A while since anything was posted here... The Ukraine war is still going, COVID is still with us, we are surrounded by mud and sticky clay after having a major underpinning project started (still got the kitchen floor to be taken up and new stumps, bearers and joists fitted).
Could be worse - living in parts of NSW where it floods a lot...
next Saturday, many people [if they haven't pre-voted] will troop off to their nearest polling place (usually a local primary school with enthusiastic sellers of 'democracy sausages', tea and coffee and cakes/scones/etc). After being offered how-to-vote papers of various hues by candidates volunteers, they will then get their name crossed off the paper hardcopy of the electoral roll, be issued with a small white paper and a very long green paper and make their way to a free cardboard space to peruse and put numbers on the bits of paper. After a quick check to make sure all the boxes are marked correctly, the pieces of paper are folded up and placed into the Ballot Boxes provided (cardboard held together with cable ties!).
They then trundle off to do the saturday shopping or pick up kids or goto the footy..
After 6 pm local time (1800hrs), the big job of counting up the ballots commences...
It seems an odd way to select the people who want to run the country for the next 3 years, but it works well enough for us... [voting is compulsory in Oz]
I never thought that I would see this in my lifetime.. Vladimir Putin is treating the West with contempt with his dream of "Greater Russia" and is relying on weak responses from the EU, NATO and the US /UK. Now the Russians have actively invaded a neighbouring country, Ukraine with an eye to creating a 1500 km. buffer zone between the Russian Federation and the EU/NATO.
A misstep by any major nuclear power or other major entity would start WW3..Then it's Goodnight Vienna..
