IN Britain, our leaders are so desperate to encourage us to exercise our democratic right that they are offering polling booths in supermarkets so that we don't have to break our routine to vote. They are offering us postal votes so we only have to walk to the post box to vote. They are offering us e-votes so we don't even have to leave our house to vote.

It'll make a little difference. The turnout for May's local elections will still be no higher than 35 per cent.

In Zimbabwe, the leader has been so desperate to dissuade people from exercising their democratic right that he's had them attacked, beaten up and murdered. But still they return to the polling booths, the blazing sun on their heads, their babies strapped to their backs and only hunger in their stomachs. Some have queued night and day for 72 hours - the sort of thing we Brits only do if there's a half-price sofa on offer.

Perhaps we in Britain have forgotten the democratic drive felt by the Zimbabweans; or perhaps the double digit explosions in council tax is our Government's clever and subtle way of driving us to the polling booths.

OCCASIONALLY, there are sentences in football match reports that you know are the work of genius. This appeared in last week's Local Heroes section of The Northern Echo: "Barnard Castle Glaxo lost 5-3 to Houghton Cricket Club. They were lacking the services of one of their star players, Corky Waistell, who had gone to Sunderland to take delivery of a new Vauxhall Vectra."

The author of the report from the Sunderland Catholic Club Over 40s League was none other than Kip Watson, the Local Hero 2001. Kip assures us that Corky is a real person - Corky being short for Corbett. "He's a good goalkeeper but he says his legs have gone and he can't dive any more so he plays out," says Kip.

"I was speaking to him last night and I said to him 'how's the car going, Corky?', and he said 'marvellous'." Which is good news indeed.

YOU can tell when spring is in the air because the roadworks season begins. These men, their road-stripping contraptions and their temporary lights - which always stick on red - have been hibernating all winter in the council depot, but the first warmth in the sun's rays has woken them into a tarmac-spreading frenzy.

It's impossible to get into Northallerton from the north; it's impossible to get into Darlington from any direction; it's impossible to reach Middlesbrough without battling against cones; it's impossible to get in - or through - tiny Hurworth.

But, just as last weekend's snows quickly faded, the spring season on the roads will evaporate when April 6 and the new municipal financial year kicks in.

IN Alsace, France, a "pay-as-you-throw" system of rubbish disposal is being tried. Residents' bins are fitted with a microchip which activates a computer in the dustcart which measures the weight of rubbish of each household. Residents are then billed at 6p a kilo. The idea of the scheme is to encourage recycling.

Which is very laudable. However, Alsatians have simply been nipping out in the dead of night and dumping their rubbish in their least favourite neighbour's bin - leaving them-next-door to pick up the bill.