South Shields Polling Stations [of the X] 05.05.05
1. 'Hey Jude ... take a sad song ... and make it better ...'
2. Trinity Walk. Portacabin.
It would appear that while christian church buildings are being used in South Shields as polling stations mosques are not. This may or may not reveal some things about 'inclusiveness' in the town.
3. Portable. Sunderland Road / Hepscott Terrace.
The 'supervizor' appears.
4. Elsewhere blue pencil 'marker' issues are raised locally with the 'supervizor'.
Meanwhile, in between lectures, even more cryptically, George makes a run for it.
5. As promised, the candidate turns up with agent to visit the residents' association. It is mentioned how rare this is these days.
A blue agent apears too, surprizingly, as an added bonus - though as with most of the campaign, the Tory candidate is conspicuous by his absence.
[There is much merit to be found in true 'one nation' Tories - and, although somewhat remote from such places by background and habit, they are, in fact, more in touch with the council estates these days than the arrogant elitists in New Labour, typified by the sitting M.P. Miliband.]
6. A special school is not hard to find because locals use their intelligence and give accurate and honest directions - which is more than New Labour and local education officials did when closing down other 'special' schools in the town.
7. Mysteriously there seem to be 13 additional voters on the register - as reported verbally - in this church polling station.
8. Portacabin beside rubble of a good school demolished by New Labour. Removing traces of the past is, of course, a typical 'Orwellian' way of rewritting history.
9. Soul-less bleak [almost nihilistic] New Labour post-modern 'panopticon'.
10. A pleasant church environment - though there are some complaints about the heating.
11. Portacabin. Portaloo tested [water-pass test passed].
Questions remain as to whether residents nearby have voted in person or have been encouraged to block-vote postally.
12. A good old modernized old school - built up as it should be by care-taking educationalists ... bit by bit ... evolutionary ...
[Not smashed to rubble then hastily prefabricated elsewhere.]
13. 'Rules is rules' she said, or words to that effect, 'so I cannot give you that information'.
Unfortunately she apparently had not been properly instructed in what the rules actually were, so denied information she could have supplied.
14. A homely, mix'n'match, 'can do', friendly, pleasant, sort of place.
15. Rather a stark seeming undecorated environment, but they are efficiently at 'action stations' here, and you know they are doing their jobs well.
16. Children's art work at this school suggests alternative party designations. Guess who are:
The Dolphin Party?
The Dodo Party?
The Rat Party?
The Koala Party?
17. Dynamic wall paintings at this youth centre - but the younger people seem to have been kept out of the place for the day, which, in a round a bout sort of way, actually tells a tale about the 'disengagement' of young people from this election.
18. The decoration of this school is an exceptionally stimulating visual feast inside - and visually impaired people are well-catered for too.
19. It does the job, but away from the polling area people who should know better are spotted not learning much in this teaching centre.
20. An illegally parked car - carrying 'suspect device' New Labour posters -is actually being investigated by police near the 'grassy knoll'.
21. It is assumed, of course, that in accordance with electoral law, the people displaying the New Labour election material on buildings near this church establishment had not been paid to do so.
22. Political fads [to say nothing of 'con tricks' like 'New Labour'] come and go, but pubs and churches tend to outlast them.
23. In an area filled with greater artists' names, there were accusations -that could be neither proven nor disproven - that much lesser artists had lived down to their lowly reputations and had sketching out murky seeming marker tricks with coloured pencils.
24. Another splendidly decorated internally 'visual feast' school environment.
[Were Miliband to educate his child in 'our' town - as he almost certainly will not - there are actually many excellent schools here - the construction of which predated his parachuted arrival here. Unfortunately, he and his New Labour cohort have destroyed a lot of good schools - and the 'panopticon' replacements seem dreadfully out of place to many in 'our' town.]
25. It might only be mis-matching by chance, but there does seem to be New Labour 'stooging' going on in this portable arrangement.
27. Making poverty history is an ongoing task for good faithed people of all faiths.
26. Old community educational acquaintances are not forgotten.
[Statitistics suggest that maths, pastly and presently, is unfortunately not one of the better learned subjects in South Shields educational environments. Written evidence suggests this was Poll Orientation Station 27, and previous 26. Such details do matter, as vote counters and 'weapons of mass destruction' inspectors will attest.]
