Interesting things in European elections and May Day thoughts

Ladies and gentlemen, I am thankful to everyone who turned out to any May Day solidarity demonstrations that happened today; I went to the main one in London, marching from Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square, to pay tribute to great left-wing heroes of late, Bob Crow and Tony Benn. With news of Royal Mail share buyers being major Conservative party donors (and a firm owned by arch-Blairite Lord Mandelson), of further attacks on the long term unemployed (with proposals to make long-term unemployed people sign on every day or lose benefits unless they do volunteer work for free) and worse yet to come, no more truer has Karl Marx's quote, 'the emancipation of the working class (people) must come from the workers (people) themselves' than now.

We are also only 3 weeks away from the polling day for the 2014 European elections, and most nations' candidate lists have now been officially confirmed, including that of the UK. Notably, not a single UK region has an independent candidate for this year's European elections, and the number of lists per region has dropped quite significantly outside of London. Here are some interesting pieces of information I found amongst the UK's European elections candidates:

1. The second candidate on the list for Yorkshire First, Richard Carter, has a home address in Oslo, Norway (not even part of the EU)-strange given Yorkshire First's priorities.
2. The sixth candidate on the Animal Welfare Party list (only standing in London), Meg Matthews, is the girlfriend of Oasis singer Noel Gallagher.
3. The eighth candidate on the Peace Party list (only standing in the South East), Imdad Hussain, is a Bradford councillor who has never lived in the South East region.
4. The top candidate for the Christian People's Alliance list in London, Sid Cordle MBE, was a Conservative activist in Sheffield in ages past.
5. The ancient Socialist Party of Great Britain (not to be confused with the Socialist Party that is part of TUSC) is not standing any candidates in the London region even though that region is practically the only region where it stands in local elections.
6. The top candidate for An Independence From Europe in the South East, Laurence Stassens, is a Dutch MEP, and ex-VVD (Party for Freedom, which like UKIP is racist, right-wing populist).
7. Two Liberal Democrat MEPs standing for re-election were once Conservative MEPs-Bill Newton Dunn and Edward MacMillan-Scott. Also, the bottom candidate for the Liberal Democrats in the South West, Lyana Armstrong-Emery, used to fight on my fellow Greens' behalf in 2004 (as part of the now-defunct Reform Party of Gibraltar, included in the South West).
8.The so-called Harmony Party (actually anti-immigration and anti-EU, and not really pro-peace either) is fielding 'lists' with only one candidate in all but one of the four regions it is contesting.

Regards, Alan.

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