From the Waltham Forest Guardian:
An aspiring MP has gone to extreme lengths to protest against the three main political parties.
Adam Osen, 50, has officially changed his name to None Of The Above and hopes to attract support from disillusioned voters as an independent parliamentary candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green.
The move was suggested by Mr Above’s brother, Gideon, who took the idea from the film Brewster’s Millions, which sees a character run a political campaign under the same slogan.
The former Mr Osen, a painter and decorator of Woodberry Way in Chingford, said his wife, Rebecca, 43, tried to talk him out of the move and many did not believe he would go through with it.
However, he admitted his two children, Gabrielle, 18, and Michael, 15, were less surprised as he has a reputation for coming up with “off the wall” ideas.
Mr Above, or None as he is known to friends, has lost faith in Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties since the MPs’ expenses scandal.
I spoke to Geoff Seeff, Liberal Democrat PPC for Chingford and Woodford Green, who said,
We as Liberal Democrats are protesting against the main parties as well.
Clearly we want to change the political system and the electoral system – the other two parties shouldn’t get anywhere near Parliament.
This man is wasting his time: don’t bother to stand as “None Of The Above” – Vote Lib Dem and change the way we do politics.
So is a name change like this allowed? As a Parliamentary Committee pointed out (see paragraph 136), powers exist “for the courts to rule out the use of names which were intended to mislead the electorate.”
This has happened before, with varying success. A famous early example is from the Glasgow Hillhead by-election of 1982, where a candidate who had changed his name to Roy Harold Jenkins stood against Roy Harris Jenkins of the Social Democratic Party.
The SDP took Roy Harold Jenkins to court, citing the Representation of the People Act and claiming that he was attempting to mislead the electorate. Although they were unsuccessful in the legal action, the SDP successfully drew voters’ attention to their Roy Jenkins’ position on the ballot paper and the other Jenkins only took 282 votes. One of the ways the SDP did this was by placing volunteers (including a young Charles Kennedy) near polling stations, wearing sandwich boards which read, “The real Roy Jenkins is number 5.”
At the 1997 General Election, a prospective candidate calling himself, “Sir Nicholas Lyell” was not permitted to stand against the Conservative candidate of the same name.
Is “None Of The Above” enough to confuse voters into thinking they’re voting for no candidate when really they’re voting for an actual candidate? Is Mr Above likely to poach votes from other candidates? Misleading or a harmless gimmick?
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23 Comments
The daft thing about this of course is that if he is calling himself “Mr Above” he is likely to be at the top of the ballot paper and not the bottom. He should have called himself “None of the Below”. He’ll get the usual 500 votes for idiots.
Tony Greaves
I was about to post that very same thing. What a muppet.
Mind you, if they put “None of the above” as their surname, Geoff should be quids in, appearing below that name on the ballot paper 🙂
I thought the surname came first on the ballot paper, followed by any forenames. If so, he should have called himself Mr “Of The Above None” – which would have appeared on the ballot as:
NONE, Of The Above (Plonker Party)
…still leaving Geoff below, as Mark notes.
A lost deposit in any event.
Euw – what on earth? Hate the new website it sucks
I like to ask people who say “None of the above”, “well, ok, what do you want that isn’t already on offer – and is a logical coherent and possible set of policies?”.
I have never yet got an answer to that one. Mostly when people say “all the parties are bad” they are disappointed because none of them is offering less tax and more state spending, or some other such mutually contradictory policies.
Matthew
I am offering something different. The current political system does not oblige MPs to find out their constituents views, once they are elected it is their job to do what they, or more often their parties want. If I get elected, it is my duty to find out what my constituents want and act accordingly.
I know you were not asking about taxing and spending specifically, but since you mentioned it I believe the answer to our current economic problems is to spend less, not tax more. As in most businesses the main state expense is employment costs, and the quickest way of cutting these costs is to reduce the number of employees (and claimants). There are lots of ways of reducing the number of employees, one popular one is to carry out a thorough review of who does what, what jobs don’t need doing and getting rid of the people who do non essential jobs. Another is to decide to get rid of a percentage of staff, either by offering people a decent redundancy package or other means. The remaining staff have to fill in somehow. It’s surprising how well it works, and how many supposedly essential jobs are not so essential after all. That’s my favoured approach.
That, however, is my view, I would have to consult my electorate to see if they agreed, no doubt they would have other, perhaps better ideas, and we would hopefully arrive at solutions which I would advance as much as was possible for a single MP.
If you want to see my manifesto go to http://www.noneabove.com. The website is due to be updated to incorporate things I have already discussed with my potential electorate, including one who told me if you want to cut costs, just close things down, which has a certain elegance.
Ron.
