Election Day

[shewhomust]

We have voted: that is, we have spread out our postal votes over the kitchen table, and puzzled out who to vote for, and what goes in which envelope, and then we walked down to the Spiritualist church which is our polling station, and handed them in. On the way back up the hill I paused to take a picture of someone's front garden:

I wanted to take a picture of the bluebells, but the dandelion insisted on jumping into the limelight.

One reason for this complicated approach - if you have a postal vote, why not post it? - is that the County Council has had problems with their printer, and the postal votes were sent out very late (ours arrived exactly a week ago, last Thursday, and that's a week that includes a bank holiday).

We were voting for two County Councillors, eight Parish Councillors and a Police and Crime Commissioner. In addition, we had a referendum on the Neighbourhood Plan: this is completely separate, and has its own set of envelopes. It has suffered particularly badly from the Council's printing problems, with a number of people not receiving the ballot paper: will they have to rerun the referendum? I'm reasonably confident that the plan will be approved, but it has been delayed quite long enough already.

For the record, in the County Council election I voted for the sole Green candidate, and one of my existing LibDem councillors (take this as a personal vote for a good councillor, and a vote against the existing County Council, rather than a statement of party preference); for the parish I used only two of my eight votes, voting for the sole Green candidate (not the same pwerson as for the county) and for durham_rambler; for the PCC I was tempted to spoil my ballot paper, as I think it's an entirely pointless election, but eventually voted for the only candidate who endorsed their predecessors support for decriminalisation of soft drugs (the LibDem, sigh).

It was a beautiful sunny morning when I opened the door this morning to bring in the milk and the recycling box; it is beautiful and sunny now. But while we were out, the sky was low and grey, and the cold breeze hardened into an icy shower.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Just the police commissioner here and we went along to vote in person.

[shewhomust]

We have had postal votes since we both worked in Newcastle: sometimes it came to a choice between voting or going to an evening event in town. When we retired, we considered going back to voting in person. But then the Brexit referendum fell at midsummer...

[klwilliams]

I read about the number of campaigns/issues piling up in the UK. Over here, the GOP is doing their damnedest to make sure only conservative white people can vote.

[shewhomust]

Yes, I've been reading about that!

[anef]

We thought about postal voting, but didn't get round to it. Also our polling station is only a couple of streets away, so it's no huge deal to get out and vote (quite unlike when I was working in London when it was a big effort to vote around my daily commute).

I voted Green where I could and Lib Dem/Labour when I couldn't. And, we now have two Greens on the City Council (as opposed to none) and the Tories are no longer in overall control of the County Council. So here at least we are feeling a bit cheerful. The Mayor and PCC haven't yet been declared (but were and will probably continue to be Tory, alas).

[shewhomust]

Yes, we noticed the news about your County Council - and were grateful for a crumb of good news amid the gloom! Durham are still counting: one Green elected so far. Lots of Independents, which could mean anything (in the old days, it usually meant Conservatives, but these days they stand as Conservatives)...

[cellio]

Dandelions are such divas! Do me, do meeeee, they say!

I mean, it's a lovely dandelion, but the bluebells look lovely too. Dandelions need to learn to share. :-)

[shewhomust]

Dandelions need to learn to share. :-)

When your name means 'lion's tooth', who's going to make you share?