I Didn't Vote ..

.. but fortunately they're not going to fine me*. Even though it's all my own fault.

Apparently I enrolled as an overseas voter in 2007 (for the last federal election), but apparently I forgot that and apparently the AEC website don't tell you that sort of thing when you look up your enrolment details, and so when I eventually got around to sending in my forms to apply for a postal vote, I got an email telling me that they had already sent the forms to the wrong address and that now my only chance left to vote is to go to Geneva and do it there (at the permanent mission or whatever it is). Which I had no intention of doing, not only because about a day or two before I got that email I had been to the mission in Geneva to get some stuff certified to make the No into a tiny Australian and I wasn't about to make that annoying journey again.

Even if they had sent the voting forms to the right address it still would have been extremely annoying. To complete the forms, you have to get another Australian (one who is enrolled to vote, I suppose) to sign your voting forms. I have a grand total of one Australian friend in this country (hello Sarah!) and she is inconveniently located in Zurich. So in many ways, not voting is much more convenient for me, but you can all rest assured that if Tony Abbott is the next PM, I will feel very very guilty.





* There's a federal election on today in Australia, in case you didn't know, and voting is compulsory, in case you didn't know, in the sense that they fine you if you don't vote, but apparently not if you misinform them about your address and thus scupper your chance of voting. And apparently it's not really compulsory if you don't live in Australia, and after you've been away for 5 years or something it might be not so much compulsory to vote as forbidden. Nice (that was sarcastic, by the way. I find it outrageous that they apparently want to deny me my chance to vote in my own country, even if I don't live in it).

Grammar Poll!

Is "caucus" a verb? I would be inclined to say no, but consulting with assorted dictionaries around the place does sadly not back me up 100%. About 2 weeks ago I read a quote from someone in an English newspaper saying "I don't even know who I'm going to caucus for yet" (about the US presidential nominees) and I thought that was odd. Then yesterday I read in another paper (Australian) a similar use of the word and I still thought it was odd.

Whaddayathink? Have you ever used it as a verb? Or would you?

Today In The News

Switzerland-wise, there is the exciting news that Christoph Blocher is gone from the federal council, and has been replaced by Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf* (or rather will be replaced at the beginning next year, when it all takes effect, apparently).

The federal council is a group of 7 people, representing the 4 main political parties here, and each councillor is sort of like a minister in Australian politics, I suppose, but they do more than just that (read about it here instead. I don't really know what I am talking about) and they take it in turns to be the president (or whatever it's called) for a year each. Normally federal councillors are re-elected forever and ever (until they retire or die**) but during these elections Blocher was beaten by another candidate from his party when a bunch of centre and lefty types banded together to get him out. Blocher, as you might have gathered, is a bit on the hardcore-right side and is unpopular with many people, and is widely associated with the whole black sheep thing earlier in the year.

Widmer-Schlumpf won the election thing yesterday, and then she took until 8am this morning to decide whether she would accept the position or not (time she no doubt spent being harrassed by various factions within her party. Frankly given the fact that being a federal councillor is the pinnacle of Swiss political achievement and practically guaranteed for as long as you care to do it - as long as you aren't too controversial or too much of a trouble-maker - she would have presumably needed some pretty impressive persuasion to decline). She did accept the role, and consequently the SVP announced that they do not recognise Widmer-Schlumpf and the other SVP person in the federal council as representatives of them (ie. sort of kicked them out of the party), which means that the SVP, the party that got most of the vote at the last election***, is essentially unrepresented in the federal council, and so there is bound to be all sorts of infighting and disagreement and probable splitting (?) of various SVP factions.

In other shiny and exciting news, Marcus Einfeld, former Australian Federal court judge, will be off to trial next year for allegedly perjuring himself and perverting the course of justice when he submitted sworn statements saying that it was, among other people, a woman who was dead at the time, and not he himself, who was driving his car when it got a speeding tickets or ran red lights at various points over the last few years. Ha, I say. And I also say, what's the point in saying it was other people? Yes, you can avoid the fines (a few hundred bucks?) and you can avoid losing the points on your license (it only happened 4 times. Had he lost lots of other points? Was the car going really fast? I don't really remember anything about how many points you have on your license or how quickly you can get them back but it strikes me as reasonably unlikely that he would have lost his license for long, if at all. And what would have been so bad about forcing other people to drive him around for a while? Or taking taxis?), but now maybe he will go to jail for 14 years****. Hah.


* Apparently Schlumpf is the word for "smurf" in german, and, as you would imagine, leads to everyone making boring and predictable jokes about her.
** Wikipedia tells me that 4 federal councillors have been voted out, Blocher now, another dude in 2003 (when Blocher took his place) and two men in the 1800s, so this really is comparable to John Howard and his Bennelong debacle.
*** By which I mean a bigger percentage of the vote than any other party, not an actual majority of the vote. And let's not forget that the proportion of people who actually bother to vote is only half-ish.
**** I believe this is the maximum sentence for everything he is being charged with.

Votin'

.. and of course, although I'm sure you're all already aware of it (and incidentally I even read about it in Heute (my favourite of those free public transport-affiliated newspapers) yesterday, and they even managed to get John Howard's name mostly right this time!) today is votin' day in Australia. And because we are so behind the times here (even with our crappy, crappy, crappy new bed I still didn't manage to get up early) it seems that it's practically all over bar the shouting, that John Harvard is out and that a brave new world of being kinda lefty has emerged. The only thing left to see is whether John Howard (aka Harvard) has lost his seat, and for those of you who don't understand the implications of that, it would be remarkable indeed.

Oh, and happy 200th post, me.

