Category Archives: News

Welcome to another selection of interesting articles from this week’s Sunday papers. It’s been a dramatic week, but we start off with something a bit closer to home:

The Observer has an article about how the huge number of elections due to take place in England could be run:

Measures such as switching to postal votes or extending the time in which ballots can be cast are regarded as logistically impossible in England.However, election officials are looking at simple measures to reduce transmission, including a publicity campaign asking that voters bring their own implement to make their mark.

“Voters can bring their own pen or pencil to vote,” said Craig Westwood, the Electoral Commission’s director of communications, policy and research. “While you can do that in any election, it’s another measure to help keep safe. Voters will be hearing these messages from us, and others, in the weeks leading up to the polls.

“We are focusing a lot more on the voting options that people will have, including postal and proxy voting, and making sure that polling stations are safe places to vote. We’re comfortable that local authorities can make them safe, with support from voters in following the advice they’re given. This will all be similar to what we’re already experiencing in our daily lives, in terms of social distancing, hand sanitiser and masks.”

They ruled out extending the time for voting. It would perhaps be sensible to have the voting over a weekend rather than just a Thursday.

Liberal Democrat guidance is to assume that the elections are going to go ahead in May regardless of any speculation to the contrary. That means that we continue to campaign in Covid-safe ways and if we have to go on for longer, then we’ll be in really good shape to do so.

In the Independent, Jim Moore urges Keir Starmer to look to Stacey Abrams, who has done so much to level the playing field in Georgia where Republican voter suppression had given them so much of an advantage. Her work at making sure people were registered to vote has been credited with both Joe Biden’s victory in the state and those of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to take control of the Senate. Moore argues:

For the record, there were more than 32 million votes cast in the UK General Election that year, but just 161 cases of fraud reported to the police and only a single conviction.

As in the US, enforcing voter ID in Britain looks very much like a solution in search of a problem that doesn’t exist. But if it can swing you a few constituencies – and it might do that because poorer, and younger, voters who are less likely to have ID are typically more likely to vote Labour – then hey, why not.

A distressing interview in the Sunday Mirror with a nurse shows the pressure that NHS staff are under.  She was speaking after four patients she was caring for had died in two days.

Given the pressure on her, it was really worrying to see that when she is not at work, she can’t sleep because of the nightmares she’s having.

She begged people to follow the rules to avoid catching Covid.

Her message to anti-lockdown groups is simple: Get real.

Ameera said: “They don’t have any medical qualifications yet feel it’s OK to make unfounded comments.

“When will they realise what’s really going on? Will it be when they lose someone they love? We can have a day where patients are dying all day long and you are having to quickly wash them and zip up a body bag.

“None of the people from anti-lockdown groups will ever zip up a body bag in their lives.” Doctors and nurses are risking their lives to treat patients, day in, day out.

Back to the Observer and Bill Clinton’s former Labor Secretary Robert Reich gives us a long list of people who should pay the price, along with Donald Trump, for the events this week.