28. 'Disabled' people's access to this church hall is well-marked, but when tested the access door seemed to be locked.
[Equal Inclusive open access is not equal inclusive open access if you have to ask for the key.]
29. An extra member of staff lightens the work load - but adds to the electoral cost - in the not in fact overflowing methodical polling station.
30. 'Belly of the Beast' to some. 'Poll Tax House' to others. Just another council building to most. Sun is out and atmsophere is in fact very pleasant, surprizingly so to 'sceptics'.
31. Early evening. Sun is out.
Some real voter enthusiasm was found at this school near a park [perhaps because - perhaps for the first time in too long time - some people had taken the trouble to involve people in the surrounding area as 'active citizens' - rather than mere 'lumpen' voters whose indifferent 'support' could be taken for granted].
32. One popular mission group meets another, and although we do not perhaps quite see eye-to-eye we seem to recognize each other as people of essentially good faith.
33. Sea breeze breaths of fresh air flow through this community centre - not quite strong winds of change, perhaps, but potentially indicative of better possibilities to come.
34. Births. Marriages. Deaths. Votes. The bare registry office details scantly account for the complex inter-connecting endlessly varying small-town human realities.
[No New Labour I.D. card scheme could adequately capture those human realities either - and like all New Labour schemes would surely enough be tarnished by 'fakery' one way or another.]
35. A bit on the side at the town hall.
Good work being well done there.
[Mean-times, the main town hall clock - stopped in the morning - was working by this late stage in the day.]
36. Poor Robinson Crusoe lived in miserably unsplendid 'Thatcherite' isolation - there being 'no such thing as society, only individuals' in the Thatcherite world view.
But at this sort of island drop-in place there were sure enough and trustworthy signs of community regeneration going on - almost inspite of New Labour's continuation of the Thatcherite dogma.
37. Jolly sounding chatter - and other more silently noted matters - at this portable.
38. A rather special infants' school, well worth going round-and-about and down-hill and up-hill to search out and visit.
39. An excellent modest small children's play centre on the edge of an estate - almost hidden away, as if deliberately it seemed. [Local reports had it that the centre was scandalously neglected and under-valued by those more interested in more eye-catching costly and grandiose projects].
40. An unexpected beacon of enlightened common sense and dignified civic virtue appears at a portable place.
[Needless to say, this is not a description of a chance meeting with David Miliband.]
41. It looked like a pub, but was in fact fully and properly instituted as an efficient and warmly welcoming polling station.
42. 'You cannot go in there,' she said and threatened to set 'security' on us. But she was out of order to speak to us like that, and - mistakenly or deliberately - she was taking liberties from/with honest citizens, as officials later confirmed.
43. I thought I saw a 'Nicky-5-Live-Campbell-Woz-Here' piece of graffiti on the wall - but Watchdog said it was only a reconstructed studio scam.
These idle seeming radio and tv imaginations put aside, polling at this place was briskly done and efficiently handled.
44 ... [without properly kept records memories of matters of fact become blurred]
45 ... [without properly kept records memories of matters of fact become blarred]
46 ... [without properly kept records memories of matters of fact become Blaired]
47 ... [without properly kept records people like Mr Blair and Mr Miliband can get away with misleading people on matters of fact - including about deadly important matters in fact]
48. Were they jokingly misleading us or seriously mistaken in this 'cave' when they said that electoral rules stipulated that rosettes were not allowed items of dress in polling stations?!
49. Friendly greetings were taken to and from this last visited community centre polling station.
Regrets and apologies were issued indirectly to the half-dozen other polling stations we did not have time to visit ...
[Candidate's and agent's own poor time-management on election day meant we were not able to visit all polling stations as we had hoped to do.]
50. We all make mistakes, and margins of human error are allowed for. So when Nader later announced in his speech to the count that he had visited 50 polling stations that day, he was not telling the exact truth - he actually accidentally misled the voters, having been accidentally mislead himself by a careless counting error made by his agent Philip!
[Footnote that is more than a frivolous footnote:
Mr Miliband never had the decency to acknowledge that he misled the people of South Shields when he told us there was 'overwhelming evidence' that Iraq possessed 'weapons of mass destruction'. There was no such evidence.
The stacked up ballot papers of electoral evidence might record this as a minority view, but in my view he did not deserve the vote of confidence/trust given to him by those voters who re-elected him.]
