General election takes place in the world's one true democracy

The vote has now been cast, the polls are closed and North Korea's version of John Snow is almost certainly set to move his swingometer. Political pundits are poised to pick up the results. It is election time in the DPRK.

Needless to say there is one candidate per seat so the result it a foregone conclusion. That said The nation truly has a one man, one vote system and the one man of course is the Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il.

The only real item of interest in what is of course a rubber stamp exercise is whether The Dear Leader's third son Kin Jong-Un actually appears on the ballot. This may confirm rumours that he is favoured to succeed his father.

According to ITAR-Tass (not exactly a first choice news source for the Poor Mouth) thousands of residents of the capital Pyongyang dressed in festived clothes stood in lines to cast their vote (turn out last time was reportedly 99.9%.... hmmm).

In theory, each voter has the right to express his or her discontent with the candidacy of a would-be representative and cross out the name in the ballot, but no such cases are known in practice here.North Korean mass media claim that this is the most democratic form of a direct voting by secret ballot.

At the end of the voting procedure, each voter is expected to stop by the portraits of the country's leader Kim Jong Il and his father Kim Il Sung, the founder of the Korean socialist state, and to make several bows to them.

I'm sure the Korean Friendship Association and its Juche brown nosers like Alejandro Cao de Benos de Les y Pérez and Dermot (a sterling fellow and in no way a f**kwit) are probably enraptured.... Hiho