Richard Baum

My Sunday night was spent having a lot less fun than even the most die-hard Oasis-haters would have had if their ears had been glued to a Heaton Park speaker – I was at the Bury count for the European elections.

Bury is one tenth of one small part of one region in one country which is one twenty-seventh of the European Union. I know the elections were important, but I couldn’t help but feel that standing there in the leisure centre was the Euro equivalent of being at the count for election of vice-Treasurer of the Prestwich and Whitefield Coffee and Biscuits Club. 

Not only was there a depressingly large pile of BNP votes, but the whole process dragged on so long that at one point I feared we’d start counting the 2014 elections before we’d finished with this lot.

Someone promised me it would be over by nine. They lied. 

Out of 48,000 votes cast, the amounts counted up at the end didn’t come to the same number as the amount counted into the ballot boxes when people voted. Despite a difference of only 7 (or 0.01%), this meant two laborious recounts and lots of people rolling their eyes and cursing democracy in all its troublesome, vote-counting forms. I wasn’t content with eye-rolling, and actually sat with a glum expression on my face at the back end of a hissy fit directed at party colleagues and containing the whined phrase “I want to go home” several times over. 

This was of course my second appearance at a count in recent days, following the Radcliffe West by-election on Thursday. Two nights out of four spent at vote counts at Castle Leisure Centre is not my idea of a good time. It does though seem to appeal to a disturbingly geeky set of young politicians who appear to be emerging from somewhere in ever greater numbers. They’re easy to spot, They often sport blue rosettes, drone on about by-election statistics, and almost certainly have never kissed a girl. There were lots at these counts. I’m all for young people getting into politics, but some people are just so into the minutiae of it that it makes me fear for their very souls. People should be into it to make the world better, not to bore me to death talking about vote swings in some remote south western council district.  

Thankfully there are plenty of people in the Bury political scene who are also required to attend counts, but like talking about anything but politics. Last night during the interminable wait for the declaration, I was chatting to colleagues from all parties on topics as diverse as the Twenty Twenty cricket and The Apprentice (both of which we were missing because we were at the count)…  

One particularly intriguing conversation centred on the ages old question of why there aren’t more takeaway owners standing as European election candidates. It costs £5,000 to get your name on the ballot, but this is the same whether you’re a party like the Lib Dems or a single person standing as an independent. This is a pretty high amount for one person, but is worth it if you’ve got the cash lying around and a message to get out, because the Royal Mail will deliver a leaflet for you free of charge to every house in the region. Hence me spending two solid days sticking labels on 6,000 of our’s. 

They don’t have to be addressed like our’s were of course. Some bright spark had the idea of addressing the Lib Dem ones, and whilst it probably does work it was very disheartening to see Tam chuck out the one that came through our door without even reading it because it arrived with leaflets from four other parties on the same day. I wonder if that happened with all 6,000 of mine?

So, no address required. Election leaflets just need writing, designing and printing, and sent to the Royal Mail, who’ll then do the posting.

Which made us wonder in the sports hall last night about the takeaways. They spend a fortune in time and effort sticking menu after menu through my door. If they stopped calling them menus, and started calling them European Election leaflets, for five grand they could get the Royal Mail to deliver for them and cover every single house in the North West! And I tell you what, the way people hate politicians right now I suspect the Golden Dragon Chinese would probably rack up a fair few votes! Free prawn crackers with every main course is one manifesto promise most people would believe.

Unfortunately, the mystery of the Chinese menu-cum-manifesto may never be solved. Thankfully though, the puzzle as to when we’d all go home was eventually answered. Finally, nearly 6 hours after we started what should have been a short count (because we’d done half of it after the local elections on Thursday), and after an agonising debate with the Regional Returning Officer about whether or not we’d have to recount the votes until our eyes bled, it was finished.

We were released into the early Monday morning air to the news of Labour’s collapse, a pretty static performance from the Lib Dems despite everyone hating politicians, and two BNP MEPs crowing about a new world order despite polling fewer votes than they did five years ago. 

And then, in too few a number of hours, it was work again for the start of another week. 

 In the words of Bob Geldof et al, I don’t like Mondays. 

Rick