European Elections
Well, I trotted off to the church hall/polling station to exercise my democratic right and vote.
We certainly had a choice of parties: not only were the usual suspects represented, and a fair smattering of Cloud Cuckoo Land parties, I found that I could also vote for a specifically Cornish party (that says party – not pasty). Our consistuency stretches from Gloucestershire in the north to Cornwall in the south. And rather bizarrely, it also includes Gibraltar. Yes, that’s the one, just to the south of Spain. It’s deceptively close to Land’s End, just board a ship and sail through sea areas Lundy (or Plymouth, depending on which coast you start from) and take a more or less southerly route through Sole, Biscay, FitzRoy and Trafalgar turn East at the bottom of Spain (having ignored France and Portugal) and then you’re on your own for a few miles before you find landfall at Gibraltar. I expect the good citizens of the Rock feel particularly well represented by being lumped in with us. We’re only about 1,000 km away.
I read through all the candidates’ blurb that came through the door. I was interested to note that only one saw fit to mention his foreign language skills (French and German). If I ever find out the results I’ll let you know who my new representative is.
Filed under: Politics on June 4th, 2009
I would have enjoyed voting for a Cornish Pasty.
However, I voted for what seemed the most sensible choice. Given I live in an area where the turn out is likely to be low, and a large proportion of whose who live here will not be eligible to vote anyway, it seemed even more imperative than usual to toddle round the corner to our polling station.
In the paper today it said that turnout in Scotland by 2pm yesterday was around 7% (which included HD and moi). I was really shocked – I mean, I was expecting it to be not much higher than 30-35%, but 7?!!!! Let’s hope there were lots of after-work voters.
Jack [and all others]: do you think the low turnout is due to the current money scandal, general EU malaise, or something else? Just curious me…
Given voting is compulsory here, 7% blows my mind in many ways! Wow. And good to know Kerensa that other countries have their share of Cloud Cuckoo Land parties — great name.
I had a postal vote. But you need a degree to work out how to use it. (Do not remove section C. Put section A in envelope B.. etc etc