OK, So I Was Wrong.

Well Nick didn't win, he came a useless 2nd to Conservative Gordon Oliver. If you don't live here in Torbay you probably wouldn't know that the election for Mayor wasn't a first past the post job but was a practice run for AV. What ever that is. Gordon Oliver had 10600 votes and Nick Bye had 7900 votes after the first count. As Gordon didn't have over 50% of the votes cast there was a count taking in everyone's second preference just like AV supporters wanted us to vote in our MPs. After the second votes were counted Gordon had 12716 to Nick's 9631 so nothing changed using AV. Now I know a sample of one isn't scientifically sound but from speaking to many people in Australia the person who gets most votes first time round almost always gets through in the end. AV just prolongs the agony and costs loads of money, our money. The 3rd person in the election was the LibDem Dennis Brewer with 6905 votes, labour came 4th, 3793. The Green party came last, 1918 votes, 166 votes behind Voice 4 Torbay.

The council is now a very clear conservative council 22 councillors compared to LibDems 9, three independent, and one each for Lab and UKIP. What exactly a UKIP councillor is going to do to foster his party's aims, that is get us out of Europe from Torbay Town Hall I'm not too sure. There will be a bye election soon because Gordon Oliver also stood for and won a council seat and one cannot be elected mayor and a councillor at the same time. More council tax money down the drain.

Big day for Torquay United to morrow. The are away to Rotherham and need the same or a better result as Gillingham and Stevenage to make it into the Division Two Play offs. There are 4 teams in the play off position with only 1 game each left to play. Shrewsbury, Accrington, Torquay and Stevenage and only Accrington are certain to still be there after tomorrows games. Shrewsbury could move up into a promotion place with Wycombe dropping down to the play off slot and Torquay or Stevenage could drop out of the play off slot to be replaced by Gillingham. Going to be a long 90 minutes for the fans of all 5 clubs tomorrow afternoon.

And Finally. Will Nick Clegg do the decent thing and fall on his sword? Go on Nick, a bit of bloodshed will go someway toward cheering up all those Lib Dem ex councillors up and down the country.