So what is the beef?

The Government knows the voting reforms they put in place are condicive to electoral fraud, but the effects are mostly in NuLab's favour. This is a good thing, isn't it?

What else do you expect from the party created by Tony Blair?

What the hell is wrong with you people, accepting fake charity from Chavez?

Oh....wait a minute....I just read the Times article about Massachusetts doing the same thing.

Never mind.

What the hell is wrong with you people, accepting fake charity from Chavez?

Oh....wait a minute....I just read the Times article about Massachusetts doing the same thing.

Never mind.

The people of Venezuela will be very lucky indeed to get a chance to remove Mr. Chavez peacefully. Ever.

It should be pointed out that the phrase "Bolivarian Government of Venezuela" is the Chavez code for his project to annexe Colombia and Equador into Greater Venezuela.

It should be pointed out that the phrase "Bolivarian Government of Venezuela" is the Chavez code for his project to annexe Colombia and Equador into Greater Venezuela.

..which will work about as well as anything else that Chavez tries. One of those countries is militarily far more powerful than the others, and despite its problems with FARC I see it mopping the kitchen with the Venezuelan army in the event of an attempted 'annexation.'

Now, if Colombia were to elect a nitwit socialist of their own and agree to form a sudamericano version of the EU with Chavez, that's a rather different story.

Unbelievable. How did such a blatant socialist ever get voted in? Will abolition of this mayor business be one of the choices at the election?

Proud to report that when offered the same 'deal' by Chavez's government, Chicago's transport system (under direction of Mayor Daley) politely told him to shove it.

But on the topic of elections, of course, I have a bit less local pride.

It is a mistake to think of Chavez as anti-democratic. He was indeed elected and anyone who voted for him is getting what they voted for.

The fact Chavez was elected is a magnificent example of why the words 'democracy' and 'freedom' do not belong together. Democracy is at best a tool for mitigating the power of the state, it should never be an end in and of itself. The example of Venezuela should be a really good reminder why separation of powers and constitutionally limited governance matter vastly more that that bloody fetish-word 'democracy'.

I agree with Paul Marks' take on Chavez.

And of course:

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

- H.L. Mencken.

But didn't Chavez, DaSilva of Brazil and the hopefully late Castro cooperate in a nuclear weapons program? Brazil provides the wide territory to hide the labs and the test sites in, Cuba provides Soviet-trained NBC experts, and Venezuela the money? (Link)

Would Colombias army matter if Bogota disappears in a flash and Venezuela and Equador moves in to provide fraternal bolivarian assistance?

Or has DaSilva bailed when the fourth wheel of this NeoCommie axis, Evo Moralez started making hostile noises towards Brazil?

Still, it could be worse. Imagine what might happen if an extreme socialist steeped in liberation theology and brought up with the 'democratic traditions' of somewhere like Chicago were somehow able to get elected as President of the United States.

All well and good removing livingstone,but what about those in brussels that we do not elect and can not get rid of,it matters very little what flavour of administration we elect in this country, because our "government" in brussels is permanent ,fixed,and since we will never be asked ,unalterable.

The outcome of the electoral fraud trial in Slough "..stripped of his council seat and banned from holding office for five years " gives a good idea of how much we value democracy. If we truly valued our democracy anyone involved in this would now be looking at a very long sentence inside. Or do we not believe rigging a ballot does as much damage to society as defrauding a bank?

But didn't Chavez, DaSilva of Brazil and the hopefully late Castro cooperate in a nuclear weapons program?

No. The article you point to is more a confection of guilt by association, non-sequituur, and decontextialised factoid than the average 9/11 conspiracy theory. Ken Livingstone doesn't have nuclear weapons either.

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On the UK postal-voting scandals: it is remarkable, is it not, that the media affects not to notice that the practice has almost exclusively been detected in wards with large unassimilated south asian populations, and being run by asian councillors. There are plenty of fitting those criteria that don't stuff the ballot boxes, but it looks like a cultural, or perhaps a 'multicultural', artefact. The Tammany Hall model of communal leadership directing the vote has otherwise (except perhaps in a few places in the North East) largely been unknown in Britain for many years.

Ken may be able to exploit the cult of "seriousness" (read worthier-than-thou) in public servants, and to rely on a vast variety of organisations he has spent taxpayers' funds on to blackguard his opponents. He He will certainly be able to exploit the naivety of the Greens and the rest of the left to sweep up second preferences. He does have a vast taxpayer-funded propaganda machine that has in effect been campaigning for the incumbent MAYOR OF LONDON for 6 years. But those are his real weapons. Dodgy postal votes from the small number of Labour asian pocket boroughs (and not all of them are Labour) wouldn't be enough to swing London.

Guy: I don't know. I think one of the major problems with modern government is that we have a professional political class of people who have never done anything other than politics. They are student politicians, then they become researchers for MPs, then they get elected, then they become ministers, and when they lose office at domestic level, they often go to Brussels and become European politicians or officials of some kind. They have never been anything else, and they have this tremendous self-regard and high opinion of their ability to run things they know nothing whatsoever about. Paying them well encourages and strengthens this idea of a political career path. If you look at nineteenth century politicians, they often did other things at different times in their lives, and they often were actually only part time politicians: doing something else in the morning and then heading to Westminster later in the day. I think in truth less professional politicians were a good deal more competent.

I tend to think that it would be better not to pay politicians at all. It would of course provide an advantage to the independently wealthy, but it would also make it much harder for someone to be exclusively a politician, and this would be a good thing.

Yes.

Chevez spends vast amounts of oil money subsidising people in other nations (meanwhile Venezuela decays - but he does not care about the country, he cares only for his own image).

From the FARC terrorists in Colombia, to the pet projects of politicians like Duval Patrick of Massachusetts, Joe Kennedy, and our own Red Ken of London. Still a merit mark for Mayor Daley in rejecting it - this is the first good thing I have heard about Richard Daley.

As for Red Ken:

As I have said before .......

I normally blame the media for people electing leftist nitwits - but in this case I can not.

Local newspapers and radio stations in London have expossed Red Ken as both a wild money waster and as an anti semitic thug.

So if the voters of London vote for him again it will be out of their wickedness - not too strong a word.

Just as it was wickedness (a desire to see other people as poor and as unhappy as themselves, NOT a belief that they would be become less poor) that led people to reelect President Chevez.

It is possible for a single individual (any of us - indeed I have a strong tendency to evil myself, I wish I did not) to fall into evil at a given time, and it is also sadly possible that a majority of individuals can fall into evil.

Make no mistake - the voters of London know what Red Ken is, if they vote for him again it will tell me all I need to know about them.

In voting for him they will have proved themselves to be as bad as he is - the "we did not know" defence will not wash any more.