Managed to escape quarantine today for a few minutes on the basis of a medical emergency. Talking to the GP from the car park through an open top window was fun.
I know a lot of people go to the doctor as much as a place to talk as anything else, but I really got the impression the GP was really looking for a patient to talk to. Quite an interesting reversal.
I drove through the town and saw so many naked faces. Wearing a mask is so easy in this country – after wearing one in Spain for a hot summer day I found it simple. One of the problems in Spain was the little gap between the face and the mask really built up the heat – especially from our breath.
I’ve been watching the politics of election in the USA. They always say they are a democratic country, but I am more and more convinced democracy is a myth there. There have been so many examples that show democracy is not at the heart of the electoral process.
I first became aware of some of the problems with reports of Gerrymandering (a term created in the USA). I saw one district that was dumbbell shaped – the middle part was drawn along a main road so had no voters. Three is an interesting report on the 2004 election here. It will be interesting seeing if they have another review this year.
Then there was the hanging chad issue in Florida. Interesting the time it took for a recount of the questioned results – when you live in a country like the UK where manual counting of all the votes in the country take place in a night it makes you wonder why it took weeks to check just a fraction of the votes in the USA.
Now there is the postal vote issue in the current election. But never mind, there are voting drop boxes all over the place. Except now we hear that Republicans are trying to get rid of them in certain states. One state has a single box for over three quarter of a million voters.
So if democracy were to be threatened here what would that look like?