The house of lords voted to remove the North West from the list of trial regions in June.

The reasons given range from the risk of fraud to the fact that ballot papers are sent out a couple of weeks before election day, apparently before people have made up their mind. Mainly the excuse seems to be that the electoral commission had only proposed two areas and then the government wanted to run the trials in four.

The commission also said that local elections should be run as postal votes, and that the government should change the law to enable this. So it follows that they don’t think that fraud is an issue.

The LibDem MEP locally said that postal votes were only “for the lazy”. Ignoring the fact that this chap uses such stories just for self promotion, it sums up the true position of the Liberals and Tories who prefer their safety in small numbers.