the United Kingdom)
• not subject to any legal incapacity to vote (for example, if you are in prison)
At a general election, the following people cannot vote:
• anyone under 18 years old
• members of the House of Lords, including life peers, Church of England archbishops and bishops and hereditary peers who have retained their seat in the House of Lords - these people can, however, vote at elections to local authorities, devolved legislatures and the European Parliament
• European Union citizens - who can, however, vote at local government, devolved legislature and European parliamentary election level
• citizens of any country apart from the Irish Republic and Commonwealth countries • convicted persons detained in pursuance of their sentences, although remand prisoners, unconvicted prisoners and civil prisoners in default of fine or breach of 'recognisance' (an obligation to the court or magistrate) can vote if they are on the electoral register
• anyone found guilty within the previous five years of corrupt or illegal practices in connection with an election
and, under common law:
• people with learning disabilities or a mental illness if, on polling day, they are incapable of making a reasoned judgement
Register to vote
If you are eligible to vote, you can register at any time by contacting your local electoral registration office, which is usually based at your local council office. You will need to fill in a voter registration form.
It is not the case that you are automatically registered to vote if you pay Council Tax or are registered in a house where Council Tax is paid. Electoral registration is a separate process to Council Tax registration.
Once registered, you will be able to vote in a number of different types of election: parliamentary, local government, Scottish Parliament, Welsh and Northern Ireland Assembly and European Parliamentary elections. Information about which types of elections you are eligible to vote in, and when elections will be held is available from your local electoral registration website.
If you aren't on the electoral register, you can't vote. The electoral register is updated each month so you can have your name added to it at any time. If you have recently moved, or aren't registered to vote for any reason, you should contact your local council. Also see the www.aboutmyvote.co.uk site where you can sign up online to register to vote.
The Electoral Commission has more on elections and the importance of voting.
Vote by post
Anyone can apply for a postal vote. So if you can't get to the polling station for any reason, a postal vote means that you won't miss out on your right to vote.
See http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/ for more postal votes information.
When I first saw this I thought it was satirical until I realised that Darling must have gone into the business of selling houses and that this would save on the estate agent's fees.
ReplyDeleteThe reason it was taken down so quickly was due to the deluge of critical comments from all over. Makes you wonder what other murky messages this crowd have dreamed up.
Interesting part of Niko's comment was the one that says that those found guilty of corrupt or illegal election practices cannot vote. Labour have been found guilty of this so does that mean that none of them can vote?
I've got a postal vote and the envelope I get is addressed to the Returning Officer at the relevent council so I'm not sure wtf is going on with these ones that are sent to the Labour party
ReplyDeleteI hope that people rather more influential than us are thinking the same thing Arbroath.
ReplyDeleteThere is too much to be lost, and after all there is a history of perfidy where the Uk authorities and Scottish referenda are concerned.
I agree Tris.
DeleteIt was ridiculous that in the 2010 Westminster General Election people were getting Labour leaflets through their doors asking if the residents wanted to apply for a postal vote then for the residents to fill in the attached form and return it to Labour HQ! Now consider this. I live in Dumfries and Galloway. WHY would I want to fill in an application for postal voting only to send it to Labour HQ. WHY do they need to have my postal vote application, in fact WHY do they even need to know that I've applied for a postal vote? Labour were just treating the electorate like complete idiots. Did people fill in these forms and send them to Labour HQ? I don't know. Did they receive their postal votes? I don't know. One thing I do know is that this sort of questionable behaviour STINKS in my view!
As I mentioned earlier the SAME questionable action took place in the Holyrood 2011 elections. The only difference was that this time the "application forms" were to be sent to the Labour office in Dumfries!
As before this whole approach by Labour STINKS to me and always will. ANY application for postal votes MUST be sent to the local Election returning officer NO ONE ELSE!
I understand from discussions I had with others at the time NO other party entertained such methods. Every other party did door knocks and did ask if postal votes were required, if so application forms were filled in on the door step. The difference is the address on the forms was the local election returning officer, as it should be!
