Incandescent

This morning the Goblin is incandescent with rage. I wrote back to Swindon Borough Council yesterday to inform them that they had written to me in error. It turns out that the content of the mail, though addressed to someone else, was intended for me, and I am being denied a vote in my own country. Apparently my registration arrived too late. The cut off date was 11 March.

I was told:

The overseas registration form you sent to me was dated by you as 6 April 2005. I received the form a week later. In order to register for voting in the election on 5 May 2005 I needed to receive your form by 11 March 2005. These dates are set in law and I am unable to deviate from them. I note that you downloaded your application from from the Electoral Commission website. This site provided information on the deadline date for registering to vote in the General Election.

Well I can't find any statement on the website that mentions a deadline date for registering to qualify for voting in May 5th elections. And I would suggest it would be a miracle if I could, since the deadline date actually esxpired before the election date was announced. In fact the election date was announced on April 5th I believe. My registration form was dated April 6th. I also have an issue with the statement, " These dates are set in law", since the registration form states, "the deadline for
registering to vote can be up to two months before an election". There would appear to be an issue with consistancy here.

Of course I could have registered before the anouncement of the election date and therefore I can't claim that all overseas voters are being denied a vote. I cannot understand however, why they have to make it so bloody difficult. It's ridiculous that such a situation should occur in this day and age. Why do I have to send international mail to register? Why can't I just register at the representative office here in Taiwan and drop a ballot paper in the box like foreigners from every other country in the free world?

I don't hold out much hope of getting a vote, but I have wrtten to a councilor friend of mine and written back to Swindon Borough Council pointing out all the inconsistencies in their arguments. I'll keep you posted on this one.

In other news, we have a new Holy Father. Cardinal Ratzinger has become Pope Benedict XVI. I still wish they'd choosen the cool Nigerian guy, but at least they picked one without glasses.

The insidious national ID card scheme, dreamt up by power drunk nazi, an now thankfaully fired, David Blunkett, has proved to be a complete disaster at the pilot scheme stage. Apparently 50,000 idiots signed up for an ID card in the south west of England. The technology didn't work and it turned out to be too expensive. The scheme in its present form has been abandoned. Well that was 1.5 million pounds in public funding well spent wasn't it.

I have news of prize prick, Mark McGowan, the "performance artist" I ranted about earlier this week. Apparently he is now claiming that the car scratch installation was a hoax and that all the photograhs showing him scratching cars in fact feature cars that were already scratched. Reading the BBC report, I'd have to say that he sounds very scared indeed, and he has apologised.

So, do we believe him, was it all a hoax? I'm in two minds about this. I'd guess that McGowan was of fairly low intelligence and I'd be surprised if he could have thought up a complex hoax by himself. On the other hand, he does claim that two of the cars in the pictures are his sister's (which he earlier claimed was the motivation for this piece) and a barmaid from his local area. On balance I'd say naked fear has led him to try and convince everyone it was a joke. I hope it goes to court and he at least gets done for public nuisance or wasting police time or sometihng. Click for the story.