Labour wins West Harrow by-election (From Harrow Times)

A 28.5% turnout shows that people in Harrow do not engage in politics. No one should be polishing their halo's at ths victory. A win is only a win when everyone shows up to have their say and cast their vote acordingly. This shows that we have a very disengaged community and it is this very issue that should be concerning everyone, including the losers of this election. With all the recent issues that have been brought to the forefront, including the reason for this election (Cllr Gates) appears to have been a non issue for the residents of West Harrow. How much worse does this council have to get before people actually think about challenging them. Unbelievable! As I have stated so many times before, if there were medals for voter apathy, Harrow would win gold. We truly deserve the council we have today.

A slight mistake in the report.

Having polled 171 votes, I came 3rd.
In vote order labour 1042, Cons 761, UKIP 171, Green 96, LibDem 68, Ind 53
Turnout 28.5% in total.

Crucially the postal turnout was 54.7% of issued postal votes.

Had we still had the old system of postal voting rather than them being available willy-nilly, the order would have been the same, but the voting patterns different. It was instructive when you saw the voting patterns from each ballot box.

As Harrow Rani points out, voter apathy is the problem. I would add that with the behaviour of the Council, especially the dictarorial "Cabinet" system and attitudes to residents, it is no surprise that residents don't just hold it in contempt, but actually despise it.

Until Harrow Council (and others) start making our lives easier and get off of residents', businesses and motorists' backs and out of their bank accounts, nothing will change.

Before anyone gets worried, individual votes cannot be identified from the count, merely voting trends.

From a campaign point of view, it was good mannered and natured, with candidates and campaigners getting along without rancour. That is how it should be and generally is in Harrow.

Apart from some extremely nasty postings on this website, by some distinctly appalling characters making the most appalling accusations, this was a fair fight.

Having spoken to Christine Robson, she seems a pleasant person. All I asked of her was to be a good Councillor to her residents.

From a personal view and considering that I and UKIP were starting from scratch, a low turnout and it being extremely cold, coming third isn't a bad result.

If it would have been any colder, I would have started as the UKIP Male candidate and ended up as the UKIP Female candidate :-)

This article is full of errors and requires an immediate rewrite.

How the hell did the "reporter" (I use that term loosely) manage to get the results so badly wrong?

The Liberals didn't come third. They were shunted into a miserable FIFTH place,with only 68 sad people voting for them. UKIP came third, presumably only because voters recognised Zeid's name from when he was a Tory.

Here are the results in full as published on Harrow Council's website:

Christine Robson Labour 1042
Julia Merison Tory 761
Jeremy Zeid UKIP 171
Rowan Langley Green Party 96
Pash Nandhra LibDem 68
Herbert Crossman Ind. 53

are you all stupid in harrow

paisley. The best way i can illustrate this. I put a quote into my leaflets. Albert Einstein said:- Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result

Sorry jayjoe, but I was recognised from my letters in the papers and appearances on radio phone-ins. All people knew was that I'd been a Councillor.