Postal Votes

In Tower Hamlets it seems that the old adage about voting (vote early, vote often) still applies particularly in the form of the postal vote. Labour legislated a change to the postal voting rules careless that the new system they introduced was an open invitation to electoral fraud and so it has proved to be. You might wonder why Labour introduced such a flawed system and the only answer one can come up with is that they thought they would benefit from it and so it has proved to be. Why aren't the coalition doing something about this you might well ask. Why are they spending so much time on a form of House of Lords reform that no one wants rather than on reforming the postal ballot system? Is the intention to have an elected House of Lords and if so will Tony Blair stand for election to the Upper Chamber as is being suggested in certain quarters today? Makes one shudder as does the thought of Siobhan Benita winning the London Mayoral election tomorrow. Siobhan is the alternative socialist candidate for Ken Livingstone. This being so it is curious to say the least that the former head of the Civil Service Gus O'Donnell is publicly supporting her alongside a number of other odious people like Jonathan Ross and Richard Branson. The fact that O'Donnell has come out as a socialist makes one wonder whether his advice to the coalition whilst he was still in post could have been disinterested. One hopes that his political interest was made known to Cameron and one also hopes that his replacements have disclosed their political and EU leanings so that the government is forewarned of the direction from which their advice comes. It makes it all the more curious that policy meetings in No. 10 now exclude the special political advisers to Cabinet Members. This seems to me to be wrong and that the rule should be reversed to allow political advisers to be present at such meetings. We all know civil servants can no more be trusted than politicians thinking, as they do, that they know best. Special political advisers are supposed to be there to ensure that civil servants don't frustrate their political masters and special political advisers can't properly perform this function if they are excluded from policy meetings. One wonders what O'Donnell's role was in the shambolic Labour postal vote legislation.