Thanks to the help and imagination of Chris & Sean I have my office how I like it, covered with stickers and licence plates from my trips and other things which are part of who I am.
Vote Local
David Mackintosh Conservative Party
Julie Hawkins Green Party
Kevin McKeever Labour Party
Sadik Chaudhury Liberal Democrats
Rose Gibbins UK I
I know it is tempting to think of the May elections as a choice between David Cameron and Ed Milliband, some may feel they’d be voting for Clegg or Firage too, who know, it doesn’t much matter because, none of those will be representing Northampton or, I suppose, giving a moments thought to the place after the election.
One of the people above will be our the one representing us for the next 5 years.
It is tempting to vote for the ones who always get voted for, if you’re true blue then it doesn’t much matter what you know about David Mackintosh, you’ll vote for him any way, same goes for the other parties.
Now, I only know of David Mackintosh and what he has done with Northampton Council and I am not happy at all. We’ve all see huge cuts in services, road lights off, fewer rubbish collections, terrible roads and all under his leadership whilst, at the same time, we’ve seen these huge cost window dressing properties which do nothing to enhance the town. Under his leadership we’ve seen a bus station which wasn’t fit for purpose built at a great cost along with a totally over the top railway station allegedly to encourage people into the two … how does that work? I mean, I’ve never once considered the state of a station when I considered going somewhere, I am far more interested in the quality of service, the cost of the service and the geography, how easy is it to get from where the train stops to where I am going. None of those issues were solved. We have the second huge cost attempt to get the roundabout by the gas works sorted, huge traffic problems for months and no assurance that the traffic flow will be improved this time any more than last time they did this. The new multi-million pound council offices, we sure don’t need those at this time. The parking situation at the hospital has still not improved.
In short, David Mackintosh has done precious little for this town except get himself in the limelight, he certainly likes the camera. His predecessor, long may he remain out of politics was near useless. I have personal experience of the man and I have colleagues who also share the experience that he didn’t even respond to situations he personally didn’t agree with. He, along with David Mackintosh, is a well off Conservative who wanted and want this town to be all jolly nice for their wealthy pals yet have little interest for the tax payers who pay for everything here.
So, the only thing I know for a fact is, I am not giving my vote to Mackintosh, he’s already got a job anyway and I don’t approve of MP’s being anything other than MP’s.
I still have not done research on the other candidates so I cannot say with any certainty which I will give my vote to. Of course, there is tactical voting, if I know I don’t want a Tory, the only option is to vote Labour on the basis that anything is better than Conservative!
Wrote a new website
I know right, just rattling these things off in an evening!
To be perfectly honest, I am not 100% satisfied with it yet but … not bad considering I’d never used the software until I wrote this blog!
That’s the link should you wish to take a look. Like I said, a few rough edges and I might play with it more over the next few days
Normal running back and forth today. Cough/cold feeling better today, apparently I’ve sent it to the Philippines as Randy has it now, not nice! Plenty of cold showers for him I think.
Oops!
I thought I’d do some tweaking with the blog earlier, thankfully I also had an inclination to back up the entire server space. My tweaking totally screwed things up and my blog looked like it was written in notepad!
The back-up file did the trick though and everything should now hopefully be restored!
Meanwhile … earlier on, at a brief loose end I found myself in M&S at Sixfields. I didn’t even know they had a café but they do so, fancying a slice of bakewell and a flat white I wandered over. The general conversation was as ‘one’ might expect. The ladies before me had ordered some Earl Grey and some Green Tea and spoke like they had horses outside, the ladies behind me were similar, beige coat, fur hat sort of thing and a handbag, his wife was dressed similar 😉
I found myself automatically dropping in to posh speak when I ordered my bakewell and coffee, quite relaxed and enjoying the moment. The lady serving, lovely woman, somewhere like Sheffield she came from if I had to guess. Well, she had that put on well spoken voice too. She told me the amount but was a little hesitant until she realised I was paying by card.
“Put your thing in the hole” she said
I replied, “I’ve not had an invitation like that for a while”
Oops, it just seemed to slip out (no pun intended). Seemed to be a bit of an ice breaker as the place came to a standstill for a while whilst both staff and customers composed themselves from laughing so much.
It was good to cross the social divide and create some happiness.
By the way, they do ever so good bakewell tarts and flat white.
Additionally meanwhile … The new SD card for the SatNav should arrive in the morning, about time and let’s hope that works AND, my originally ordered pair of glasses should be with me by next Wednesday, they’ve just taken two months and seems high level, beyond branch management are now involved.
In my next blog entry I am hoping to post some pictures of the newly decorated office with all the stickers and licence plates I’ve been building up here.