Just got back from stoke myself. This is what happend at that count.    After the result came in the BNP were 3rd just 190 votes behind the conservatives.    We ask for a recount, we got one and lost 350 votes and mike wolfe gained nearly 100, which put us to 4th.    There were 10 000 spoiled ballot papers, I looked at a lot of them myself and almost all of them were BNP votes with conservative crossed as well, what happend was people put the 1st and 2nd prefrance votes in the same row, making it spoiled.    The new Labour mayor made his speech stating that I am willing to work with anyone in any party (which is a lie, Labour have never worked with our 2 councillors) so when steve batkin went on stage he said we have an elected official who after 2 minutes of being elected has told his first lie, he will not work with us, because the BNP like thousends of people want to stop mass imigration at this point the entire labour party and conservatives started to boo him so we cheered and then they left(we shouted things like 20% and 15half thousend votes when they were leaving) steve batkin finished his speech, we listend to the other candidates and then left.    NOTE:  In the general election we stood in stoke south,central and north(which we have never done before) and we got all our deposits back.    GENERAL ELECTION  Michael Coleman Stoke Central 2,178 7.8%   Spencer Cartlidge Stoke North 2,132 6.9%   Cllr Mark Leat Stoke South 3,305 8.7%     MAYORAL ELECTION  Labour - 27,253  (32.8%)  Conservative  16,211  (19.5%)  Mike Wolfe  15,822  (19.4%)  Steve Batkin  15,776  (19.0%)  Independent  4,505 - (5.4%)  Independent  1,955  (2.4%)  Independent  1,368  (1.6%)