In this week’s edition

IBlaming the council for things is pretty much a national pas time

must confess my voting papers have been sitting unopened on the kitchen benchtop for a couple of weeks now. They were in a soggy state when I delicately extricated them from the letterbox. The ink was running a bit on the envelope, but they did arrive, and that’s the main thing.

About half the people who are going to vote have voted by now, and the rest of us are still waiting for that all-important sign from God, before committing the ultimate act of democracy.

Blaming the council for things is pretty much a national pas time, so it can be a bit unsettling for some, being confronted with a choice of who you want making the big decisions and the little ones.

I haven’t been completely inactive when it comes to my democratic duty and lately have been casting a critical eye over things of a civic nature at every corner — literally.

The guy in the little road sweeping machine in town even got some eye contact on Wednesday and responded with a cheery wave. Thumbs up to that fella, he’s got my vote.

Even the gutters outside my own house have been flowing suspiciously well lately and I know this because I convinced my wife to head out for a walk one evening this week, even though it was still raining, based entirely on my prowess at interpreting weather data. As an avid user of the MetService rain radar, usually I can predict exactly when the clouds are going to open up and when they are going to close again, however, on this occasion the wind changed from north to south, pretty much as we set off.

By the time two dripping figures had returned from a circuitous route, the water had made it into every nook and cranny, the gutters were flowing like rivers and pouring into the culverts with all the enthusiasm of the Huka Falls.

I’m easily impressed by things like functioning gutters, but other voters no doubt have their own set of standards so far be it from me to tell you what’s important.

My general rule of thumb is that you don’t have to vote for people you know nothing about but, if you have a few people you know and like and agree with, then you should definitely take the time to put your vote to paper and stick it in the appropriate place.

Then we can all get back to our lives, safe in the knowledge that someone is keeping an eye on the place.