One interesting thing I learnt at this meeting on Saturday is a small but significant change to ballot papers.
Previously if you were know as something different to your official name it would appear on the ballot paper as (for example)
Anthony Wedgewood-Benn
commonly known as Tony Benn
But now it will only show what you are commonly known as. I guess this is handy for anyone who has an embarrassing real name that nobody else knows, so that all the neighbours come up after polling day and say “I always assumed Al was short for Alan and not Algernon!”
My mind wandered a bit. Presumably someone like Sting could now appear on the ballot paper as just “Sting” but I do wonder how far it can go. What counts as ‘being know as”?
So I got to thinking about people who have become reasonably well-known through blogging. Would it be possible for Paul Staines, for example, to go on a ballot paper as just “Guido Fawkes“? Wouldn’t it be great to get in a polling booth and be faced with the chance to vote for someone just called Pootergeek or Recess Monkey?
Next time he is up for election I think Kerron should take the plunge and actually have “The voice of the delectable left” on the paper instead of his name.
I think there is a great deal of amusement to be had from this even under the old rules. A Councillor aquaintance of mine in Pendle is reputed to have given his name at the last election he stood in as Tony Greaves – and then gave the “commonly known as” name as the Lord Greaves of Winewall in the County of Lancashire…… That to me is a whole new definition of common!
its a whole new definition of ‘amusement’ too!