On May 7th, as I noted here yesterday, Men’s Rightser Mike Buchanan only managed to score a humiliating 153 votes in the UK election. This brought the total number of votes cast for Buchanan’s Justice for Men and Boys Party to — let me doublecheck the math here — 216 votes. 216.
The Labour Party, by contrast, won a total of 9,347,326 votes. But this was considerably less than the victorious Tories, and was seen as such a disaster for the party that Labour leader Ed Miliband resigned in disgrace.
But Men’s Rights Activists can never admit defeat. And so huge loser Mike Buchanan has declared his total drubbing to be a victory of sorts, telling the world — or whatever tiny portion of it that was paying attention — that his party had “achieved what we set out to achieve.”
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Here’s the, er, logic behind his victory claim, as set forth in a statement posted on his website, and on Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men.
Around 05:30 today, the results were declared in the two seats where Ray Barry and I were standing. I secured 153 votes, Ray 63, and I’d like to thank the good people who voted for us.
While more votes would have been welcome, we achieved what we set out to achieve, which was to use the democratic process to break the conspiracy of silence about J4MB and men’s human rights, and show up the hypocrisy and blatant gynocentrism of the mainstream political parties.
If your aim was merely to make a bit of noise, congratulations, Mike; a radiator can do that.
Mike took a moment to point out one piece of “evidence” for this terrible gynocentrism: Labour’s Gloria de Piero, who won the seat Buchanan competed for so miserably failed to compete for, didn’t even bother to mention him in her victory speech.
“Whether you voted for me, or Helen, or Philip, or Simon,” de Piero declared, “I promise to represent you all, and work tirelessly for you all.”
Buchanan sniffed:
So it’s only men in Ashfield for whom she won’t work tirelessly over the next five years.
Either that or she just didn’t feel the need to acknowledge a ludicrous “candidate” who got such a small percentage of the vote that it didn’t even round up to 1 percent. Or maybe she just forgot? In any case, I’m pretty sure there are some men who voted for her, or Helen, or Philip, or Simon.
Buchanan acknowledges that “we expected to secure a higher number of votes” — no shit; a fart in a jar could have done better — and blames the poor showing on the fact that “this was our first general election, fought with very limited funds.”
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
But even though he and his party comrade failed miserably at the polls, Buchanan takes heart in the fact that the complete assholes who blight the comment sections of every major UK newspaper were on his side.
[T]he comment streams in articles by the Telegraph, Independent, Mail, Express, and even the Guardian and Observer, have been highly supportive of J4MB, and many thousands of people have been led to our website after reading these articles.
I guess, from my point of view, this is a highly reassuring result, showing that these commenters don’t reflect the opinions of some silent majority, but rather that of a very loud but actually quite miniscule minority.
But Mike, seriously, you need to acknowledge your failure, as have the leaders of all the major losing parties. More than this, you need to accept the painfully obvious conclusion:
Your party has tried a male leader, and he — that is, you — failed miserably.
Clearly, you need to step down and let a woman take charge.
And nobody was kind enough to stand up, go to his podium and whisper in his ear that in order to win an election, you’ll need the most voices not the fewest? Misandry !
Does the Raving Monster Looney Party still exist?
Nemmind, missed a post. Durr. Glad they’re still around, though.
http://youtu.be/TRM3LO2ZCac
(Hope that isn’t triggery; to me it’s just a novelty song by the MRLP’s founder.)
that his party had “achieved what we set out to achieve.”
Well, if they set out to prove the MRA movement does not represent men at all, but a negligible, irrelevant and delusional fringe, then he’s right.
@Alan Robertshaw
Bet ya a quid that they’re a boy under 18 years old.
(Although you’d have to accept my defeat bet in USD.)
The MRLP’s policies included:
Lowering voting age to 18
All day pub opening
Passports for pets.
All of which eventually became law.
@ GODDAMN!!!!!!! Batman etc.
You’re on!
[What is we’re betting about again?]
@Alan Robertshaw
Whether you forget about betting on someone who is male and under 18 years old.
Pay up.
@ GAWWWWWDAMMMMNNNNN! etc
There’s £0.646789 here with your name on it.
Very much so. In last Thursday’s election they came twentieth, with 3,898 votes. That put them well behind the Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol party (17th, 8,419) but well ahead of the British National Party (25th, 1,667).
And yes, that’s the same British National Party that got so many people spooked in the first decade of the 20th century – in 2010 it managed 563,743 votes, so that’s a 99.7% drop. There wasn’t much good election news for people of my persuasion, but that was one of the major exceptions.
@Alan Robertshaw
That’s not a quid. That’s 64.6789% of a quid.
I know what a quid is, Alan.
I know.
Damn. You women *can* understand complex financial issues; the MRAs lied to me.
OK, your $1.5461 awaits.
153 votes is well within the realm of most of his votes being comprised of family and friends, as well as some people that thought he was still Tory, and the rest being made up of people that thought he was the guy from Art Attack. Very few will be from actual supporters.