Thanks for the info Arbroath...
DeleteDoes that mean that if the voters, having sent their vote off, didn't vote the way that Labour wanted them to, the ballot was binned and never counted...?
NIKOOOOOOOOOOOOO
ReplyDeleteWhere have you been...
Oh, Don't tell me Inverness????
Anyway...nice to see you back.
LOL John...
ReplyDeleteImagine Darling being unable to vote, and us winning by one vote!!!
Mind you, I know that referenda are different. For a start 16 year olds can vote in this one...
I wonder if the Lords ban sands. Imagine if the Noble Baron Fffolkes of Haberdashery couldn't put his cross...
For reasons other than hangover....
I don't know either Anon.
ReplyDeleteI would have thought it impossible to send it anywhere except the returning blokey, but I've heard of that before.
Labour seems to do this.
I'm not sure if other parties do it...
Standard BritNat style of fair play showing that their secret polling is going against them so expect more ludicrous schemes become more evident as time goes on. Fools think people laugh at them because they are funny but these fools are hypocritical liars to boot. Vote YES in 2014
ReplyDeleteImagine if we didn't and were left in a country run by these idiots, CH.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't bear thinking about.
Interesting that the Scottish Sun seems to be getting rather pissed of with Labour......AGAIN!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/4897762/Nicoll-Dont-give-us-a-list-of-problems-Johann-give-us-solutions.html
Could this be yet ANOTHER small step taken by the SUN on its way to openly supporting Scottish Independence I wonder!
Another day and another example of Westminster TOTAL INCOMPETENCE!
http://newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-economy/7233-treasury-admits-p16-billion-mistake-in-nuclear-decommissioning-costs
Is this another example of why we are Better Together?
Tris
ReplyDeleteIt's starting to look like Bitter Together are getting desperate so what do they know that we don't. The polls show a healthy amount of no votes compared to yes and don't know, it will be closer than many suggest but sadly my money is still on a no vote but this did get me wondering.
Bruce
More and more people don't like being insulted or lied to.
DeleteYes, CH. That kind of thing is bound to happen when you treat people like fools.
DeleteStop it Labour/BT.
You're not debating. Your blethering. Take us on on the arguments.
Be honest.
Why, for example, are we sharing our gas with England, which has done nothing about sorting out proper storage like other big countries. We have enough gas to keep us warm for decades, if we don't have to share it. Why at the same time are we helping to pay for nuclear power stations in England at £55 billion.
Explain to us why Norway is so successful, when it has what we have, but it doesn't have a pretend superpower spending all its money on being a big boy.
But no. Lamont's speech was lamentable. As the clipping from the Sun said. She said they were going to be positive and then spent the whole speech running down the SNP and Scotland.
Not everyone is thick. Many people can see through the lies.
That's a good piece, Arbroath, and it's true too. All we heard from her was negativity about the SNP, Alex Salmond and the ability of Scotland to cope without the Eton types to tell us what to do.
ReplyDeleteIdiotic when you think that in almost every way the current SNP government is doing so much better than the UK one.
We have bigger growth, smaller unemployment, better health service, free education, and on and on... resulting in the current government being streets ahead of the main opposition (Labour), and all polls showing that the SNP would win even more seats if there were an election tomorrow..., while the UK government languished far behind their (Labour ) opposition and an election tomorrow would give Labour around a 100 seat majority.
She has nothing to say for what she would do, because what she would do is what Ed miliband would tell her to do. And all that would be decided upon on the basis of how many votes it would get them in Chipping Norton.
As for the £16 billion, I'm not surprised. This farce of nuclear being guaranteed huge profits is a joke. Can these people see that there are some things that just can't be pofitized.
Providing a cold wet country with heating is a government duty; people die without it. It can't be left to people, whether French, English, or Martian, to make profits round it.
The polls do show that more people say no than yes Bruce, but they also showing a bigger and bigger number of people saying,... I don't know.
ReplyDeleteIt's a big step for people who have always thought themselves British first and from the Scottish region, which is what we are brought up to believe...
