DAY 15: STAFFhire
DeADline
Each constituency has
about 200 counters,
with over 10,000
nationwide – and
they’re paid double
time, working from
10pm to 5am on election night.
Elections cost an average of ÂŁ40m.
DAY 17 AnD 18: POllinG
7am Voting begins.
10pm Voting ends. An increasingly
David always
had a problem
finding exits
hyperactive Peter
Snow gets his
Swingometer out for
all-night coverage
on the BBC.
12.30am The first
results come in.
Sunderland is almost
always first, due to its
unmatched levels of voter non-turnout.
3am The bulk of the results come in,
with only Northern Ireland and Scotland
waiting until the next morning. Brown
will have an adviser with him at his
constituency updating him on how it’s
looking. The outcome will be clear by
4am at the latest.
5am The etiquette is for the losing
leader to call the winner and gracefully
concede defeat, prior to the result
being announced. Enormous drunken
celebrations follow at the winning
headquarters. The losing party leader
goes home to listen to Radiohead.
11am The new prime minister goes to
Buckingham Palace where the Queen
asks him to form a new government.
Of course, she doesn’t have to in theory,
but then she’d soon find Balmoral Castle
sold off to Japanese businessmen…
Brown was pleased with
his new balloons (crying
child just out of shot)
“he SAiD whAT?!”
The gift of the gab is vital to a
successful election campaign. Oh…
George W Bush
“I am against hard
quotas – quotas they
basically delineate
based upon whatever.
I think they vulcanize
society. I don’t know how that fits
into what everybody else is saying,
their relative positions, but that’s
my position” (The US president
addresses the nation, 2000).
Marion Barry
“Outside of the
killings, Washington
has one of the lowest
crime rates in the
country” (The mayor
of Washington DC during a speech
to the National Press Club, 1989).
John Kerry
“If you make the
most of [education],
you study hard, you
do your homework,
and you make an
effort to be smart, you can do well.
If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq”
(The ex-Democrat leader speaking
to Pasadena students, 2006).
Boris Johnson
“Nor do I propose to
defend the right to
talk on a mobile while
driving a car, though
I don’t believe it’s any
more dangerous than other risky
things that people do with their free
hands while driving: nose-picking,
studying the A-Z, beating the
children, and so on” (The London
mayoral candidate’s reply to reports
that the Government influenced
the Queen Mother’s funeral plans).
Boris Yeltsin
“You can build a
throne with bayonets,
but you can’t sit
on it for long” (The
then-Russian leader
in a speech during his presidency).
Bill Clinton
“They’re going
to tax you into the
poorhouse. On the
way there, you’ll meet
a terrorist on every
street corner. And when you try to
run away from that terrorist, you will
trip over an illegal immigrant” (The
ex-US president on the Republicans’
2006 campaign formula).
www.ShortList.com / 35
To view a Ceros magazine you need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser and have the flash player 8 or higher installed. To install the latest flash player, click the icon above, install the flash plugin and then click here to refresh this page.