Oldham and Saddleworth By-election.

At the British General Election in May 2010 voters in the Oldham and Saddleworth constituency misbehaved terribly. Rather then voting for a Liberal Democrat (LibDem) candidate as they'd clearly been instructed to do they voted for a Labour candidate. Not only that they voted for Phil Woolas the Labour Immigration Minister who committed the great crime of tactfully and humanely diffusing the Ghurka immigration scandal.

Obviously the will of the people couldn't be allowed to stand in this way so for the first time in 100 years a special election court was convened and Mr Woolas (a politician) was convicted of lying during his election campaign. As punishment he was banned from sitting as an MP and expelled from the House of Commons meaning that a by-election had to be held in his constituency to select his replacement.

The idea was that the voters would be so outraged by yet another Labour scandal that they would get it right second time round and vote in a LibDem MP increasing the majority of the ConDem coalition by one. The problem is that on January 13th the voters of Oldham and Saddleworth again failed to do what they were told and voted in another Labour MP with an increased majority. Since then the Crown has frantically been reviewing the result and the campaigns of the political parties involved because if no-one told the voters to behave like that then it means they worked it out for themselves and that's a thought that terrifies illegitimate and authoritarian regimes across the World.

Given the result of the election and the response it provoked it is rather appropriate that in British electoral shorthand the Oldham and Saddleworth constituency is known as Old & Sad.

On a related subject Tunisia has formed a government of national unity but now seem to be backing away from the idea of holding full elections that would allow the people to have a say in that government of national unity. What will happen now is that the Trabelsi clan will try to avoid these elections by playing the Islamaphobia card by arguing that is the elections are allowed to take place it will create a domino effect bringing down neighbouring regimes and increasing the spread of Islamists across North Africa. Although this is an attempt to cling to wealth rather then a legitimate argument it's being helped by activists in neighbouring countries trying to use the Tunisian uprising to instigate uprisings of their own.