³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

Nobody at the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ has said one single word about Baroness Udinn's little local difficulty eitherlead in the Sunday Times, even the Guardian was covering it by Sunday evening, so that shoots the anti-Labour thesis out of the water.
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ= ZanuLabour Ministry of Truth.

MULTICULTURALISM AT ITS FINEST (#1)

I am no expert, but surely - apart from in Monty Python "'e won't 'aggle" films - if a queuing culture leaves an open goal for a haggling culture to exploit, are they not duty-bound to give us a metaphorical kicking? I think JJ might have an example or two of this phenomenon. Of course, the situation is reversed when it comes to superior Weapons of Crass Destruction. They fire up at our multi-million pound planes, bristling with obscene weaponry, and we bomb and rocket the proverbial out of them. To paraphrase Zimbardo; "given the upper hand, bloke will abuse bloke" - the more so if the other bloke is 'one of them'.

Now for multicultural unemployment - can't wait!

I thought you were about to apologise for failing to report Baroness Udinn's expenses claims.

The election frauds carried out by the Slough six were known to me so someone must have reported it in the past week. There was no need to apologise though. You haven't reported any of the other electoral/postal vote frauds that have been carried out in the past eleven years so I don't think anyone expected you make an exception of this one.

You'll make a good politician, Michael.

You acknowledge an error of (omission), but you haven't said "sorry" and of course you haven't be involved "in any wrong doing". Perish the Thought.

Now Baroness Udinn SHOULD say "sorry", and BEFORE she goes to prison.

You receive expenses to cover a legitimate costs, that you run up in the course of your employment. No outlay, no entitlement to costs, even though there is a very generous scale of remuneration.

The Baroness, and probably many more, a guilty of embezzlement and fraud, and being in the public eye must be dealt with, and SEEN to be dealt with severely.

Oh dear.

It was not hard to find the story elsewhere

Shock horror, the news gathering is a sheep like thing!

When I was young and learning things political I was told that postal votes were hard to get and very controlled. Later on as a ward chairman I found that to be just the case.

Now they have been subject to fraud by all the main parties; Labour, Liberal and the Conservatives. Postal votes should return to being tightly controlled. The argument that they improve voter turnout is bogus. The only additional votes you get from lax postal voting are personations.

To my mind the franchise is important and the new rules Prescott brought in just cheapened the franchise. it is a disgrace.

Michael: I am accepting your apology on behalf of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ and the NewsNight Division regarding your not stated all of the information....

~Dennis Junior~

From the article linked to...

"Sloughs Labour party asked the High Court to scrutinise votes cast in the Central ward during the local elections in May 2007."

Unfortunately, when people wanted to scrutinise the votes cast in a recent Scottish bi election (Glenrothes), the evidence went missing... how convenient.

The bi election was an important one as it was next door to the PM's own constituency. Indeed he played a large part in the campaign - visiting a number of times.

The result was a very big surprise.

"NEWSNIGHT'S political editor Michael Crick was one of many pundits caught out by the Glenrothes by-election result. Last night he called an SNP victory by 1,000 votes less than two hours before the Labour win was announced."



Did you report that Michael?

Perhaps you should be doing a bit more detective work on that one - it was a little more than a local issue.

remember the judge calling the uk electoral system one that would have "shamed a banana republic"? 20,000 'names were taken off the list in birmingham alone after an investigation.



didn't even mugabe 'joke' that international observers should be sent to the uk?


i was shocked to hear lawmakers reject calls [recommendation] to make the electoral system more robust because they say they prefer it based on the 'honour system'. How mad is that. Where do people think they are? And what century? Parliament really is a bubble of delusion isn't it.

there won't be any improvement.





etc

You probably didn't report it because they are Muslims. Typical ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ bias, don't do anything to upset Muslims.

The postal vote system certainly seems to have brought the worst out in the political classes. All of the major parties have been caught out trying to cheat the system and rightly the guilty parties should have the full weight of the law thrown at them.

