Vote early and often
Dear Subcomandauntie, I'm campaigning for a principled anti-war candidate in a marginal seat against a prominent pro-war Blairite. The contest is going to be very, very close, with just a handful of votes likely to decide the winner. However, the enemy is definitely cheating the postal vote system and fighting a very dirty campaign, and we are probably going to lose. Depressed at the thought of these "dogs of war" getting back in, I now have to engage in a little postal vote fraud myself to even up the score, but, predictably, I'm having a last-minute moral dilemma. Auntie, what should I do? Not George Galloway
Dear "Not George Galloway",
Gorgeous, are you out of your tiny, shiny-suited, Mercedes-driven mind? Using such a spiteful Ba'athist manoeuvre to debase hundreds of years of parliamentary democracy, shaft the Chartists, stick two fingers up to Churchill, and desecrate the Pankhursts' shrine...
Why on earth is this a moral dilemma? Over the centuries, millions of people have fought and died for the right to vote in free elections and live in a democracy. Unfortunately, we still don't have such things. Only 24 per cent of the electorate voted for New Labour in 2001, but they had virtual carte blanche to do what they wanted.
Two million in Britain got off their arses to say no to war but it didn't stop one bomb. Antisocial behaviour orders, control orders, tuition fees, privatisation, rising inequality, anti-immigration, the list goes on and on. So don't think about this a moment longer. Auntie subcommands you to go forth and multiply those votes by any means necessary - stuff envelopes with dodgy ballot papers, bribe the tellers, hold old grannies at gunpoint, whatever it takes, just beat those Blairites. That's right, comrades, the revolution will be falsified.
The crack pipe of peace Dear Auntie
_ War, famine, economic depression and global warming - the idea that 'another world is possible' seems remoter than ever. Will we ever have a just and peaceful world?
_ Desperate for peace, Preston
Learning by number Dear Auntie
_ At one of the Gaza protests in London, Stop the War put the number of protesters at around 100,000 but the police insisted it was only 20,000. Can Auntie reassure me that the Met has a scientific methodology for estimating crowd numbers?
_ Numberless in London
No hope Dear Auntie,
All my left-wing friends seem to be overjoyed about Obama winning the US election, holding real hope that he will bring change, that he'll stop the wars, and that he'll somehow make America all cuddly and nice. But haven't we been here before? I'm getting flashbacks to the expectations people had of politicians like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, and how quickly they betrayed us. Is it terrible that I think Obama will be just more of the same?
Hopeless, London
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