why i really love wikipedia today. worried your letter will go astray? unsure what's the slovak for sweden? ding! brilliant. took me a minute though - lesson learned: wikipedia first, always.
in other news, new mayor for "a city whose energy conquered the world". his name day is october 14. convincing win. awful speech. bleugh. it's nice, though strangely unfulfilling, being somewhere i feel no responsibility for the state of politics.
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My favourite thing about the fiasco was school being closed for polling. Otherwise, I'd rather have like to be somewhere else too.
does that mean you had to go to school on your day off?
No, different area - I went to a different school to vote.
i really don't like the fact that schools are closed for voting. firstly, it's sheer laziness to not find anywhere else to put a polling station. our local one is in the car park of an old people's home, and no ward in the country doesn't have a hall somewhere, a vacant lot or something. in lewisham they could do the whole borough in that policeless police station...
but why not have voting in schools, and have the kids there at the same time? what better way to glamourise democracy than to show the kids it's so important that all these adults come and do it. you never know, kids and adults might start talking about the whole malarky. (i think 'democracy is good' is a fine starting point and that people should come to their disillusionment individually.) it's tenuous, perhaps, but closing schools says 'democracy=holiday', combined with 'mum, our teacher said all the adults were going to the school today to do something called vote, aren't you going?' 'not if i have to drag you down there with me'.
They'd never allow that these days - what if some of those adults were paedophiles?!
I think you have a point, but I think it could equally go the other way - how about a public holiday every time there's an election? This would encourage more people to vote and give everyone the jolly bonus of an extra free day. Anyway, I'm not complaining - I got one anyway.
Weird, they let them go home to their paedophile parents...
Ahem. Public holiday = seaside = wet, sandy ballots
That said, I think voting on Sundays is a very good idea. That can be option one, option two being that everyone votes in schools and has to answer kids' questions about their choices.
I think a national day off is good. And then you can have democracy parties afterwards.
But then I'm a nutcase because I'd lower the voting age to 14 and make it compulsory to vote (none of the above on the ballot sheets), run national media campaigns against tactical voting and introduce proportional representation across all forms of government (even if that would mean even more BNP in government than we already have).
ps I mean none of the above as an option rather than its compulsory to vote none of the above... although in the current climate...
Hi. I have been out of contact with the news for the last few weeks, so the election result - and indeed the election - really snuck up on me. I thought everyone was joking. I mean, THE Boris Johnson? The one on TV? It's like when I got told North Korea had done a nuclear test - scary and incongruent with my previous impression of the world.
NB may be living in London come autumn, so feel entitled to worry.
Hello Lucy! Yes, I find it a bit surreal, and given that he's gone for panic policy-making these past few days, I think so does Boris. I'm just waiting for footage to turn up of him saying "Don't be preposterous, that's like putting me in charge of London!"
So, job in London?
Talking of surreal, compulsory voting with a ballot paper where the single option is None of the above. Inspired way to show those eager fourteen year olds that representative democracy is an empty lie!
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