But bit by bit, and hopefully in time for next year, they are seeing the car crash that is Britain.
The Yes Campaign has to work hard to show what life could be like 10 years down the road.
And dirty tricks are never a good idea, unless they have the wit to keep them secret... and apparently (as sticking them on Facebook suggests), they don't.
Tris
DeleteTotally agree with the don't knows growing, I even had a liberal say today that he was edging towards a yes now but I am really interested in the seemingly increased negative campaigning on behalf of BT. Is something afoot or in the pipeline that they are getting pre-emptive strikes in now, something like good news for Scotland somewhere.
Bruce
I really think that they are a bit desperate.
DeleteIt seemed easy. Brits are conservative by nature, they thought; they won't want to risk it. But more and more they see a successful government in Scotland dealing with those things left to Scotland far far more efficiently than the Westminster government does on behalf of the English.
The economy is better, employment is higher, unemployment is lower.
So they tell us about not being able to cross the great iron wall that will be built across the island. They tell us that we won't be able to have a pound unless we agree to very strict terms...why? the other small countries that use the pound don't have these constraints. Most of them are tax havens.
They must know that if Scotland left the sterling area, sterling would lose value and the english economy would tank.
They are saying different things because it is hard for bitter enemies like Labour and the Tories to agree. So Darling says that Osborne is an idiot who has made a mess of everything he touched, but that he's right about the problems of independent Scotland's pound. What? how can that be possible?
As the referendum gets close, so too does the English elections. Labour v Tories (Liberals in the bin). The two big English parties will be tearing each other apart, and agreeing over Scotland.
As they are politicians of course they have no shame about lying through their teeth.
We will win this Bruce. We can't afford not to. Cameron will gloat all the way to the next election as the man who saved the union. And the fact that Labour is lumbered with Miliband who has as much appeal as a cold steak pie can only boost their success.
And without the Liberals, the Tories will be even more vile and hateful than they are now, if that's possible. It's certainly not imaginable.
As poster campaigns go, this one is more stupid than most, not just for the obvious dishonest (possibly illegal) reasons but also because the people who support the Union also support the parties that have made it nigh on impossible for anyone to move anywhere because the banking system is so fucked.
ReplyDeletePerhaps someone in Hampshire will sell their garage to raise money for a flat in Hawick, I wouldn't have thought so though.
At the risk of courting controversy, there are enough people already here who want to have their unionist neo-con cake but eat the far superior Scottish social democratic pie they're being provided with.
I'm not sure that was a great metaphor but I know what I mean. ;-)
There's never anything wrong with a cake and pie metaphor, Paul.
ReplyDelete:)
The actual moving is a pretty unlikely possibility. I mean who is going to give up their job to move to Scotland to vote.
That said, there is a steady move from London to poorer (or less important, in some people's views) parts of Britain.
What bothers me is the incitement to use postal votes to cheat the referendum.
That's Great Britain for you. Butter Tomorrow, or whatever they are called do themselves no favours with people like this.
Strangely enough, one of the main reasons the Nats have to keep their spirits up in the face of opinion polls showing they are backng a lost cause is that they claim to have a uniquely effective election machine/marketing database which can identify smaller sections of wavering voters and the reasons for their doubts, allowing the Nats to spend their £millions targeting micro-groups of voters and causing a late swing in voting intentions.
ReplyDeleteI don't see how it can be a problem if other parties try to do the same. But then I'm not a Nat.
I don't think the Yes side has ever suggested packing the ballot box with postal votes from people who will have to register in Scotland, and give up their vote in the rUK.
ReplyDeleteI actually accept that very few will do that. But someone obviously thought it was a good enough idea to put it on a fb page.
Now Braveheart,
ReplyDeleteDo you honestly think that the SNP having a well honed campaign strategy is the same as breaking election laws as suggested by this No Campaign group?
That's like the nonsense that Ian Taylors investment into the Harris Tweed Company, is just the same as his donation to the 'No' Campaign.
Strange one.