The Recent Election - "Back Home"

I think the best way to start this is to thank the 127,037 voters in the Borough who managed to stir themselves sufficiently to cast ballots in the local elections. Even more thanks need to go to the 176 candidates from all parties which put their lives on hold sufficiently to stand for election. Final thanks should go to those people who worked on polling day to work in the polling stations and on the counts. The reality is that these groups of people are the only things we have to be proud of in this election. The fact that slightly under 65% of the electorate could not be bothered to vote at all is shameful.

In the post-election article, The Bournemouth Evening Echo reported a stament by Peter Charon that “It’s been an outstanding night for the Conservative group in Bournemouth…It seems our message resonated with the residents of Bournemouth. It wasn’t a close result.”

Certainly if you look, the Conservatives won 50.74% of all the votes cast (64,454 out of 127,037) across the wards in the Borough which is a commanding win. Yet it is plain that if the turnout had not been so low, the result might have been quite different. The reality is that the Tory win was achieved with 18.11% of the entire electorate – (64,454 out of 355,807 eligible voters.) Put another way the Tories represent less than one in five of the people of the Borough, they might try to spin this as a mandate, but it is nowhere near that.

In fact there are many of the aspects of this election which should cause the Conservative party some real worries and these start right at the top. Councillor Charon will remain as leader of the Conservative group on the Bournemouth Borough Council. Whilst he personally captured 17.88% of the votes in his ward, he was voted in to office by only 7.59% of the electorate in his ward.

Even more worrying for the Tories is that this was no mean feat, he attracted 1,363 votes which was more than those of fellow Tory Councillors Johann Edward and Theo Stratton combined. Even Councillor Philip Stanley-Watts only managed to capture 4.9% of the electorate in his ward with 686 votes which is hardly a ringing endorsement. In fact ten of the “winning” Tory Councillors will have secured less than 1,000 votes each, combined their vote tally is only 2.07% of the entire eligible electorate.

Labour has worries of its own though, with 40 candidates standing for election, they secured three seats, or a success rate of only 7.5%. Even worse they managed only one third of the total votes that the Tories did, this is not a brilliant result. As a party expected to be making major inroads against the Tories and Lib-Dems, the result can only be viewed as a massive failure. On key issues they failed to make their case and bring out the electorate.

The only party that did worse was the Lib-Dems, who in the eight years since the 2003 election have lost 91% of their seats on the Bournemouth Borough Council. Both Labour and the Lib-Dems need to reconsider their approach and strategy in the Borough.

Ultimately the biggest losers in this election will be the electorate; especially the 65% of you who couldn’t be bothered to vote at all. To live in a democracy is a privilege and there is only one payment to be made for that benefit; to spend an hour or so every now and then voting; but that seems to be too much for many. You cannot say that your vote will change nothing, especially when 65% of you do not exercise that vote. You cannot say that your vote will change nothing when you had the chance to change everything with the AV Referendum.

You cannot even use the excuse that you were fed up of the candidates as you have the right, the ability and privilege to stand for election yourself. As it is 228,770 voters in the Borough of Bournemouth disenfranchised themselves and handed control of the Council over to 64,454 Tory voters.

And for those who are fond of the statement, that they have the right, the freedom to their opinions; when it comes to the performance of the new Conservative led Council; unless you did vote, you don’t have the right to make any comment at all. You surrendered that right when you decided your right to vote was unimportant enough to be surrendered to vague platitudes and an absence of thought.

Osama bin Laden – A Pointless and Irrelevant Life?

“A middle-aged nonentity, a political failure outstripped by history – by the millions of Arabs demanding freedom and democracy in the Middle East – died in Pakistan yesterday.”

On May the 2^nd, Osama bin Laden was killed in a raid by SEAL Team VI, part of the US Military’s Joint Special Operations Command or JSOC, “JaySock.” For many his death was proof of the aphorism that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. On a personal level, although I will not shed tears for his passing, the fact that he was killed and not captured is a concern and his followers will no doubt kill more to insist they are still relevant. Regardless of my personal feeling that relevance is what I’m talking about today.

