Freaky Friday

There were lots of things that were Freaky about last Friday. The most numerically obvious one was that in both Newsome and Kirkburton Wards the Green Party got exactly the same vote - 2447. In Newsome this was enough to win it in Kirkburton unfortunately it wasn't.

Apart from the numerical freakiness the actual results didn't bear a lot of relationship to natural justice or effort expended. In the Parliamentary elections the Conservative who didn't turn up to hustings and didn't appear to have done anything much during the campaign came second. I managed 4% just ahead of the BNP thank goodness. In the rest of Kirklees the BNP beat the Greens If anything was evident from the results it was that local factors just went out of the window with national TV coverage focussing on Leaders debates and tactical voting.

The bright spot for Greens was the election of Caroline Lucas as the UKs first Green Party MP. A real acheivement and hopefully with far reaching consequences.

In the local elections our truly excellent Candidate Michelle Atkinson polled a record number of votes for us in the Kirkburton Ward but the increased General Election turnout worked in the Tories favour and we missed out by over a thousand votes.

We all await for the outcome of the negotiations and Nick Clegg chooses whether he wants the death of thousand cuts (Conservatives) or the death of 500 cuts (Labour). Whichever way round it is the double dip recession is already in the pipeline and whatever his choice it won't do his Party or the rest of us much good either.