General Election

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 It was Election Day yesterday. The preliminary results are now in, and they are disappointing. There is no clear winner, so the right wing coalition of the last three years may continue. In my view, both major parties lost. Labour because they won fewer seats in parliament than National, and National because their proportion of the overall vote was 9% lower than at the last election three years ago. The winners are NZ First and ACT, the two more right-wing minority parties that have been in the government coalition. This is not good news in my view, as they have foisted divisive and uncaring policies on the National led coalition, and may have more leverage to continue doing so with the result as it stands. However, 400,000 special votes have yet to be counted, and with the outcome resting on such small margins, things may change. We will get the final official results on November 27th.


For those of you reading this outside New Zealand, Special Votes are those cast by people outside of their own electorate. Most of them come from people living overseas. The populous here have the facility to walk into any polling place anywhere in the country and cast their vote using a ballot paper for their own electorate. Today (Sunday) the Special Votes ballot boxes are opened in each electorate office and sorted. During the coming week couriers will collect and deliver all these voting papers to their home electorate for counting. At the same time, all the ballot papers cast during Advance Voting and yesterday will be counted again, and the official result determined. We now have to wait until the 27th to see if anything is going to change and who will actually form a government.


In other news, the country is currently in the grip of the British and Irish Film Festival. It has even made it to our lovely wee cinema here in Whanganui so we are partaking. I have been to see Hill, a documentary about Damon Hill winning the F1 Drivers Championship in 1996, which was very interesting. On Tuesday we throughly enjoyed Mother’s Pride, a gentle and predictable comedy about the underdog. We followed this with dinner at the Rutland Arms, both enjoying our steaks. We quizzed on Wednesday coming 7th with 90 points. The Community Kai at the Te Ao Hou Marae on Thursday was quite quiet and enjoyable.


At home I have spent a couple of days giving the outside of our home it’s six-monthly wash. A number of my joints and muscles didn’t appreciate this but they are recovering. On Friday I made chicken, pork, bacon and cranberry hot water crust pies. We consumed a couple of them tonight.


Another major event, which the Election didn’t disrupt, was the Parish Fair. Nicky spent Friday helping with the setup in the morning, and baking in the afternoon. She managed a visit to the museum in-between for the Garment of the Month - a posh going away outfit. Possibly ironic, but the honeymoon was camping. The fair was on Saturday and the heavy rain reduced the numbers, so takings are down on last year. Nicky served on the book and toy stall and came home with a selection of plants:


Valda is in town at the moment and came round for dinner tonight, along with Erica, a friend, fellow parishioner and Whanganui resident. We had a really good catch up and put the world to rights in terms of how the country should be run. If only us oldies were in parliament…


Take care, Rick and Nicky.

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