Did you know this about Ohio?

DID YOU KNOW?

• No one has won the presidency without winning Ohio since John F. Kennedy did it nearly 50 years ago.
• If the Democrats had carried Ohio in the last two presidential elections, they would have won the White House.
• In the past eight years, Ohio has lost more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs and the state's median income has fallen by nearly 10 percent.
• If Ohio were a country, it would have the 25th largest economy in the world, just behind the Netherlands.

 The General Elections in Spain to decide the next President will be held this coming Sunday March 9th. Under what conditions, we can't be sure because in Madrid at the moment we have ongoing strikes - bus, rubbish, cleaners for the underground, state schools (schools are the voting polls), hospitals, nursing homes, and if I've forgotten any important strike which affects us all here, please forgive me.

With the exception of the bus strike, these other strikes in the sanitation field have just started. If the information is accurate, the rubbish collectors should be coming around every 48 hours, but who can say how much of the rubbish that will have accumulated in the streets will be picked up. Although it's a lot colder today than it has been for a week or so, we´ll still have the problem of rotting bags of waste. As for the strike of the workers who clean the underground, this is our second strike this year. The company that had the contract to clean lost it because the strikers were caught on tape pouring  litres of oil  in the halls near the exits, causing several old people to fall. These strikers were subsequently identified and taken to court though I have no idea what their punishment was. Probably a fine. Now we're going to suffer through all this again?

And will these strikes affect the election results? It certainly won't be pleasant casting your vote amidst piles of smelly rubbish. I always laugh when I see someone leaving a bar with a paper serviette trailing off their shoe (unless it's MY shoe). That's because here in bars the customers throw everything on the floor. The last elections for President were affected by some tragic events which happened just before election day. These are events which will be remembered for a long time in Spain like September 11th in the USA - the train bombs of March 11th and the election results were very much affected by these tragic events.Let's just hope that whatever the results of the elections on Sunday are that the worst thing that happens is some politician getting a paper serviette stuck to his/her shoe or even forgetting to take his/her ID like so often happens.