well theyre all as bad as each other we know - but if the tories get in, at least that stupid little woman jaquie smith will get kicked out on her fat stupid arse.

Nice to see The Register showing no allegiances to any political baws up :-).

Not enshrined in the Magna Carta, not in any other law in UK. It is allowed at Hyde Park Speakers Corner, but that is because of continuous usage and not by law.

Mines the raincoat with "SSSSHHH!!" on the back.

(actually we will have a good idea of the voting intentions tonight or tomorrow morning when, I predict, the Labour party will loose this seat. I am not sure that The Flying Brick (The Official Monster Raving Looney party candidate) will in fact keep his deposit). All over in a day, rather than the debacle of the US which seems to spend an age just getting the wrong candidate.

ID Cards and a Central Database will help fight terrorists. The only Terrorist I am concerned about at the minute is the clowns taking my Bank Details and anything else they can stick in a database and emailing it to any fool that asks for it.

On a lighter note nice to know that its a universal problem and that the Tories are just as stupid as the Labour when it comes to looking after others peoples stuff. I guess there is just no hope.

So stop shredding your papers and trying to protecting your identies, there's no point because no matter how careful you are its the rest of the (Gordon) clowns are just giving it away

Paris because when she gets her personal data stolen somebody get arrested. When its me I get a letter saying bad luck

I think you meant to say "lose this seat...", as in -:

"You will lose your keys when I throw them in the river..."

Dear El Reg,

I am fighting off waves of despair at the thought of having to choose between the range of incompetent, directionless buffoons that collectively call themselves political parties. At least the Monster Raving Loony Party is transparent in its purpose.

In order to prevent my current option of writing c**t in the box adjacent to each candidate in the next general election, may I propose that El Reg forms a party whose manifesto is clear:

1. Flying cars by 2015

2. Scrap ID cards

3. Sort out NHS IT

4. Mandatory encryption of public data before transport

5. Specific entertainment budget for MPs to engage in off-colour activities, possibly involving alcohol, football shirts, wildlife and hidden cameras, mainly for the general amusement of the voting public. Hey, it's going to happen regardless, so you might as well be up-front about it, right?

This helpful move would allow me to vote for a group of people I felt at least lived on the same planet as I did. Though you could get amanfromMars to write your press releases to confuse stupid people.

Hugs,

Senor Beavis

xx

When I to to vote, they cross off my name from a list, and hand me a sequentially numbered ballot paper. They don't note it down (but they could infer the number from the next paper in the sequence).

I thought the actual vote couldn't be linked to you.

There is a widely observed convention/rule that there is no political reporting which may influence voters while the polls are open. That is why election day news reports tend to be along the lines of "Turnout is slow/brisk in Dunny-on-the-Wold" and give no partisan coverage at all.

Whether this is a convention or a rule, whether el Reg counts as news media, and whether this is likely to affect voters is moot however.

There was also a rule that when mentioning any specific election, all the candidates had to be named. However, that has now relaxed to "there is a full list of candidates at some website or other".

As for the voting intentions being in a spreadsheet, when I was campaigning we had a bespoke application from Central Office into which we imported machine readable copies of the electoral roll (the council have to supply this to candidates), matched up with the public phone book (minus TPS registered). We printed out canvass cards which were marked up by hand with voting intentions and then the local office would hack this in to the database. They would then print out the lists of pledged supporters for election day (with phone numbers) so we could go and chivvy them.

As a candidate, going round identifying supporters was an important part of staying connected with the voters, and tracking voting intentions year on year (particularly as a Conservative through the 1990s) was both revealing and depressing.

As for the case in point, why the !"£$%^ were they exporting voting intentions into Excel? Why were they sending this by email at all? Why the *&^%$£ wasn't it encrypted? Voting intentions given to a candidate are absolutely confidential, and when they are on paper we always took great care not to let them be visible to (for example) anyone's neighbours.

Sorry to shatter your world, your vote can be linked to you the counterfoils in the ballot books can be matched up to your vote, its was used in the past to track communists in the 1960's see http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1051,00.html

@ Senor Beavis: I agree. I suggest "5" includes mandatory filming and posting to YouTube. Or possibly YouPorn, depending upon the activity in question.

Important Requirement!!!

*As long as El Moderatrix is the "Party Whip".

Could you pass me my coat? Seeing as I'm chained up, I can't seem to reach it...

"Obviously a mere 8,000 voter records is not in the same league as Alistair Darling's benchmark loss of 25m child benefit records, but it's good to see Her Majesty's Opposition showing its potential."

Yes, indeed, not the same league. However, I tend to believe their performance was largely limited by MS excel. You can't really stuff 25m records in excel, can you ?

Once they're in power, they'll have large DBs and plenty of monkeys to extract millions of records and send them all over the place.

Thus the league is not yet over !

Right - that's three votes for the El Reg party. And that's at least twenty more than UKIP and Veritas apiece.

As there is no written constitution or bill of rights and English law develops by act of parliament and legal precedent, I think it reasonable to assume that, since freedom of speech has not been specifically outlawed by either, we do have it for now. However, I concede that the current inhabitants of London Reptile House do seem intent on abolishing it.

Tux because freedom is about more than source code.

Oh no , just another tribe of 419ers racing towards the soon to be vacated feeding trough , as Gordon and his merry band of fat piglets are running down the same footpath that John Major took some ten odd years ago late last century !

Got my vote.

*The bleeding vulture because it's strangely cute. Party Logo?

my vote as well

While ballots are numbered, the poll workers remove the serial number from the actual vote before it goes into the box, thanks to the miraculous invention "pre-perforation."

@ Senor Beavis:

You left out "hold individuals personally and financially responsible for cockups in functions they manage."

I swear to God it's time for these jerks in the public sector to be nailed to the wall when they goof up. I include the corporate sector in that, given modern corporate influence on government.

And no bonuses for simply doing the job you're paid for in the first place.

<rant> <rave> <froth at mouth> <bite leg of computer table> <scream>