{"id":98,"date":"2005-05-07T21:05:53","date_gmt":"2005-05-07T21:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wp\/?p=98"},"modified":"2005-05-07T21:05:53","modified_gmt":"2005-05-07T21:05:53","slug":"election-2005-why-even-bother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/2005\/05\/07\/election-2005-why-even-bother\/","title":{"rendered":"Election 2005: Why even bother?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In today’s Telegraph, they published an 8 page pull out special thing detailing every election result that had been declared at the time of publishing<\/a> (I think two had still to be declared). Now, I guess this is only of use to people like me who are a little sad and are interested in the quirks of the system. But looking through the results, one constituency stood out for me. It was Derbyshire West<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My sister lived in Derby<\/a> while she went to university there a few years back, but that’s not the reason it made me smile.<\/p>\n

Have a look at the results:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Name<\/strong><\/th>\nParty<\/strong><\/th>\nVotes<\/strong><\/th>\n%age<\/strong><\/th>\n+\/- %age<\/strong><\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Patrick McLoughlin<\/a><\/td>\nConservative<\/a><\/td>\n24378<\/td>\n47.7<\/td>\n-0.3<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
David Menon<\/td>\nLabour<\/a><\/td>\n13625<\/td>\n26.6<\/td>\n-6.8<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Ray Dring<\/td>\nLiberal Democrats<\/a><\/td>\n11408<\/td>\n22.3<\/td>\n+6.6<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Michael Cruddas<\/td>\nUK Independence Party<\/a><\/td>\n1322<\/td>\n2.6<\/td>\n+1.3<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Nick ‘The Flying Brick’ Delves<\/td>\nMonster Raving Loony Party<\/a><\/td>\n405<\/td>\n0.8<\/td>\n-0.1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Martin Kyslun<\/strong><\/td>\nIndependent<\/a><\/strong><\/td>\n5<\/strong><\/td>\n0.0<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\nMajority<\/strong><\/td>\n10753<\/td>\n21.0<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\nTurnout<\/strong><\/td>\n51143<\/td>\n69.0<\/td>\n+1.4<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Poor Mr Kyslun. 5 votes! Why even bother to get out of bed for 5 votes? For 0.0097765% of people to endorse you? For less than 1 in 1000 people to decide that, yes, you’re the man for them? That’s got to be just his family voting for him. He’s probably making a huge point about some fantastic problem in Derbyshire West, but even so, it’s probably only affecting him!<\/p>\n

You know, I’m guessing that he didn’t get the result he wanted…<\/p>\n

One year, I might put myself forward as a candidate. Except I won’t tell anybody, just put my name down. And I’ll do it in an area where no one knows my name and hope and pray that I get no votes at all. I want to be the person that gets 0. It’s almost an ambition!<\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In today’s Telegraph, they published an 8 page pull out special thing detailing every election result that had been declared at the time of publishing (I think two had still to be declared). Now, I guess this is only of use to people like me who are a little sad and are interested in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[38],"tags":[82,771,907,908,1022,1023,1712,1779,1897,1920,2219,2311,2403,2466,2523,3128,3189],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-2005","tag-82","tag-conservative","tag-derbyshire","tag-derbyshire-west","tag-election","tag-elections","tag-labour","tag-liberal-democrat","tag-martin-kyslun","tag-may","tag-official-monster-raving-loony-party","tag-patrick-mcloughlin","tag-politics","tag-publishing","tag-recreation","tag-united-kingdom-independence-party","tag-votes","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6OeSW-1A","jetpack-related-posts":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}