Long trip to polling station

TURNOUT may not have been high in this year's local elections but nothing was going to stop Ipswich pensioner Jane Allain from voting - even a 6,500 mile trip to the polling station!

Mrs Allain, 72, of Sinclair Drive, Ipswich, went on a trip to Malawi, in Africa, to visit her daughter, Theresa and her two grandchildren, Lucy and Ben.

However, the three week holiday ended in near disaster when Mrs Allain slipped by a swimming pool and broke her left wrist a few days before she was due to fly back to England.

Mrs Allain, who also suffers from problems with her thyroid gland, embarked on the gruelling journey back to Ipswich from Blantyre, Malawi, finally arriving back at Heathrow airport at 6.30am on Thursday, May 3.

However, rather than get in her taxi and travel straight back to her home, she asked her driver to take her to her local polling station so she could vote.

Mrs Allain said she was impelled to go the extra mile and vote before finally returning to her home in Sinclair Drive, because she feels so strongly about the threatened changes taking place to the Ipswich Buses.

She said: “I think it's so important that everybody knows that something has to be done about our transport system.

Where I live there are quite a lot of elderly people and they're worried about the buses going, and there are also a lot of disabled people around here who rely on the buses to get around.”

Mrs Allain said she had made a promise to her local councillor, Philip Smart, that she would vote in last Thursday's local election after his support in a number of campaigns she had been involved in.

Philip Smart, Ipswich Borough Councillor for Bridge Ward, said: “I went round to thank her for making such an effort, she's an inspiration to us all and a good example to people who don't bother to go and vote.”

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