Election fraud epidemic: More to come

The Guardian reports that Diane Abbott chaired a meeting on terror laws and tabled an early day motion (EDM) calling for an immediate independent review.

A quick check shows DA has tabled 10 EDMs since December 2008 and signed 153 in the same period. It wasn't easy to check if tabling ten constitutes DA as an EDM junkie (so I didn't check) but her signing of 153 EDMs is small fry compared to a number of MPs who have signed over 1000.

In comparison Meg Hillier has signed none and tabled none. There was no mention in the rules that ministers couldn't sign or table EDMs although all ministers appeared not to take part in this process.

As mentioned previously in this blog, Abbott's EDM on unemployed people volunteering for charity work was pulled because it was unfounded, but her EDM on unemployment remains in place and has been signed by 49 MPs. Last year DA said that Olympic developers were falsely claiming to employ local people. Her claims were aired again this week by Robin Wales, Mayor of Newham, who asked how many of the site's 4,101 employees have long term residency in the five Olympic boroughs. His borough has an unemployment rate over 9%. This story from the BBC seems to give good back ground: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7563886.stm

One of the EDMs signed by Abbott is about electoral fraud. Today there were conflicting reports about the state of election fraud - one says there's a problem as six are jailed for electoral fraud.

The other says there was no evidence of electoral fraud in the 2008 local elections.

As the prosecutor in the former piece said: "This week the newspapers are full of what has been called the swine fever pandemic, but there has been another epidemic that has been working its way across the United Kingdom in recent years.”

For some background on Hackney try: http://hackneyelectionsfraud.blogspot.com/

There wasn't much real Hackney news about today. The Telegraph has a piece that mentions moving away from Hackney, as does the Times. The former went to West London, the latter to somewhere else to farm sheep. Basically they had nothing to do with Hackney at all and they're only mentioned as proof that I've looked.

Otherwise Reuters reports more Olympic doom.

Paul Finch, chairman of the review group overseeing architecture and urban design of the London Olympics, said: "If you look at the Olympic site and consider what the map will look like a couple of months after the games, once all the temporary facilities have been taken out, there are going to be an awful lot of great big gaps in the site -- this is really the big challenge now."