A View From Middle England - Conservative with a slight libertarian touch - For Christian charity and traditional belief - Free Enterprise NOT Covert Corporatism

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Banned Candidates

Bournemouth borough council has apologised for banning "lunatics, idiots, deaf and dumb" people from standing for election. Well, they meant something else but got it wrong. An election pack issued by the council stated that "lunatics and idiots" and "deaf and dumb persons" were disqualified from standing. Matt Pitcher, the council's electoral services officer, said it was a mistake and that the terms were taken directly from election law dating back to 1766. "Of course such language is certainly not acceptable today," he added.

This 1766 law is still valid today apparently. Does it say anything about liars, cheats, spivs and crooks?

2 comments:

Being deaf and mute shouldn't be a barrier to standing for election. It would be interesting to see a deaf person contesting this as a breach of human rights.

Why all the fuss?

Most politicians throughout history have failed the first two parts of the criteria

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