The weird and the zany

Just a few glimpses of the election that the media did not, in the main, bother to report.

1. The CURE party fielded a total of four candidates across the country, one in my own constituency. CURE is an acronym for Citizens for Undead Rights and Equality. Soraya Kara, the Brighton candidate, said, 'We live in an increasingly diverse society. Yet, to my dismay I find that there is one section of society that is severely underrepresented. That section is of course the Undead. Human rights, should not only mean Human LIVING rights. The Cure party and myself want to see this extended to Human UNDEAD rights. I felt moved by the injustice that the undead have had to deal with in society. I want to be an MP to make a change, to encourage interaction between the living and the undead. We aim to give the undead equal rights to the living.' She polled 61 votes. I ask you, 61 people in Brighton want to give the vote to zombies!
2. Then there was the candidate in one constituency who changed his name to None Of The Above. He forgot that ballot papers are printed with the candidates names in alphabetical order - of surname. His appeared at the top of the list.
3. And what about the independent candidate who was so independent that he didn't even vote for himself? He actually polled no votes at all.
4. At least one independent candidate in my constituency did better than that. I doubt that more than a handful of people had heard of him before looking at their ballot papers as he had, to the best of my knowledge, done no campaigning at all. His total vote was 19. Could that be wife, parents, uncle and aunt, parents-in-law and next door neighbours?
5. I am surprised that I have heard nothing this time round of the Monster Raving Loony Party. This was founded years ago by the pop star Screaming Lord Such and has put up candidates at every general election since. I have no idea who pays for this, but suspect that SLS might have dug fairly deep into his pocket. Maybe he's gone broke, or they've simply changed their name to CURE?