Thursday, 27 March 2008

Counting out the folding stuff

No it's not money I'm talking about but campaign leaflets. About 4000 have turned up from the printers today so it was my job to go and collect them from the office, together with canvass stuffers and stakeboard posters ready for distribution to all my delivery teams tomorrow.





I spent most of the morning trying to sort out glitches (that's the polite word!) on the electoral roll so we could have canvass cards printed correctly. At the last District elections whole streets had been put into the wrong ward and I had hoped that all the errors had been corrected. Not so I'm afraid.





And talking of glitches - having sorted out my PC my s*****g printer started to play up today and wouldn't print anything. So a quick trip into Bath to PC World where I bought it and wonder of wonders the chap on the help desk was actually helpful. As an ex personnel manager I'm convinced that most 'help' desks should acually be named 'unhelpful' desks - it more accurately describes the role most of them provide. Anyway all sorted now and its only been 90 minutes lost on unproductive work





The good news today is that I've had three more offers of help for deliveries and canvassing so I'm feeling a lot more comfortable about being able to get round the whole division. And the bad news is................I'm just beginning to realise that my 2 weeks of leave from the Emergency Department in the hospital where I work is shortly coming to an end. Just how I am going to do all this election stuff next week?



But back to campaign matters. Tonight there was an interesting meeting to attend in the next parish which would certainly involve me if elected. A small village school is considering how best to preserve it's future. Federation with other schools is in the air. The village hall was filled to overflowing from locals who not surprisingly feel strongly about the school - which seems to have a very good reputation. A good open discussion followed after speeches from the Chair of Governors, Head Teacher and local MP with everyone seemingly in favour of a novel 'hard' federation across county boundaries.




Now we just have to find out if this can be a workable solution.

1 comment:

Lindsay Jordan said...

Hi Ian,

I got your campaign leaflet - so something's working :-)

However, I was really disappointed that the bar chart of the previous election's results was not drawn to scale. It's been distorted so that the Lib Dem-Conservative race looks closer than it really is, and so it looks like Labour is totally out of the running. This is dishonest, and insults our intelligence.

It's a shame, because I'm generally in agreement with Lib Dem policies. I know it's only a bar chart, but it's typical of the dishonesty and negativity that stops me from voting at all.

People complain about the apathy that causes low attendance at the polls - I don't think it's apathy so much as a general distrust of politicians.

You lot need to earn our trust - and you can start by drawing your bar charts properly.

Lindsay Jordan
Norton-St-Philip