[pp.int.general] The United Kingdom Party is Officially Recognised

[Andrew Robinson]

We've been holding back on announcing the good news, as we needed a
little time to get our membership and donation systems running, as
well as beta testing new website and sorting out the formalities of
registration to hold personal data on members under our local data
protection law, but...

As of the 30th July, the Pirate Party UK has been officially added to
the register of political parties in the United Kingdom.

This means we can have Pirate Party candidates standing at the next
General Election (although there is more paperwork to complete before
we can contest seats in Northern Ireland). We now have a huge task
ahead of us, as we try to grow the party as quickly as possible. The
election is less that a year away, to fight it properly, we would need
to find 646 candidates, each requiring a £500 deposit to get their
names on the ballot paper, and of course that doesn't include any
budget for advertising and campaigning!

See http://registers.electoralcommission.org.uk/regulatory-issues/regpoliticalparties.cfm?frmGB=1&frmPartyID=900&frmType=partydetail
for confirmation.

- Andrew Robinson