I was in very skittish mood this morning for
The Collins and Herring 6Music show. We had a lot of fun and pushed things a bit further than usual, but I think it was probably the best one we've done yet. Have a listen, why don't you?
I got home to find that polling cards had arrived for Thursday. A lot of polling cards. There was one for my girlfriend and four for people who live at the same number house to me on a totally different road, but not one for me. As I had approached the house I had seen a similar envelope lying on the pavement.
Although I am aware that a polling card is not necessary for one to vote I also felt somewhat affronted that something so important had been treated with such petty disregard. Were I a more dishonest person I now had the name and addresses of four (or five if I got the one from the street) other people and could presumably go and use this info to vote on their behalf (because I have never been asked anything but my name and address when I have voted before). And presumably it meant that someone, somewhere else had got my polling card and could do the same for me.
As you know I think voting is quite important and it made me quite cross that these non-vital, but still important cards were being delivered or dropped in such a cavalier fashion. And what was I to do with the cards I had? Post them back to the council as requested? If so they would be sitting in the post box until Tuesday (due to the bank holiday) and certainly not be with the right people in time for the election. I would have to deliver them myself, but would be the person who had mine be as kind?
I sent off an email to the council saying they should probably reconsider using whichever company was delivering these cards and set off to post the cards to the correct people.
But at the top of the street I came across a confused and fretful looking elderly gentleman with a wheelie suit case and his hands full of polling card envelopes which he was flicking through and trying to rearrange. He looked flustered and unhappy and massively out of his depth. I know my relations with our elderly citizens has not been so great since I returned from Rome and this man seemed so unhappy that I felt sorry for him, but he clearly was not up to the task he had been given. He looked almost too frail to wheel the suit case and had clearly been dropping and mis-delivering the envelopes, possibly up the whole street.
I handed him the rogue envelopes and he made some excuse about having tried to ring the doorbell to get them back, but was grateful for me returning (unaware that I had inadvertently dobbed him into his employers). I wondered if he had my polling card, but when I asked for it he looked so pained and unhappy that I hoped that he might merely look for it later.
It wasn't his fault that this task was beyond him, but the fault of whoever had employed him, no doubt rather cheaply, to carry out this task. He looked like he was at his wit's ends and I think he might not have been a million miles from just throwing the whole lot in the bin and running away.
I had tweeted about the incident and got some interest from journalists about doing something about it. And I hope they will, because Hammersmith and Fulham Council should be ashamed of themselves. I don't think we should be cutting costs on something so important. At the very least the polling card is a reminder to people that an election is taking place. But I'd like to think that my personal and important documents came to me and no one else. I still don't have my card.
And there were lots of reports of the book being in shops already and it's in stock at Waterstones and Amazon now. In fact by the end of the day it had got to number 102 in the Amazon book chart and number 2 in the comedy chart. These things don't mean too much as one offs, but it'd be great if it could get to the top of the comedy chart and into the top 100.
Make my pathetic dreams come true!.