Response to his death has varied enormously around the world.

Ismail Haniyeh from Hamas, stated that they condemned “the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs.”

Our own Tun Doctor Mahathir was reported in the Sun as saying that although he was “indeed guilty” his death was “actually revenge…revenge by the US for the Sept 11 attack.” This statement all by itself was a change in direction for the man who stated in 2010 that “I am not sure now that Muslim terrorists carried out these attacks. There is evidence that the attacks were staged. If they can make Avatar, they can make anything,”

Geoffrey Robertson QC, a man worth listening to on human rights and prosecutions for war crimes published recently in the Independent newspaper that the death and the response of ordinary Americans to it endorsed “what looks increasingly like a cold-blooded assassination ordered by a president who, as a former law professor, knows the absurdity of his statement that “justice was done.” He argues instead that a trial would have been better as this “would have been the best way of de-mystifying this man, debunking his cause and de-brainwashing his followers. In the dock he would have been reduced in stature – never more remembered as the tall, soulful figure on the mountain, but as a hateful and hate-filled old man, screaming from the dock or lying from the witness box.”

It’s hard to disagree with Mr. Robertson, despite the difficulties and dangers such a trial would have entailed.

In America though, the news was almost consistently joyful and enthusiastic about the death of man who obviously was so proud of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington. Rush Limbaugh, a right-wing demagogue even managed to cross the political divide by praising President Obama for ordering the raid.

Jon Stewart, host of the fake news program, “The Daily Show” admitted "I am way too close to this whole episode to be rational about this…Last night was a good night - not just for New York or D.C. - but for human people." Jon Stewart is a New York resident who lives only a few blocks from the site of the old World Trade Centre. He made no attempt to hide his happiness that Osama was dead; but he did raise a point that very few other commentators did.

He commented that for 10 years the face of the Muslim world had been that of Osama bin Laden, but now the face of the Muslim world were the young Arabs of Egypt and Tunisia; of Libya and the Yemen. Whereas al-Qa’ida and bin Laden had for 10 years gotten the world’s attention through desperate acts, their opportunity was now gone Stewart continued.

Robert Fisk, the noted Middle East watcher and correspondent opened his column in the Independent on May 3^rd by saying “A middle-aged nonentity, a political failure outstripped by history – by the millions of Arabs demanding freedom and democracy in the Middle East – died in Pakistan yesterday.”

Fisk mirrored Stewarts view even more by continuing that “the mass revolutions in the Arab world over the past four months mean that al-Qa’ida was already politically dead. Bin Laden told the world – indeed, he told me personally – that he wanted to destroy the pro-Western regimes in the Arab world, the dictatorships of the Mubaraks and the Ben Alis. He wanted to create a new Islamic Caliphate. But these past few months, millions of Arab Muslims rose up and were prepared for their own martyrdom – not for Islam but for freedom and liberty and democracy. Bin Laden didn't get rid of the tyrants. The people did. And they didn't want a caliph.”

For many young Arabs and Muslims around the world, Osama and al-Qai’ida offered a way to fight back against the life they lived and the forces that kept them down. The enemy was simple and death was a better option than the life they lived every day.

The recruitment practices of al-Qa’ida were entirely the same as those practiced by the SA, Sturm Abteilung, (Storm Troopers) of the Nazi Party, the Ku Klux Klan of Southern America, even the Aum Shinrikyo of Japan. Identify the disenfranchised, the dissatisfied, the afraid the spiritually empty and those who feel guilty about their success. Exaggerate the pain, strengthen the pain and then tell them who is responsible and how death (either theirs or yours) will solve all things.

But as Robert Fisk said, “It was interesting that after the Egyptian overthrow of Mubarak the first thing we heard from Al Qaeda a week later was a call for the overthrow of Mubarak, one week after he'd gone, it was pathetic.”