Mad Hatter's Tea Party

With two days to go, I am turning my attention to the matter of Thursday's elections. The other bloggers who wrote about this subject didn't seem to have as complicated a task ahead of them as Adam and I do.

Firstly we have to vote for a local councillor: choice of Con, Lab, Lib Dem and UKIP. Fine so far. Secondly we have the European Elections and we have the following parties standing (in alphabetical order):

British National Party
Christian Peoples Alliance
Conservatives
English Democrats Party
Green Party
Labour Party
Liberal Democrats
Peace Party
ProLife
Respect - The Unity Coalition
Philip Rhodes (Independent)
Senior Citizens Party
UK Independance Party

On the council's website, each party has a list of candidates, not all of them have the same number of candidates, but we don't vote for the candidates, we vote for the party. Quote from the website: "You have one vote when you elect your MEPs. Each party puts forward a list of candidates and you must vote for one of these lists, or for an individual candidate standing as an independent".

Was this how European elections worked last time? I can't remember. I thought we were supposed to elect MEPs, not parties. Oh, well - looks like I might be writing "Simon Goodway - Donkey Party" on my ballot paper too.