As many regular subscribers to this website are aware, last Thursday, I stood for the council in the local elections, as a Freedom Alliance candidate. You can read the full backstory regarding how this rather improbable scenario occurred here...

Why improbable? Well, because until 2021, I had never even voted. I didn't believe in it. It seemed self-evident to me, as it also appears to be to almost all of the conspiratorial community of which I am a proud member, that voting was pointless: that the system was rigged, that your vote made no difference, and that if voting changed anything, they wouldn't let you do it.

I assumed, as many do, that this was a relatively 'fringe' belief. That most people - the masses, the normies, the pyjama people - vote, and, just like anything these people do en masse, I didn't want to do it. As Mark Twain wisely opined, whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.

So would it surprise you to know that, where it comes to local council elections of the type I just stood in, that by far the majority behaviour... is not to vote? That, in some areas, a staggering EIGHTY-FIVE PER CENT of eligible people don't, and the average turnout hovers around the 30% mark?

So, if you don't vote in the local council elections, you're on the side of the (vast) majority. As such, it may be time to pause and reflect...

Whilst, happily, most people have been really supportive on my inroads into politics (thank you), I've nevertheless also encountered a significant faction who get really irate to the point of being aggressive regarding the fact that I have begun advocating voting and standing in elections - this, they foment furiously, is a despicable, "statist" position, so unforgiveable that it annihilates all my credibility on other issues. (Someone insinuated earlier that I no longer have any legitimacy where it comes to spotting spoofed news screenshots as advocating voting means I lack "discernment".)

To these people, I say, if you don't want to vote, of course that's your prerogative, but I suspect there are a number of issues you haven't considered in making such blanket condemnations of those who do.

First of all, I don't think these particular critics of mine have fully grasped the distinction between central parliamentary politics - meaning general elections and by-elections, where Members of Parliament are elected to attend Westminster - and local council elections - where ordinary, non-MP people are elected by residents of tiny little council wards to sit on local councils and be involved in local decision-making. These are two really distinct, and ultimately completely different, concepts - and the party I stood for, Freedom Alliance, was initially established only to stand in council elections (though has since stood in by-elections such was the clamour for this from members).

What is a council election and why is it important to stand in it? If you don't vote, you probably didn't know this (I didn't), but most councils have elections every year where representatives are elected for each of the small council wards in a respective area. A council ward is not the same as a town or a borough, it's much smaller than that, and to give you an idea of just how small council wards are, as of 2014, there were 9,456 of them in the UK. While you may know who your local MP is - the Member of Parliament who goes to Westminster to represent your larger wider locality - you likely have no idea who your local council representatives are, or that you can vote them in or out every year - and I say you probably don't know, because until 2021, I didn't either.

While members of the 'big four' establishment parties - Lab, Lib, Con, Green (sounds a bit like the name of a Home Counties rapper) - do stand in these elections and often win, they certainly don't always. They are often contested by smaller parties and 'independents' (people running by themselves and not as members of any political party). who can and do triumph, and, as a result, are able to express their alternative and anti-establishment views in a much more prominent way.

This was especially well illustrated when Norwich city councillor, Nigel Utton, labelled Covid "the biggest con in history". Many people in the truth movement applauded Nigel's stance and his bravery... But would simultaneously condemn the process that enabled him to access the council and be given a platform to air these views! If you want people like Nigel to be elected to councils and have their views heard and publicised at this level, then - to state the obvious but it does often need stating - you have to elect them.

Imagine if we had a "Nigel" - someone with powerful anti-establishment views and the courage to share them on the mainstream stage - on every council? Elected to all 9,456 council wards in the country? Don't you think there's a possibility that could actually make a difference?

We could have this, because, by far the biggest voting demographic in the country is those who don't vote. If non-voters mobilised at every council election and voted for a genuine candidate - someone not from one of the 'big four' parties and someone with a demonstrable history of standing up for the truth and challenging corrupt officials (*coughs noisily*) - these people would win by a landslide at every election and consequently be installed in every council in the country. The difference this could make to the political, and therefore social, landscape of the country is potentially enormous.

It's critically important to engage with local politics and attempt to 'infiltrate' local councils in this way, because, as my friend and Freedom Alliance leader, Jonathan Tilt, has said:

"Local councils have from the start been fully engaged in imposing the covid tyranny and feeding the absurd hysteria. That's why we set up Freedom Alliance, with the initial intention of standing only in council elections. We hoped to gain a foothold and try and push back against the false and unlawful agenda being slavishly peddled by many councils. That is still our main focus.

There will be more plandemics and manufactured crises in which councils will be used as a blunt instrument for removing our freedoms."

The government wants you to engage with politics only insofar as it wants you to mindlessly vote for one of the "big four" parties, who are all ultimately indistinguishable from each other, especially on the major agenda items (Covid, climate, war) - which is exactly what 90%+ of current voters do. Vote red, blue, yellow or green, again and again and again. Freedom Alliance and other genuine, non-establishment candidates have little or no hope at taking votes away from these existing, traditional voters, any more than a new aspiring football team has any hope of gaining the support of a lifelong, die-hard Man United fan.

