from CNN.... I tought it would be perfect for the list... ok maybe I'm
wrong.
Cat Takes Over British Loony Party by a Whisker
September 24, 1999
Web posted at: 9:19 AM EDT (1319 GMT)
LONDON (Reuters) -- A four-year-old ginger tomcat called Mandu assumed joint
leadership of Britain's Official Monster Raving Loony Party on Friday after
elections ended in a dead heat.
Cat Mandu and his owner, Howling Laud Hope, both polled 125 votes in the
contest to find a successor to the party's eccentric founder, Screaming Lord
Sutch, who died in June.
"As party chairman I had the casting vote. I didn't have the heart to vote
for myself against my cat so I put a proposal to the floor that...the
Monster Raving Loony Party should have joint leadership," Hope said.
"They accepted it. We now have two leaders," Hope told Reuters from his
Golden Lion hotel in Ashburton, southwest England, where he is hosting the
party's annual conference.
"We've cracked open the champagne," he added.
Sutch, who founded the party 21 years ago, stood for parliament 40 times
before committing suicide three months ago.
He never came close to winning a seat but his party invariably succeeded in
pricking the pomposity of Britain's heavyweight political parties.
His rallying cry -- "Vote for Insanity. You Know it Makes Sense" --
brightened dozens of by-elections. At general elections he regularly ran
against incumbent prime ministers.
Mandu has yet to drop any hints about his political convictions but Hope
said he did not expect rifts to emerge in the party leadership.
"I'm the one that feeds him. I would have thought he shares my ideas," he
said.
The party, one of the most colourful and durable of Britain's fringe groups,
claims 17,000 supporters in Britain and another 13,000 international
followers, Hope said.
Party policies have included wanting fish bred in a European wine lake so
they could be caught ready pickled, giving pensioners heated toilet seats
and extending the Channel Tunnel to Switzerland to give Britain tax haven
status.
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