the Mugabe School of Electoral Engineering (Gipton, Leeds)

Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, collaborating with the local Labour party, is establishing the first school of Electoral Engineering in the recently named "Robert Mugabe Avenue" of sunny Gipton, Leeds.

The friend of an uncle of the wife of Mugabe's chiropodist overheard him saying, "We welcome the new alliance and school. It is a wonderful opportunity to share our knowledge. Already, I have learned great things. For example, violence and intimidation aren't needed to rig an election, it's very last century. The postal vote and bored friendless students is all that's required".

In 2000, the UK government passed a law allowing postal votes on demand – in other words, you no longer need a compelling reason to vote via post. In some wards, this has resulted in 25% of the electorate registering for postal voting.

Last year in Gipton, rival candidates complained about the Labour party’s pre-election activities regarding abuse of the postal voting system ;

“At the count, the ballot boxes were opened first and the Liberal Democrats had a commanding lead. Then the postal votes were opened and they were almost all Labour. everyone present had suspicions that something was afoot.”

An undercover reporter from the Times infiltrated the local Labour party in the run up to tomorrows local elections. Local Labour activists, co-ordinated by Labour Councillor Graham Hyde, have been knocking on doors, helping voters fill out polling cards and offering to post them - a particularly effective tactic with the elderly.

The Times will shortly be handing a dossier to the police on their behaviour. This will include transcripts of secretly recorded conversations where Hyde admitted the instructions to collect postal votes were “illegal” and warned student activists,: “Don’t get caught with any on you. We are not supposed to collect them.”

Hyde then said: “We also want to check they are voting Labour as well... If they are voting Liberal Dem, then don’t offer to put the postal vote in.”

One of the students then said: “Yes, I’ll post that for you.”

Hyde laughed and added: “Yes, that’s it, and then it ends up in the toilet.”

Our understanding is that so far UN inspectors haven't been approached to monitor the voting day in Leeds, they're busy in Zimbabwe. In any case, the notion that electoral fraud would take place in the heartland of one of the worlds oldest democracies is patently absurd.

Read the full story – it’d be hilarious if it weren't for the fact that this is fucking England and it's the government's party behaving like a bunch of cunts. (sorry Mum).

UPDATE

Birmingham's postal vote sharply down after a vote-rigging scandal there in 2004 which a judge said would "disgrace a banana republic". Judge Richard Mawrey concluded Labour activists had faked thousands of votes to offset a loss of support after the Iraq war.

Barrister Richard Price, an expert on election law, told BBC radio "The reason for the decline in figures is either because the people who were registered for postal votes simply didn't exist ... or because the people who did have postal votes simply no longer have confidence in the integrity of the postal voting system,"

Full story here