You’re right (except for the Plonker party bit), a bit of an oversight on my part, although it’s tricky to campaign as Of the above None.
I believe independents go at the bottom of the ballot paper, below the main parties, so as long as I’m the only independent I’m safe, but in any case, it’s a figurative ‘above’, not necessarily a literal one. This raises another issue. The parties appear in alphabetical order, which puts the BNP at the top, which may give them an advantage. If the order does skew the result then there should be equal numbers of ballot papers in the various possible orders, even if this does slightly muck up my message.
I’m afraid you’re a little under-researched, None. (You don’t mind if I call you None?) You’re thinking of the European election ballot papers, held under a different system, with party lists. In general elections (like all elections involving individual candidates) you’re ordered by surname, not party.
Malcolm
Of course you can call me None, that is, after all, my name.
I’ve checked on the BBC website and it seems you’re right, but I don’t think it really matters, what matters is getting the message over, and in a perfect world, improving the way politics is done, which I hope I can do.
None of the above, your an absoloute legend.
Thanks Anon. I’ve taken note of the slightly more negative comments too
None of the above
since you mentioned it I believe the answer to our current economic problems is to spend less, not tax more
So why don’t you call yourself “same as above” then?
None of the above
If you want to see my manifesto go to http://www.noneabove.com.
Have just done so. It seems to contradict what you wrote in your message.
E.g.
There are too many children leaving school unable to read fluently, write and do maths. One thing that would change this drastically is to reduce class sizes in the primary schools allowing each child more teacher time.
Yes, so there would need to be more teachers and more classrooms. But you said you wanted to reduce tax and reduce the number of employees. This is what you gave in your message above as your MAIN aim. So you are just contradicting yourself when your details involve things which would require more employees and more tax to pay them.
In hospitals I am reminded of the same thing. Almost every person working there knows what they are doing, works hard and cares about the patients.
But this contradicts what you say about there being lots of people doing non-essential jobs and your main aim being identifying them and throwing those people out of their jobs.
Most of the rest of what you say in your manifesto seems to be “I don’t really have a clue, but I have good intentions”.
I think that may also count as “same as above”.
Matthew Huntbach,
Whilst I’m a Lib Dem supporter (really must get those leaflets out whilst we’re snow-free here).
To answer your question, I would like a party which has real integrity. The Lib Dems behaved pretty shamefully in the expenses scandal, it was quite clear that the Lib Dems do not personally see it as important to limit their expenditure of taxpayers money. Nick’s Rose Garden, Lord Rennard’s 2nd home. They were quite happy to pamper themselves at tax-payers expense and worse, after it became obvious this was not acceptable to the tax payers. They didn’t consider it worth taking any action,when they saw that no other party was going to either.
It leaves the Lib Dems with the position ‘well we’re really abit less corrupt than the other chaps’.
Now, in fptp and with our commitment to a change in voting system the Lib Dems are still the most sensible party to vote for. But it really does pain me to see the Executive drop the ball on such an easy way to promote our values just because they lack integrity.
Matthew
It’s good that there are people like you around who are prepared to think and to challenge. I will address what you say, because a lot of it is valid.
Starting at the end with your assertion “that I don’t really have a clue, but I have good intentions”, I wish I could give you the obvious flippant response, but in my experience humour in electronic communications usually backfires. What I do not even pretend to have is a comprehensive fully costed answer about how to run the economy, schools, the health service etc. What I do promise is to actively seek the opinions, experience, wisdom and knowledge of my constituents and to do my best to develop and act on those opinions. I believe we do not currently live in a democracy, once every five years we get a chance to vote for a person to represent us, and then we are ignored for the next five years. Any method of voting is flawed, but this one means that the power switches between the main two parties, so the one that is out this time knows they’ll be in in due course. I want us to have a democracy where everyone has a chance of having their opinion listened to and acted on. I’m also not going to promise results, If elected (that caveat applies throughout) I’d be only one of 650 odd MPs shackled by the inertia of a huge bureaucracy, but I will promise to do my best, and if that’s not good enough, find people to help me whose best is better.
In our confrontational society it’s easy to represent being open minded as being weak. At the moment I’m open minded, once we (I and the electorate) have arrived at a position where we know what we want, I’ll be as strong as is needed. It’s also easy to make knee jerk decisions and feel trapped into sticking to them, I want to avoid that trap too.
Next most important, taxes and spending, you’re right, it’s easy and complacent to just go along with popular opinion, thanks for pulling me up. With our taxes we are essentially buying services. As with any other goods and services, I think that, as long as one has enough money, what is important is not the absolute cost but value for money. People may pay more tax if they knew what they were already getting for their money or if it resulted in better education, or health, or even benefits if that’s what they want. I’ll try to find out more about where our tax goes, if we are to have a proper and informed debate we need the facts first. If I get elected and it transpires that my electorate decide they will pay more tax, or pay more for some things and less for others, I’ll happily represent them to try to achieve that.