As things stand, I would cancel the current system with only those who cannot physically get to the polling station by way of a disability being able to register for a postal vote. I suppose that those people who will be on holiday or working abroad would also be exceptions -proof required. Polling stations are open long enough these days to ensure that the vast majority of the electorate will have a chance to vote.

BRIBERY - SUBVERSION - DECEPTION - DIFFERENTIAL VOTE-VALUE

All the above and more are used by political parties - when in a position to do so. What is a bit of postal-vote fiddling?

Clear the Westminster swamp. Only evil-doers thrive in swamps.

Yet again you show the pro Labour ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ bias in the way you now bring this up without any comment on the latest expenses scandal. This is what happens when you try to edit the news rather than doing a proper reporting job.

#11 Murray
This overtly biased post from Michael Crick ignores the fact that the postal voting system is routinely abused in quite a few areas with high asian populations. I can quote other examples of similar abuse where labour councillors have been the offenders - it is not a party political issue. Corruption is unforgivable on either side.

I work with intelligent asian women whose postal votes are taken and the head of the family decides how to vote - I know this is cultural but the postal voting system takes away these women's right to a free vote.

Postal votes should revert back to the infirm or those with mitigating circumstances - they should not be the norm. Many asian women are being dis-enfranchised by this system.

I was annoyed enough about this post to bother to register. Everyone knows that if the surnames of these people had been Smith or St.John-Smythe there would be no apologies needed as it would be covered, to suggest that you were distracted by Labour's difficulties is simply a lie and that is the bigger error. To believe your story is to assume a large team of journalists on Newsnight don't know their job and they should be looking for other careers

What about Baroness Uddin then Crick? Of course she's NOT a Tory is she?

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Postal Voting:

Why doesn't anyone appear to be aware of how, in their present form, postal votes destroy one of the central tenets of British democracy: voting should be in secret?

Every postal vote I have received has contained, on the reverse, either a serial number or bar-code, corresponding to not only my street or my residence, but me: the voter. I have compared the bar-codes on my ballot papers to those on the ballot papers of others registered to vote at my address and those on the papers of those who live next door and it is clear they represent the voter and not, simply, his/her address or street. How can this not be a national scandal?

I'm aware of the need to use industrial printing technology to produce the volume of ballot papers and their corresponding explanatory notes and that the machines use bar-codes to track the printed-papers' movements around the machines, but it isn't beyond the wit of man to feed a stash of 'bar-code-free' ballot papers in to the machine, adding one to each voter's bundle of papers, and so preserve democracy. Otherwise, British 'postal' voting is more akin to voting in Zimbabwe than a western democracy. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised that, barring the stuffing of ballot boxes, Zimbabwean voting is more democratic.

I've cancelled my 'postal' vote and returned to the conventional method of voting, although I still don't vote.

It must be a co-incidence that your apology comes on the day the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ catches up with the Baroness Uddin story. You must have balance, eh Michael? I hope the outcome of the Uddin investigation will be as balanced.

I think the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is starting to loose its reputation as an unbiased, fair scource of news. Its unbelievable that a story as major as this was practically unreported on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, why is it that whenever expenses are reported its always Labour MPs who are targeted, do Tory MPs not claim expenses as well? If so then why in the name of fair and ballanced reporting are they not given equall coverage?
Its amazing that with elections only weeks away that this story was buried, what is the point of public service broadcasting if its going to be as inefective as this?
I think that the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is taking the place of the newspapers in as much as the papers have for years been used to steer the political agenda while the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ has been able to remain aloof and impartial, but with falling paper sales the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is getting sucked into playing a role its not mandated for. So all you get are constant negative stories about the government of the day, whoever that is, and in 10 years time the whole thing starts again with the other lot being the butt of all the negative stuff.

Perhaps the government hopes the whole postal vote issue will go away soon - along with the postal service.

Today the Conservatives are in the spotlight.

It will be interesting to see if, from stage left, followed by a bear, our hero returns...

For balance.

I think you owe us another apology, Michael, for your feeble interview of Stephen Fry. Of course he doesn't think it's important, a man of his intellect is more concerned about "important" things. This from a man who has spent 3 months in jail for credit card fraud, a fact that you uncannily forgot to raise with him !