153 votes is less than many comedy entrants managed to get.
@Alan Robertshaw
Yaaaaay! Having to repeat algebra 1, geometry and algebra 2 twice in high school paid off!
Comedian Al Murray got 318 votes.
Does that mean that now technically you’ve got algebra 2, geometry 2 and algebra 4?
No wonder you’re so good at this.
@Alan Robertshaw
Pfff, I wish. I probably would have been more comfortable going into (high school) physics if I didn’t suck at math so much. Physics is really interesting.
I had the same thing. I did A level physics but got kicked out of A level maths. The weird thing is, although there was obviously a lot of overlap I understood concepts in physics when I couldn’t grasp the same concepts in maths. Maybe it was a difference between the abstract and the actual.
I do love physics though, and science generally it’s all fascinating. Mind you, I find everything interesting (except football).
His humiliation is particularly amusing given Ashfield is a former coal mining constituency, (ok the pits are all closed now but plenty of former miners still live there) and we know how MRA’s love their ‘Feminism is a lie cuz coalminers are mostly men’ argument.
Yet practically none of these old miners, supposedly victims of the gynocracy which made them do all the dirty dangerous work while the lazy women sat round eating bon bons, felt sufficiently wronged by it to vote for Buchanan, and instead returned not only a women, but the Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities and staunch feminist no less, with a considerably increased share of the vote…………
I have a cat that might have some British Shorthair in him but I’m sure that he could scrape up more votes than Buchanan got (especially with his “a dead mouse on every welcome mat” campaign that he’s running now.)
And probably have raised more money to cover the deposit, too.
>snurk!<
Oh man, David, you turned the snark up to 11 for this post, and damn if it didn’t work. Hilarious.
chaltab-Me too!! XD I always have found it funny the way the MRAs throw words like ‘gynocentrism’ around when there is substantial evidence that the world is anything but gynocentric. In fact, it has no grounding in reality. Women are underrepresented in politics, and make up fewer military personnel, lawyers, magistrates, judges, politicians and CEOs etc For example, as Karl pointed out, only 27% of the candidates were women. ‘Gynocentrism’ is yet ANOTHER word that they have pulled out of their arse. They seem to pull out a LOT of stuff from their arse, almost everything in fact. O.O
” Mr Buchanan might invest his time in some basic mathematics courses.”
Yep, definitely.
Mathematics? I thought they taught “27% is less than half” in elementary school.
153 votes?!?! But seriously, TOTAL LOLNESS AND HAHA! XD Damn, I can’t believe the Cannabis is Safer than Alcohol and Raving Monster Looney Party got more votes than that. Hell, even I could get more votes than that. I should totally run for parliament (along with my feminist friend Katie, of course). lol Even the Evil Feminazis for Misandry party will get more votes than that. ^^;
My High School physics Higher course had 3 females in it. Of course the teachers didn’t encourage females. We’d get all our homework right, and get commended for ‘nice handwriting’. The guys who got 8/10 would be commended for good work.
Goats are awesome.
And I can’t claim credit for “fart in a jar,” I kind of borrowed it from Pattoon Oswalt (who does indeed look a lot like success baby).
Also, I don’t really know anything about this Al Murray guy, but he’s got some good ideas, I think. Common sense.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/its-not-just-nigel-farage-al-murray-the-pub-landlord-loses-south-thanet-bid-despite-patriotic-pledges-10235430.html
I still think it’s gear that Screaming Lord Sutch is his actual legal name (by poll deed*). British eccentricity is world class.
*From what I’ve read. Do not use this information for academic purposes without independent verification.
“Mathematics? I thought they taught “27% is less than half” in elementary school.”
Wasn’t there a study that found men seeing a crowd that’s 30% women/ 70% men often saw it as 50% women/50% men? Can’t remember where I read about that, but I guess that could have an influence on their perception of this whole “gynocentricity” thing they go on about. Maybe some of these misogynists’ perceptions are even more skewed to the point where any female presence whatsoever looks like a large majority to them.
Would it make you feel better to know that the kid, Sammy Griner, now 8, went on to use his internet fame to get his dad a new kidney?
Among Buchanan’s excuses, he notes that First Past The Post punishes minor parties. But he specifically picked marginal constituencies where the incumbent was a woman and the close 2nd runner was a man. If he’d instead stood in one of the many safe seats, he might have picked up more of the protest vote.
I almost feel that to be fair to Mike Buchannan, it should be pointed out that “success” in British politics is somewhat hard to quantify.
Look at this:
The Greens were another party that had a lot of “success” in that they tripled their membership and gained one seat, with over 1m votes.
Meanwhile, the SNP got 1.5m votes and won 56 seats.
http://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/p526x296/11011998_976028259103754_8757037119554666368_n.png?oh=20b236fc4075f0b819b2c487f53201b5&oe=55D24BA9&__gda__=1440049049_466653df7314f0ec3bca7cb38747c17b
You can divide the number of votes per seat as above and realise that the First-Past-The-Post system is totally messed up, and completely skewed towards keeping the longest-established parties in power, so for J4MB, getting any votes at all is practically a miracle.
