I think the campaign has done me good, whether we win or lose. I've seen all areas of my community, how people live, the issues they are facing. It's reaffirmed to me how incredibly selfish that the wealthier sections of the ward are.
It's reminded me of some of the most basic things that I spend my job fighting over - things like literacy, standard of living, poverty, racism, equality - but often never 'see' it for myself and recently I have.
When I was leafletting today a man came out of his house and said to me "who's the coloured man?" (I realised he meant our candidate) I told him the name. Then he showed me the leaflet I'd put through the door and asked me to show him where the name was on there because he wanted to vote for us. He couldn't read. He wanted to cast his vote but couldn't read to do so.
How do you exercise your democratic rights properly without basic literacy? Here in Wales we have a very pro trade union Government, very pro social justice, investing a lot of money in our basic literacy and numeracy courses and other courses for upskilling workers and we are lucky to have that. Under a tory Government that funding would no doubt be heavily if not completely cut. I do often think that if people think things are bad under Labour they'll get a horrible shock if the Tories make it back in. Ad astra per aspera
How do you exercise your democratic rights properly without basic literacy? Here in Wales we have a very pro trade union Government, very pro social justice, investing a lot of money in our basic literacy and numeracy courses and other courses for upskilling workers and we are lucky to have that. Under a tory Government that funding would no doubt be heavily if not completely cut. I do often think that if people think things are bad under Labour they'll get a horrible shock if the Tories make it back in.
If only we had a labour party in Westminster that understood its obligations so clearly. keep to the Fen Causeway
In Jordan, the parliamentary ballots ALL seem to require that the voters write in the name of the candidate, there are no boxes to check, or at least there weren't in 2003. I was puzzled by this and asked my colleague, "What about people who can't write?" And she looked at me like I'd lost my mind: "Nobody can't write." Which is not actually true (Jordan's overall adult literacy rate is around 90 percent) but probably is fairly close to true in the urban areas and among the younger parts of the population.
I saw this and thought of you:
Face to Face | i love typography, the typography blog
Nadine Chahine is an incredibly talented Lebanese type designer with a very special interest in Arabic typography. She taught Arabic type design as a visiting lecturer at the American University in Dubai and then joined Linotype, Germany, where she is now in charge of Sales Marketing and Arabic-related projects. As of September 2007 she is also a PhD candidate and her topic is legibility studies for the Arabic script.
Even with high literacy, are there not a lot of spoils where ballots are hand written? Ad astra per aspera
I do often think that if people think things are bad under Labour they'll get a horrible shock if the Tories make it back in.
Elections in the UK are lost, not won. They're popularity contests, not policy contests.
I'm not sure how many people have any sense of policy at all. Voting seems to be punitive, which makes it easy to manipulate results with scare stories and resentment journalism.
Oddly enough it's not usually explained that voting for greasy wobble-chinned public school crooks isn't going to do working people any favours.
It doesn't help that both of the main parties are now run by greasy wobble-chinned public school crooks. I'd guess that only confuses people.