But Freedom Alliance does have a chance with the biggest potential voting demographic in the country - the non-voters. Most non-voters are very sympathetic to Freedom Alliance's aims, and believe in Freedom Alliance's core campaigning principles of protected civil liberties, personal freedoms, and human rights.

But Freedom Alliance is never going to get into the position where it can begin to action these principles on the local or national level if people don't get out there and vote for them.

Having both stood as a candidate, and served as a counting agent for a friend last year, I've dived right into the seedy underbelly of local politics, and I can tell you for an absolute, certain, and inviolable fact - the government DON'T want you to engage with local politics. They DON'T want you to organise and get active and present viable alternatives to their cushy closed shop. I know this because of just how rude, dismissive, ridiculing, and condescending the major parties and their reps (except for the Lib Dem guy, who was very nice) are towards Freedom Alliance and other 'little people' alternatives - when they're not completely ignoring us, that is. They'll hob-nob and gush over each other - important people, big people, people who matter - but regard ordinary people who dare to make a stand as interlopers and outsiders who are beneath their contempt.

The whole time I was at the count this year, me and the other Freedom Alliance candidates and counting agents were getting sideways looks and nasty little laughs, as well as the odd muttered sneery aside. The established players could not have made it any clearer - as far as they were concerned, this was their party, and we weren't invited. They were clearly absolutely livid we had managed to wangle a valid invite anyway.

What I found the most revealing of all was that the Monster Raving Loonies were present (in very splendid hats), as they'd contested a few of the local council seats too, as they do every year.

Every time the Loonies' results were announced - even though they hadn't done well and in several wards Freedom Alliance and other non-joke parties had done better - the whole room - Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, and Green alike - erupted in whoops and cheers.

Of course, when Freedom Alliance's results were announced, there was a cold, stony silence.

Why is this? It's because the Loonies are an establishment pressure valve. The establishment knows how disillusioned many people are with politics, so the establishment has given them the Loonies - an "alternative" to the big four parties, but explicitly presented as a gimmick, a joke - the clear insinuation being, you'd have to be a loony to vote for anyone but one of the big four.

The main parties know this. They know the Loonies are actually helping them by giving a dead-end "option" for the politically disillusioned and by equating non-establishment parties with lunacy.

That's why there were no cheers for Freedom Alliance, and why the other parties were so hostile to us - because we are a genuine threat to their hegemony and they know it. We could ACTUALLY make a difference - and one absolutely not in their favour - if only more of our natural supporters would vote for us. This, believe me, is the last thing the establishment wants you to do. If the establishment wanted the majority to vote, then the majority would - just like the majority have got vaccinated and support Ukraine. If the majority don't do something, it's because it serves the establishment for them not to do it.

I'm sure you learned about suffrage in school and what extraordinary lengths ordinary people went to (our anti-establishment great-grandparents) to bring about universal suffrage: to change the voting landscape from "only married male land-owners over 40 with the middle name Robert and moon in Gemini" (etc. etc.) to "all adults over 18". This was NOT a smooth or painless process. It was NOT what the establishment wanted. But ordinary people fought and fought until they got it. "They", the overlords, aren't omnipotent. They're not Gods. Sometimes David fights back and Goliath loses.

But what's happened now? We've almost gone full circle - now, once again, the vast majority of ordinary people don't vote, and politics has become an elitist closed-shop where only the wealthy and the privileged participate.

What if, just what if, the establishment simply changed tack to keep ordinary people out of politics? What if they realised "forcing" ordinary people not to vote was less effective than convincing them voting was "pointless" - that it's rigged, that your vote is meaningless, that if voting changed anything, they wouldn't let you do it? What if these sentiments have been covertly sewn in the truth movement by the establishment itself to keep you our of local politics in order to stop you making a genuine difference that way? Remember, the vast majority don't vote, and whenever you're on the side of the vast majority...

Incidentally, "they" are considering introducing voter ID next year. Voter ID always and without exception leads to less voters. Why oh why - if the establishment wanted you to vote - would they enact a step guaranteed to generate less voters, when turnout is already so dismally low? Why would they want to turn voters away if "voting is meaningless and your vote doesn't change anything and it's all rigged anyway"? Please give these issues some genuine, open-minded thought.

In terms of results this election, there were 48 overall Freedom Alliance candidates in the country, so too long to list here (full results will be published on Freedom Alliance's website soon), but here's a selection from the local area:

Me - 74 votes - and as I said at the time, if 74 whole people attended my birthday party, I'd feel very popular, so I was extremely pleased with this! Especially not bad for someone whom, until the year before, had never even voted themselves...

Jonathan Tilt (party leader) - 96 votes, more than a 25% improvement on last year

Charlotte Sykes (Old Town, Barnsley candidate) - 145 votes, and beat the Lib Dems.

So this isn't hopeless. It isn't futile and pointless and "statist".

It's playing them at their own game in a way which, if enough of us mobilised and got active, we could start to make some very significant progress towards winning.