Why Does Everyone Keep Talking About an Early Election? Perth Polling Station Caretaker Has Left the Folding Tables Up ‘Just in Case’
MPs at Westminster are once again chewing over whether there will be an early general election. A Perth church hall has decided not to take any chances.
A polling station, Perth's favourite place for a whispered argument. Photo: Mike Pennington, “The most northerly polling station in Scotland, Haroldswick - geograph.org.uk - 4172843”, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Talk of an early general election is back at Westminster, with MPs and commentators debating whether the government might go to the country sooner than planned.
Nobody knows if it will happen. Perth is not taking any chances.
“I’ve left the tables up,” said the caretaker of a church hall in Perth that is used as a polling station. “The booths are in the cupboard, the pencils are on the string, and the sign that says ‘Polling Station’ is behind the radiator. If somebody phones on Tuesday, I’ll have it ready by Thursday. I’ve done it in a week before. I did it in 2017 with a bad back.”
Perth voters are split on the idea. A Bridge of Earn man said he was “tired of voting” and would like “a year off, like a gap year”. A woman in Letham said she liked elections because “it’s the only time anybody chaps the door and asks how I am, even if they don’t wait for the answer”.
Political experts say that an early election is “possible, but unlikely”. Perth’s caretaker says that is exactly what they said last time, and that the tables are staying up.
The Perthetic has checked, and the pencils on strings are fine. One of them is down to about an inch, but it has seen a lot.
The real story: Early election talk at Westminster (BBC Politics)
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