A bit more garden!

[curiouswombat]

It remains hot and dry. Officially the temperature in the shade reached just over 28C - but when I was driving NYK home at 6.15pm the car was registering an outside temperature of 31C. As our usual summer temperature is around 21-22C we are all feeling the heat; remember our houses do not have air-conditioning - it is seen as an environmentally

Comments

[epiphyta]

An article in the Guardian about your upcoming elections caught my attention, as your town was mentioned - it is good to hear that matters are not worse.

[curiouswombat]

There has been a bit of a kerfuffle. The local commissioners election was put off last year because of covid - and then it didn't seem to occur to anyone that if the border was opened before this new date we were bound to have a lot of new cases and a lot of people in isolation who couldn't vote. There are, of course, arrangements for postal voting, but that would have required people to predict at least 2 weeks in advance that they were going to be ill...

Feelings here are mainly a mixture of worry at the figures whilst, at the same time, a determination to just get on with life or there will have been no point in all being vaccinated - most people managing equal amounts of both at the same time. The Chief Minister has said that he doesn't rule out reintroducing some restrictions - but would prefer not to. We are like a small, 85,500 people, experiment at the moment.

[epiphyta]

Oh, bother! While I did like the "facilitation of community engagement" when I worked as an elections judge, situations like this are why I prefer Washington's system of "postal ballots for everyone" (originally proposed by a Republican Secretary of State who recognised that not everyone could take time away from work on Election Day - I know, I was astonished in light of recent goings-on, too).

[curiouswombat]

It really would be sensible - but then there would be an outcry about how easy it would be to complete someone else's and so on...

[epiphyta]

Well, yes, there's potential for that; the issue is raised every year with regard to those living in group homes/assisted living facilities, so much so that there's a section on the state government's webpage about how to facilitate it while preserving the right to a private vote

[curiouswombat]

Yes - we would probably have very little complaints if we were all-postal.

But can you imagine the reaction of all the Trumpist Republicans in the US? Although perhaps they would be so apoplectic that their numbers might seriously reduce :P

[epiphyta]

Hee!