Two strikes

And while I try to cope with one bout of travel last week, to be followed by seven weeks of travel starting this week ... there's the Municipal elections tomorrow. And in the lead-up to the big day, I ran across two reasons not to vote in particular directions. Here they are.

A major political party (NCP) has published a series of wordy ads to get you to vote for them. Nothing wrong with that: a party that tries to tell us a little more than "Dynamic Forward-Thinking Candidate!" racks up points, as far as I'm concerned. But then I read one of these ads, and it refers to the terrible flooding of Bombay in July 2005. Makes various claims about the party's efforts after the floods, that sort of thing.

But it speaks of them -- not once but several times -- as the floods of "25/7".

Not even two years later, a party that cannot remember the date the disaster happened -- the 26th of July -- is a party that, far as I'm concerned, has racked up a strike.

Independent candidate has slipped his leaflet under my door. He is one of that curious breed who resent not getting a ticket from a party (Congress, in this case) and stand anyway. Every party has produced its share of such malcontents. So with this dude, whose leaflet tells us that "even after much hard work for elections, party work and builing (sic) of the vote bank and supporting the elected Municipal Councillor, MLA and MP", he was denied a ticket in this ward, "which is a Catholic dominated ward." [emphasis added].

No prizes at all if you happen to guess that the man is himself Catholic.

So this is a dude who implies that in a "Catholic dominated ward", he should have been the chosen one. This is a dude that, far as I'm concerned, has racked up a strike as well.

Any other strikes out there?

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Postscript: Bombay Addict has a marvellous compilation of information about the elections -- the electoral rolls, candidate ratings, etc -- here.

Czech it out!

Sorry, Slovak it out!

Sorry, check it out.