Smoky Cats

We went and saw The Cat Empire in Zurich last night, which was good but not as great as I was hoping (sadly. That's what comes of getting your hopes up, though, I suppose). Last time I saw them was at a festival, I think*, and the stage was huge and the crowd was all pretty mellow and there was plenty of space and they did all this ridiculous dancing in a line thing on stage and I had no expectations at all (which were wildly exceeded, if that is possible). This time it was in a very crowded venue, and we had to queue for about 800 years to check all our assorted winter woolies into the cloakroom (it has been completely freezing here for the last few days. Although not as freezing as where Reto's brother lives, which is expecting an overnight temperature of -19C tonight, apparently. -19!), and as a consequence of all the excessive queueing we actually missed the first song (Hello Hello!). As it turned out that was pretty much the only song that they actually played "straight", ie. without endless amounts of instrumental stuff that isn't on the CD version of the songs. I'm all for movies being not exactly the same as the books on which they are based, and I am all for musicians having the chance to do their thing and not be limited to what everybody already knows and loves, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I enjoy it. And frankly, judging by the reaction of the crowd (which went from hysterically happy and leapy-aroundy to being like a bunch of people standing in a room) I don't think I am the only one that feels that way. Although I did enjoy the bit where the trumpet dude turned into a human didgeridoo, interspersed with some relatively high-pitched chirping, which was kind of excellent and kind of odd. All in all, though, it sort of reminded me of people who enjoy driving around roundabouts and not leaving them until all the other people in the car become annoyed and potentially abusive. It's kinda fun if you are in on the joke, kind of annoying if you aren't.

The zombie wave, which caused so much confusion at the Crowded House Concert, was a bit of a non-event at this concert, mainly, I think, because it only really happened in the gap before the encore (ie. when the band weren't on stage), and it kind of fizzled out before it reached its typical climax. Personally I was only too pleased to see the end of it, because the zombie waver just behind me seemed to be relatively short, and so his little outstretched zombie arms kept touching the top of my head, which was a bit unnerving, in the manner of being outdoors and having bugs land on your head. Actually (and happily only in retrospect), it reminds me of when I was attacked repeatedly by a bird while at a nursery (plant shop) last year. That was kind of terrifying, and it was really only me that the bird was swooping at.

By far the worst aspect of the concert (apart from the fact that everyone seemed to be really tall! I can't remember ever being at a concert where I had such a bad view, and we weren't even that far from the front, because it really isn't such a big venue. Probably smaller even than the Metro in Sydney, if you want a reference point. And it was a terrible change from the Rüeblimärt the other week, where absolutely everyone was teeny tiny. If I had lost Reto in that crowd I would have spotted him again in a second, but at The Cat Empire I would have had no chance) was the fact that it was so very, very smoky. Because I lead such a sad, shut-in, impoverished type lifestyle here I rarely go to pubs, and even though you are allowed to smoke in cafes etc here, there are rarely so many people smoking (and generally in the smoking section, which isn't actually separated by anything other than half a room, but it's better than nothing, I suppose) that it makes much of a difference to me. Last night, though? My god. By the time I got home I was feeling nauseous, and (strangely enough, since I only had a glass) as though I had drunk about 8 bottles of wine, all of which I blame on the smoke. Grr.

Anyway, it was a good night out and I'm glad I went, but the super-crowdedness of the place (we were really wedged in), and the super-smokiness, and the super-instrumentaliness of it all made it less shiny than it could have been. Which is really too bad, because The Cat Empire really are super.

And in other news, you'll all be pleased to know that I have now fulfilled my electoral responsibilities, filled in my voting form (in a cafe, while drinking a glass of wine, hee hee. Which is actually quite hard to do with the combination of the vastly huge senate form and a very small table), got an appropriate witness to witness it (thankyou Sarah) and posted it off.



* Is this right, Steph? Did we see them at the Blues Fest? Now that I think about it, I have no recollection of it at all.

Electoral Entertainment

In spite of my total lack of faith in the Australian Electoral Commision (based on their previous inability to send voting forms to me when I applied for a postal vote, and a vague paranoid idea of a conspiracy to stop people overseas from voting), I've just got my voting forms! Yay!

Votin'

It's votin' day in Switzerland today. Everyone gets their votin' forms posted to them, and you can just post them back (which Reto did a few weeks ago), or apparently you can take them off to a polling booth today and bung them in the votin' box. Which seems like a strange option to take, but apparently people do. Or they just don't vote at all, because it's not compulsory here (except in Schaffhausen, apparently, which is weird).

In other electoral news, I seem to have successfully applied for a postal vote in the upcoming Australian election, but frankly I am not holding my breath for the forms to arrive. Last time I applied for a postal vote I was in the USA and my voting forms were sent to my home address in Australia. Which was not very handy.


UPDATE: Oh Switzerland. It seems the "black sheep" thing hit a bit of a chord. In general it seems that the right wing vote is kinda up and the lefty vote is kinda down.

On The Hustings

All the electioneering that is going on in Switz at the moment is kind of interesting. The blurbs we get in the mail are reliably entertaining (usually as a result of the funny photos of politicians trying to prove what normal people they are by being photographed with their binoculars (because they are such birdwatching fans, or because they are peeping toms?) or while cooking vast quantities of hearty Swiss fare (because they want to nourish the nation, or because they want us all to die of roesti-induced heart attacks?). Sometimes because of the rage-inducing racism, apparently, but we haven't got any of those here. Yet). People are enthusiastically embracing the poster vandalism, which I will probably bring you some photographic evidence of one day.

Now I hear that a website has been set up so that foreigners living here can (unofficially) vote in the elections too. Which I think is a great idea. Come on, everyone! Cast your pretend vote!