It’s possible that those 216 people were just “voting tactically” – because if you don’t like any of the other parties, but don’t want to spoil your ballot paper, you can put a cross next to the party with absolutely no chance of success and deny the rest your fraction of a %’s worth of polling support.
So this election seemed particularly unwinnable for any small party. But Mike was deluding himself if he expected enough votes to win a seat.
AHAHAHAHAHA! Holy Moley!
I just discovered that Mikey was right all along – Thanks to all the party leadership resignations, Politics is now “gynocentric”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/every-major-british-political-party–except-the-conservatives–currently-led-by-a-woman-10238390.html 😀
“Even the Guardian”? Is he under the impression that the Guardian’s comment section is some hive of reasonable and thoughtful debate which ostracizes misogynists? Because it seriously ain’t.
https://www.facebook.com/LeMurphs/posts/10204299998839471
Sorry, I didn’t mean for that link to become embedded in the post! Feel free to remove that if it’s a problem.
@Paradoxical Intention – Thanks! Gotta say, ‘ruined’ might have been a bit too strong, since I wasn’t sad about that, just amused (it’s just that, well, it’s kinda hard to see it as saying ‘success!’ once you know it’s more ‘ptblplbt, sand tastes like sand’), but that is an awesome story.
I was really disappointed that poor old Al didn’t get more votes than he did. Still I guess people sensibly wanted to keep Farage out and thus didn’t want to waste their votes on him.
David: Al Murray is a British comedian of good standing who has made his career lampooning (but fairly lovingly) the worst of the thoughtless prejudices (in particular, but not exclusively) of the English working classes by embracing the role of the pub landlord on stage.
But he in truth he’s incredibly posh, attended a very elite school and has produced and presented thoughtful historical documentaries.
I have to confess to using “and a white wine or fruit based drink for the lady” whenever I’m on a night out with my most radfem friend.
If anyone is interested in a watching a battle between Tom “Penguins are whores” Martin and Mike Buchanan, check out the comments on AVFM now:
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/british-general-election-j4mb-results-and-reflections/
Actually, Tom’s been banned so the battle is already over.
Wow…AVFMorons actually banned a rabid misodge, for once? The mind, it boggleth, yea verily.
That was quite the battle of the titans there! My favorite was when one of the commenters objected to Tom Martin’s evo psych argument by asking “what, are we apes now?” What? Manospherians love evo psych and use chimps to excuse sexist and/or violent behavior constantly! Oh, the irony.
It really doesn’t take much to get banned over there, does it? Hey, it’s there blog and they can moderate the comments how they want. But if they’re going to be quick to ban for anything less than complete and utter agreement with them on all things, they really need to stop accusing feminists of being censorious and unwilling to listen to other points of view.
Is there no aspect of life in which MRAs aren’t committing massive amounts of projection?
Their. Not there. Shit.
Dudes, hate to break it to ya, but you’ve been baboons since birth. Ain’t our fault that you haven’t evolved. But hey, make yourselves comfy in the dustbins of history, because you’re gonna get a lot of company in there before long!
@Spindrift – hehehehe I like that! I have often wondered how the menz would react if we treated them just like they treat us. You know – as if their only reason for existing is to please US, donate sperm and stay at home, caring for the offspring. How would they feel, being looked at and rated as if the only things that matter are their youth, abs, body parts and genitalia? And if they do not measure up to some insane standards, well then! I am sure that we can come up with some nasty, hurtful names to call them.
Ah, if only….but I am not that mean. Almost, but not quite.
@rugbyyogi
So I guess Stephen Colbert, the American comic who lampooned the right-wing by pretending to be a right-wing commentator, is a lot like him? Colbert has had his share of political campaigns, too, including running for President and creating a super PAC in an episode that experts commended for being informative and educational.
@pussypower – yes, many parallels.
After all his years of crusading for men’s sitting comfort and exhorting woman blog commenters to renounce prostitution in all forms, this is how Tom Martin is repaid. There is no gratitude in the manosphere.
David, all I did was scroll through the man’s Twitter feed to find something completely expected of these humanitarians lol! Keep doing what you do. If I find out something more shocking or unpredictable than that, then I might ask for credit. But seriously, that these are the worst people ever isn’t exactly a huge revelation. It’s just hilarious the way they desperately try to convince everyone and themselves otherwise.
The comments on AVfM congratulating Buchanan on his ‘success’ and admiring his ‘courage’ are hilarious. These fellas do live in their own reality, distinctly incompatible with that inhabited by the human race.
On a related note, I’ma get out of bed soon and expect much praise for my bravery and congrats on the indisputable success of this carefully planned operation.
P.S. Bina and Alan, you crack me up. Verily, WHTM comments are among the best ever.