Which brings me naturally to schools. Education is my thing, If I had to pick one thing to spend more money on then that would be top of the list. If my electorate agree I would cheerfully double the spending on schools and halve it on benefits, assuming money is the issue, which is not always the case.
Re hospitals, I stand by my assertion that “Almost every person working there knows what they are doing, works hard and cares about the patients”. That doesn’t mean they are doing the right thing, it also doesn’t mean that they should all be there, the “almost” is important, but it does mean that they would mostly be open to changes which would improve patient care, and would be willing to suggest changes. My parents in law have just come out of hospital, he was in for 16 days, she for six or seven. It is possible that he could have been out in three and she wouldn’t have got ill. This was not mainly because people didn’t care, but that doesn’t mean things didn’t go wrong. I have a lot of ideas about what is wrong and suggestions to improve care and simultaneously reduce costs, but I need to flesh them out in discussions with people with more experience and knowledge.
You are obviously a lib dem supporter, and I wish you well with that, however, if you wish to continue our discussion I’m happy to do so, here or by e-mail, [email protected]
Matthew and others
I think you have made the easy mistake of assuming that None of the Above is a fool ( I think the phrase used was Muppet)
From the responses it is clear that Mr Above is far from being stupid. He is clearly more intelligent than Matthew who seems to be stuck in the party political mindset right or wrong.
Maybe he needs some assistance on the minutiae of the political process such as whether the ballot paper is alphabetical by first or last name or whether indeed it is written in iambic pentameter or as an inverse alphabetic acrostic but that is a minor issue. Look at the big picture and see what he is saying.
Those who challenge the system are often accused by the establishment of being on the lunatic fringe but all of us including the lib dems should sit up and listen to people like Mr Above who clearly has ideas beyond the imagination of party wonks who write in these forums.
He isn’t in my constituency but if he were, I would vote for him. I might even be persuaded to canvass for him.
If I were the lib dem candidate in Chingford, I would be very worried right now. Perhaps it won’t be Mr Above that loses his deposit……
Gordon
Thank you for your very kind comments.
None
Gordon Palmer
From the responses it is clear that Mr Above is far from being stupid. He is clearly more intelligent than Matthew who seems to be stuck in the party political mindset right or wrong.
If you look at my contributions to Liberal Democrat Voice, I think you will find I am rather far removed from having a “party political mindset right or wrong”, in fact I tend to be very criticval of the LIberal Democrats, and particularly of its leadership. Whether what I write manages to reach in intelligence the level of Mr Above’s material in his website, well, that obviously isn’t for me to judge.
Mr None’s education policy is wrong! We need to lower the amount of subjects on the curriculum, not the amount of pupils in the class! English literacy, English language and basic Arithmetic are the neccessities that will be needed in these pupil’s future life. Once these subjects are “MASTERED” the rest will be easier! Pupils must attain a “GOOD” grade in these three areas before moving on to History, Geography etc. and not before! If you cannot read or write acceptably then what is the point of doing another subject?
Mr None of the above has failed to take part in helping the residents in his own street when they got together to fight a planning application which would havecaused numerous problems to the residents one of which being a lift shaft running up the party wall with the machinery next door to their bedroom,which would have been operational 24hours a day. If he has no interest in his own neigbours needs then how is he supposed to help a whole constituency. Please correct me if I am wrong but I dont believe you have done anthing in your community or would be constituency that would actually help people.
Before you say you havent had the opportunity I know of a member of the public who set up the whipps cross campaign to save the hospital, without funds or prior knowlegde in this field she tells me she did it because she didnt want to see the hospital close, this was another opportunity to offer your help and make a difference that you did not take.
Do you honestly believe that changing your name to something stupid and spouting out unoriginal content is the way to gain the trust of the constituents
Personally i don’t care what his name is, Sure None of the Above is a way to catch someones eye. After all it sure is better than ‘deliberately’ writing “For Britian” on their campaign leaflet.
However i honestly do believe that he would be better for Chingford than the other candidates that run here. For one i find Cath Arakelian to be a very irritating person who looks like she been thrown in at the deep end. Barry White seems to be ‘fighting for whats right’ instead of what would actually be best, Whilst Nick Jones seems to have only two aims, neither i think are really important right now.
Oh and i’m just going to ignore Julian Leppert for now.
In case anyone else reads this old article and wonders how Mr None got on, the answer is 202 votes (0.5%).
Full results are still available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/constituency/b06.stm