So, that PCCSpoil blog. To begin with, it was a collection of spoiled ballots from the police commissioner elections, a large (>75%) proportion of which seemed to add the hashtags #PCCSpoil or #policespoilballot. I had the impression that this suggested a campaign of some sort. After all, why the hashtag if you weren’t planning to put it on the web?
Since then, the blog has vanished, briefly shown a Mike Giggleresque student politics video, and now points at a petition to explain one’s spoiled ballot to No.10 Downing Street. Someone on Twitter thought the slogan “Don’t politicise the police”, which many of the spoilers used, might be a Police Federation internal line. But it’s not.
There was a policeman who was supporting it, CynicalBobby on twitter. Also, a well-known libertarian. But these were late to the party. Much earlier (9th November) a facebook page had appeared. Following up people who liked it or contributed in any way, I found no cops, but a variety of people who were by turns Green, sceptics, atheists, pro-Palestinian, and from Yorkshire, Wales, or the Isle of Wight, in more than one case.
Spoiltpapers.org.uk was registered by someone in Wrexham on the 9th of November, the same day the facebook page appeared. On the way, Plaid Youth glommed on. But many of the people involved were in comments to this Guardian piece, on their Northerner blog, from the 5th of November.
That, in turn, was from this lady, a regular contributor from God’s and Jimmy’s own county, a green-minded pro-Palestinian ex-Lib Dem who even introduced the slogan, on the 3rd. We have a patient-zero. Magic darts!
A special note. Tumblr, like Facebook, doesn’t delete your photos if you kill your account or even delete stuff from it. They remain in whichever content-delivery network they used. I know this because, after the PCC blog vanished, I noticed I still had a copy open in a browser tab, and I was able to wget all the images and the HTML wrapper into an archive.
Update: One of the people in this post is now claiming to be me! As a note to the TV producers who are asking me for copies of the spoiled ballots, PCCSpoil is not my blog and has nothing to do with me. My bet is the Plaid guy.
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