My Election - Part 2 - Election Day
An early start for me - but thankfully I didn’t have to be at Camelon High polling station until 8am as Peter Paterson had agreed to do the first hour due to me going to the count later on! So I didn’t have to get up til 7am instead of 6am! Annoyingly, after the lovely weather we’d had leading up to it, the day was dull and dreary, though at least not raining at this point! I arrived at Camelon High at 8am to take over from Peter. I was actually fairly surprised at how busy the polling station was and it looked optimistic for a decent turnout! Two hours passed very quickly! My dad then cane up to take over so I could go home and freshen up, wash my hair etc. I went back at 12 - around the same time as the heaven’s opened - and that seemed to kill off the voters! It was VERY quiet for most of the afternoon. Fortunately I had my old Labour pal Isabel there to keep me company! I always end up standing with her every election! It’s quite enjoyable as she used to be a cleaner in Camelon High at the same time as I was at school there so we have lots to reminisce about!!! Makes the time pass quicker when you have someone pleasant to stand with!! Only us there tho - not a Tory or a Lib Dem to be seen all day!!!
Throughout the day tho, I had problems with the covering of the three polling stations in Camelon and I was not amused! I had said weeks ago that this needed to be sorted out WELL before election day, in fact I’d even created a draft timetable and sent it to Colin, and offered to arrange the cover myself but he didn’t get back to me! In the end, at around 7.30pm THE NIGHT BEFORE Georgie arrives at my door with our polling/counting cards and says “can I just leave you in charge of cover for the 3 polling stations at Camelon” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Exactly how I was supposed to do anything about it that late in the day I don’t know!!!! In order to be a polling agent (i.e. stand at a polling station) you need to have your names submitted to the Council a week before. You are then issued with a pass that entitles you to be there. There is absolutely NOTHING you can do if you’re short the night before!!! Anyway, I told her we currently had 3 polling stations and only 4 ppl to cover them which was just not going to be enough. She was supposed to be “floating” so I thought that she would be able to cover for a wee while, or if she knew if any of the other stations in Falkirk were oversubscribed then she could point pp in our direction. In the event, no one came near any of the Camelon stations. This meant Peter ended up spending from 8am to 10pm at one with no break at all, I managed to have 2 short food breaks only because my dad was covering for me, and then Elaine announced she wasn’t planning on doing anything after 4pm!!!! This resulted in me having to frantically phone round for cover! In the end Shona’s daughter Catriona and her BF Ross came to the rescue! Shona was spitting fire when she found out the fisasco!!! (Shona is the one that got me involved in the SNP in the first place - she used to be our branch organiser but has since left the branch - funnily enough, because of Georgie!!!!! This would NEVER have happened when she was orgamiser - and that was back in the days when we didn’t have that many people!!!)
Anyway, I digress, back to the polling station! Interestingly, unlike in 2007 where I had become increasingly excited as the day progressed because I could just sense there was something happening, this time I didn’t feel it! In fact, I was quite worried that we might not win the seat at all. The people that were coming in to vote were very much keeping their cards to their chests. Usually you can tell who someone is voting for - a smile, a subtle nod, the way they make eye contact are all dead giveaways - but not this time! Of course you always get the ones that make a big thing of it and are all over whichever party representative it is they are voting for, but in general you learn more from the other, more subtle ones! I wasn’t getting a BAD feeling - but certainly nothing like I’d felt in 2007! I thought Labour had got the old guard out to vote after all!
Flying it for Scotland - our saltire!
It started to pick up again around 5pm as people came in on the way home from their work. The atmosphere also started to change a bit then. I think the core “Labour vote” had come out in the afternoon!!! (take from that what you will!!!!) From 6pm onwards the feeling was a lot more positive! I had another short break at 6.30pm to get some food and then back for the final stint - 8 til 10pm! For the last two hours I was the only party representative there! Labour obviously thought they’d done enough and had buggered off to the Labour Club to have a drink and pat themselves on the back!!! That’ll teach them! They obviously hadn’t learned the lesson of not taking the voters for granted like last time, as from what I heard they had pretty much abandoned ALL the polling stations by 8pm! (although apparently they were seen in my street at around 8pm knocking on doors, offering to run ppl to the polling station according to Angela’s dad - there were no takers!!!) .
Throughout the day tho, I had problems with the covering of the three polling stations in Camelon and I was not amused! I had said weeks ago that this needed to be sorted out WELL before election day, in fact I’d even created a draft timetable and sent it to Colin, and offered to arrange the cover myself but he didn’t get back to me! In the end, at around 7.30pm THE NIGHT BEFORE Georgie arrives at my door with our polling/counting cards and says “can I just leave you in charge of cover for the 3 polling stations at Camelon” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Exactly how I was supposed to do anything about it that late in the day I don’t know!!!! In order to be a polling agent (i.e. stand at a polling station) you need to have your names submitted to the Council a week before. You are then issued with a pass that entitles you to be there. There is absolutely NOTHING you can do if you’re short the night before!!! Anyway, I told her we currently had 3 polling stations and only 4 ppl to cover them which was just not going to be enough. She was supposed to be “floating” so I thought that she would be able to cover for a wee while, or if she knew if any of the other stations in Falkirk were oversubscribed then she could point pp in our direction. In the event, no one came near any of the Camelon stations. This meant Peter ended up spending from 8am to 10pm at one with no break at all, I managed to have 2 short food breaks only because my dad was covering for me, and then Elaine announced she wasn’t planning on doing anything after 4pm!!!! This resulted in me having to frantically phone round for cover! In the end Shona’s daughter Catriona and her BF Ross came to the rescue! Shona was spitting fire when she found out the fisasco!!! (Shona is the one that got me involved in the SNP in the first place - she used to be our branch organiser but has since left the branch - funnily enough, because of Georgie!!!!! This would NEVER have happened when she was orgamiser - and that was back in the days when we didn’t have that many people!!!)
Anyway, I digress, back to the polling station! Interestingly, unlike in 2007 where I had become increasingly excited as the day progressed because I could just sense there was something happening, this time I didn’t feel it! In fact, I was quite worried that we might not win the seat at all. The people that were coming in to vote were very much keeping their cards to their chests. Usually you can tell who someone is voting for - a smile, a subtle nod, the way they make eye contact are all dead giveaways - but not this time! Of course you always get the ones that make a big thing of it and are all over whichever party representative it is they are voting for, but in general you learn more from the other, more subtle ones! I wasn’t getting a BAD feeling - but certainly nothing like I’d felt in 2007! I thought Labour had got the old guard out to vote after all!
Flying it for Scotland - our saltire!
It started to pick up again around 5pm as people came in on the way home from their work. The atmosphere also started to change a bit then. I think the core “Labour vote” had come out in the afternoon!!! (take from that what you will!!!!) From 6pm onwards the feeling was a lot more positive! I had another short break at 6.30pm to get some food and then back for the final stint - 8 til 10pm! For the last two hours I was the only party representative there! Labour obviously thought they’d done enough and had buggered off to the Labour Club to have a drink and pat themselves on the back!!! That’ll teach them! They obviously hadn’t learned the lesson of not taking the voters for granted like last time, as from what I heard they had pretty much abandoned ALL the polling stations by 8pm! (although apparently they were seen in my street at around 8pm knocking on doors, offering to run ppl to the polling station according to Angela’s dad - there were no takers!!!) .