All over bar the counting: local elections 2008 round 6½

Well, there ends one of the most lacklustre local election campaigns that I can remember. The blue and red nests have seemingly put all their canvassing efforts put into Parks ward, with the voters in the rest of the town almost been taken for granted.

With it being a couple of years since I last voted at a polling station there were a couple of things that struck me as I cast my vote this morning: the first polling station official didn’t ask me to confirm my name and address when I handed over my poll card; another didn’t bother to stamp the ballot paper with an official mark, just tore it from a pad and handed it over (perhaps they were pre-marked); yet another official sat reading a newspaper and didn’t even bother to look up to see what it was that I was putting into the ballot box. It’s little checks such as these that stop this week’s shaggy dog story being nothing more than a tale of naïve stupidity.