Friday...time to ramble?
Friday, 7 May 2010 09:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
byslantedlightI swear, if I fall over one more thing this morning, spill anything else, get nearly-caught one more time doing a sneaky at the photocopier, I'm going home... Quick - how do you turn a day around?! I need good things! (Although there was no queue at the coffee counter. But my coffee wasn't very nice. And Boss stopped to chat while not-catching me at the photocopier, and the rest of it went cold. Hmmn, not sure the coffee thing was all that successful after that brief first moment... Also she'd keyed in it before I could give her my free-coffee card, so I had to pay... That might be one on the Tory side of my day, come to think of it...)
Speaking of which... *g* Oh, godddddd! Although in a way at least it's kind of interesting, and maybe it'll make the buggers buck up a bit, and start listening to what the electors are actually saying they want/need, rather than trying to tell us that what we want/need is what they're giving us? Or is that just hopeless optimism? Either way, I reckon it's our only hope for a bit of change, because it was really a race between one horse shown from three different camera angles...
How was your voting day? Did you get to vote? Cos my goodness - queues at the polling stations! On the one hand good, surely that must mean a better turnout than usual (or does it just mean that more people left it until the last minute?) I still think voting should be compulsory, as it is in Australia - and if you just don't want to vote for anyone, then spoil your paper/make a "donkey vote", and then we'd know how many people felt that way too. But it'd be a positive outcome at least from that pov...
Right - bad start means a glorious end to the day, doesn't it? I shall be over here working on that... any clues as to how to make it happen gratefully received...
A Wonderful Thing
Oh I know - let's have a Wonderful Thing - NASA's astronomy pic for today. Except they're calling this "the antennae" - stoopid, unpoetic scientists... *headdesk*
I can't decide about this next one - is this a Wonderful Thing - Arborsculpture...? Or is it as bad as forcing kittens to wear dresses and big pink ribbons?
Speaking of which... *g* Oh, godddddd! Although in a way at least it's kind of interesting, and maybe it'll make the buggers buck up a bit, and start listening to what the electors are actually saying they want/need, rather than trying to tell us that what we want/need is what they're giving us? Or is that just hopeless optimism? Either way, I reckon it's our only hope for a bit of change, because it was really a race between one horse shown from three different camera angles...
How was your voting day? Did you get to vote? Cos my goodness - queues at the polling stations! On the one hand good, surely that must mean a better turnout than usual (or does it just mean that more people left it until the last minute?) I still think voting should be compulsory, as it is in Australia - and if you just don't want to vote for anyone, then spoil your paper/make a "donkey vote", and then we'd know how many people felt that way too. But it'd be a positive outcome at least from that pov...
Right - bad start means a glorious end to the day, doesn't it? I shall be over here working on that... any clues as to how to make it happen gratefully received...
A Wonderful Thing
Oh I know - let's have a Wonderful Thing - NASA's astronomy pic for today. Except they're calling this "the antennae" - stoopid, unpoetic scientists... *headdesk*
I can't decide about this next one - is this a Wonderful Thing - Arborsculpture...? Or is it as bad as forcing kittens to wear dresses and big pink ribbons?
no subject
Date: Friday, 7 May 2010 08:47 am (UTC)At first it looked like the queues were people who left it until late to vote, but apparently there were long delays at some polling stations caused by voters without polling cards, or lack of staff, or lack of ballot papers.
Was just thinking yesterday how antiquated the system is, with slips of paper and lead pencils. Surely it must be possible to make voting electronic.
Last I heard, the turnout overall was only about 5% more than last time, but I wonder if there were particular seats where there was a big jump - where there are lots of young people, or marginal seats?
Here compulsory voting sounds like the next thing to fascism, but yeah, it works in Australia.
no subject
Date: Friday, 7 May 2010 09:25 am (UTC)And hah - just read your post, and yes I can imagine the wailing in Chez Jaycat...
D'you know, I think I really dislike the idea of making voting electronic - everything's so electronic these days that it's almost less real, somehow... If computers broke down, it would be as if nothing existed, even! Much as I love them... *g* Plus it'd be so much harder for ordinary people to be reassured of accuracy - it'd all be down to trusting the tech companies (okay, right now it's down to trusting individual counters, but at least we can understand their answers if we have to question them, rather than being shown a line of code in which we'd have to be fluent to make any sense at all!) That said, I know what you mean - I was almost taken aback myself, when I turned around and was confronted with a pencil on a string! *g*
I suspect the media hyped up the election enough that it made it sound as if more people were interested - they certainly made Clegg sound sexier than people clearly thought he was!
Here compulsory voting sounds like the next thing to fascism, but yeah, it works in Australia.
I wonder why - people seem to sit down and accept so many rights being taken away from them, but accepting one that's being made compulsory, as you say, would probably be tantamount to... well, something Very Bad Indeed! *g*