My colleagues who were recently observing elections in a country which shall be unnamed recently have sent me a note about it. After observing numerous blatant examples of vote-rigging on the day of the vote, they went to the offices of the District Electoral Commission to observe the tabulation of the final results.
“The DEC working room was locked and after several knocks the door was opened slightly, but when the person saw it was us held the door half open and despite me pushing to get in he was pushing back for some time. When I managed to get in the DEC chairman politely asked us to leave the room, since they were tabulating the protocols and did not want others to see the process.
Well, of course, you wouldn’t want observers actually observing, now, would you?
(I repeat my earlier appeals for people interested in dabbling in the practical side of international relations to sign up for election observing missions.)
The one weak link seemed to me Kit Harington as Jon Snow; hopefully he’ll grow into it.
He’s sullen and whiny in the book too. He does eventually get better.
(And I can’t lay my hands on my copy of the book now to see if Eddard promises to tell him about his mother in the original as well; please enlighten me in comments.)
We don’t get their farewell scene in the book. There’s Maester Luwin convincing Ned that Jon should join the Watch, and Ned says he’ll break the news to Jon himself, and then the next scene with Jon is him saying goodbye to Arya and Bran, and then he heads north.