VOTE!

I began another day of joy and constant happiness by rising today, conscious that I must vote, and thereby change the world.  I pushed my way through the masses to find the place empty except for two tables stocked with two servers, and one manager standing to the left.  "Where are they all?" I asked, "It was busy this morning," they lied.  It's always, "It was busy earlier," innit?

Council elections do not draw the crowds, County Council ones appear to draw less, as the council appears to that wee bit further off from the people.  

The poll is in the museum hall and the manager is well known to me.  The six of us chatted, there was plenty of time to do so, while they prepared my voting slip and refused to answer my question as to "Why is there no SNP on here?"

Now, we have a choice of five individuals, all of whom wish to become a County Council Councillor.  The usual parties, Labour, Tory, Reform, Lib Dem, and Green.  I looked up the names of the five men, unusually all men, and found little about them.  The Lib Dem, like almost all the Lib Dems standing in this town comes from Chelmsford, the Reform lives here but comes from Colchester, the rest are local, which is how it ought to be.

But what do we know of them?  Almost nothing!

One states his favourite biscuit is 'Hobnobs.'  Surely we can ask deeper questions that this?

Another is a fellow councillor here known to one other councillor who attends our kirk.  So we have some info, and he likes 'Hobnobs' also.  For the other three I found nothing.  

This surely is not the way to seek election, surely they must make some political statement somewhere along the line?  This leaves most people voting for the party, not the individual, which is more important in such elections as opposed to general elections.  The person is nearer to the people here, why are we so poor in offering information?  I of course ignore the Twitter feeds which daily fill the page with Reform candidates withdrawing, or being withdrawn, by party or constabulary.  

I scribbled my vote to await the result in due course, and set off for Tesco.

£35:20 later I left the friendly checkout girl and took my heavy bag back to the museum.  Here I give a little support by buying their excellent honey, this comes from bees living in a nearby village.  The young girl in charge is well known to me, well known for making me spend money I do not have.  This meant I had to resist her pressure and only spent £10:50, then had to ransack my pockets to find enough loose change to give her some £1 coins as they had not left.  I was then allowed to tour the latest exhibition in the museum.  

This was magnificent.  The new curator has made changes and vastly improved the displays, building on what went before.  I was impressed with what she has done with the Great War stuff, and other local history is well noted.  This is indeed a very good local museum and deserves much mention.  The big exhibit was the between wars art deco stuff produced by the main businesses, the cloth and silk mills, in the town. This reminded me of one of my aunts, she was a child of the 20s and much in her house spoke of those days.  Being old I find a connection to the past via aunts and uncles, as well as parents, especially when some of them were born in the Victorian age, and their ideas, books, and attitudes spoke of times past.  Much better attitudes than today I hear you say.  Possibly, as most of them saw two wars, a general strike, near poverty, and a depression, that gives a different view on life.

 

Our new recycling bins arrived today.  Because of lack of space we had been promised the non-standard boxes, we got both!  Coming home from Tesco's I ate and fell asleep, when I awoke we were surrounded by bins.  These are not being used until June, 3 weeks away, and take up a lot of space.  Just how this will work will be intriguing, as we have 3 cars already, and with two flats about to be leased possibly 2 more, plus bins, life will be great in the car park.  We also have 8 boxes now!  I'm to weary to care today, maybe tomorrow I'll look out again.

Friday Frippary

The tingle in my toe indicates I sit around too much, similar tingles in my fingers indicate repetitive strain injury caused by too much time playing solitaire working on this laptop.  Therefore more walking and exercise is required, but this aches the knees, it doesn't do much for the back either.  However, this morning I crossed the park, wandered the long way, that is another five minutes, through the town, and limped home hungry for lunch.

This afternoon I returned the empty beer vinegar bottles to the recycling bins at the supermarket, with great difficulty.  For a start the bag appeared heavy for some reason, and the actual bins had not been emptied.  The lids were bursting open, bags crammed with bottles lay all around, beer bottles, wine bottles, spirits of many kind bottles, all stood to attention awaiting disposal in amongst the discarded plastic bags and broken chips of glass that always lies everywhere here.  At least people are trying to recycle and save the planet.  

Having added my bag to the flock I meandered towards the bank, took cash from the 'Hole in the Wall,' and marvelled at how easy this was.  In times past Scots banks were not keen on customers, after all, they had work to do, so they opened at 9:30, closed for an hour at lunchtime, and closed again to the public at 3:30. These are all ideal times for the man in the street to make use of a bank!  Today I just inserted the card, pressed numbers, pressed another couple of buttons and money appeared from the wall. This is great!  

I wonder who the card belonged to?

Anyway, I hobbled down the road passing many mum's returning the kids from the schools, crossed the park once again and amazingly sat on a bench to enjoy the warmth of the day!  It was heading towards 70ish degrees today.  Short sleeves abounded, women putting their noses in the air expecting all men to admire them, I look the other way to annoy them, all around the unexpected relief that summer might be nearing.  Ha!  I thought it was getting cloudy now, the weather man has promised rain tonight!  Typical.

 

 

Sadly the local elections turned out to be disappointing for us all.  While the Tories lost heavily it was clear they did not lose heavily enough.  Worse, many continued to vote for them, in spite of the mess they are leaving us.  Labour have done well in Scotland, but elsewhere they have gained many local seats but not enough to encourage hope in a general election.  Boris may yet try for an early general election if he thinks he will gain enough of a winning margin.  I doubt this however.  There again there was not sufficient displeasure amongst the faithful to call for his removal, but underneath the ground is shifting.

 

 

My day of excitement will end with the second leg of Inverness Caledonian v Partick Thistle tonight.  The play-off time is here again and always to be welcomed.  The first legs are not always so enjoyable, however, when the game is there to be won in the second leg it gets interesting.  These are good games to watch.  However, not all is good in Scottish football, last nght the blue bigots won through to the final of a European competition.  This is sad news to me.  The last thing we need is the sectarian pair getting more cash, they will waste it on themselves and continue to spurn Scottish football. This is not a good moment for Scotland.