General Election today.  And local council election here as well.  Double the fun.

Today is the first time I've voted 'properly' - the last election (2005) I was deep in final year exam hell at Keele, and had a postal vote.  Weirdly I seem to have a fairly vivid memory of walking from the house to the postbox with it.

But yes.  I've ticked some boxes.  And got odd looks from the polling station people.  Possibly because I was asking them really stupid obvious questions (such as "where's the box?" and "do they both go in the same place?"), possibly because I was wearing my freakshoes.  Maybe both.

Thankfully the election hype will all be over soon (well, until it ends up hung and we have another in a couple of month's time...).  This means no more huge piles of political junk mail to throw in the bin without reading, and more importantly, no more huge obnoxious billboards all over the place.  They were making me very angry - purely because all they were doing is slagging the others off.  This is not productive, and I hate how much they all do it.

It's all very well wanting to tell people that your opponents are rubbish and you disagree with them, but it's also sort of a given.  Make adverts/leaflets/etc about some actual policies, and positive things, and I might pay more attention.

As for staying up and watching results come in... it's a bit tempting.  But my telly has decided it doesn't want to make any noise, and I've had half an hour of bbc news website refreshing - but it's all far too boring and I'm tired. Zzzz.

tags: politics