Voting, skate-park, and some other bits.

Well I was tempted to do a small piece for our American friends on 'Hey look this is how you count ballots' I'm glad I didn't.

The electronic counting machines brought into Warwickshire failed as they were "too sensitive". So why machines anyway instead of people? Well they're modern, quicker, less error-prone? Seems like they were trying to fix a problem that wasn't there, we've been hand-counting ballots for, well, bloody ages. Sure with complicated votes it might take <gasp> a whole day or even two to get the results, but are we really in that much of a hurry to discover the new make-up of the local council/district council/Parliament? I think the only ones who who do are the candidates themselves.

Then we get Scotland and the SNP who are so big on 'independence'. Fine give it to them; remove Scottish MPs from Parliament, give them their own mandate to create laws etc. oh and stop subsidising them and put the money back into England (and Wales). With the news of perhaps 100,000 spoiled votes being cast in Scotland, due to the complications of holding two elections at the same time (a factor that didn't seem to affect the English or Welsh) I believe they thoroughly deserve to enjoy the collapse of the country that their independence would cause.

The only upside is in the recounts which occurred with little fuss and in some cases have still managed to produce results before some areas 'primary' counts.


So after voting I managed to take a wander down to the skate-park just to see if it'll be ready for the Bank Holiday Weekend that starts tomorrow, and I must say I'm impressed by the level of work that's been done since last time I took pictures on the 22nd April.

Time to play 'Spot the difference' or 'What work has been done'



That's the 22nd April for the first one and the 3rd May for the other two. Can you spot the differences?

Yep that's right the coke bottle in the big pile of dirt bottom left has gone from half-empty to empty, the bag has blown onto the first small concrete square, and we've acquired a new fence panel on the ground.

If that's not enough there's more. Here's a clue



Can't get it? Here's a big clue



Yep they've put up warning signs, oh they've also closed the fence (next to the downed panel) hey didn't I point both of those failures out on the WFA looks like I did; well what a coincidence.

Now as Fran has stated that the work will be complete by Half-Term (that's the 28th) and as I doubt/hope they won't try and do any work over this Holiday Weekend that leaves them with... 3 weeks to get everything done. Now if they'd started just after the last Bank Holiday Weekend on 9th April they'd have had um... 4 weeks before this upcoming one. Anyone care to comment?

[Update - Oops apparently Half-term is the next week, so they've an extra week to work, but could mean that it'll still be a construction site come the Spring Bank holiday on the 28th - joy.]

I've also taken some pictures of the bridge paint job, plus some other pretty pictures they'll be uploaded to my Flickr account during the day as and when I get around to it.

[Update - which was a lot sooner then I expected, they're all up now.]