A selection of "junk mail" has passed through our letter box in the past few weeks. It's not the usual endless montains of menus from Pizza Time, but a last ditch attempt to get people to vote for certain parties.We received "handwritten" letters in the post, which banged on and on about all the good work that one party had been doing in the area, but neglected to make it obvious which party they were writing from. I don't know if they were relying on us having a knowledge of the name of the candidates, but it didn't work. We eventually figured out that it was from the Liberal Democrats as indicated in the tiny small print, that alone made me not want to vote for them.
The Lib Dems seemed to have been making the most effort to convince us however as they also sent round a free "news"paper, which basically slagged off their rivals. Again, it wasn't immediately obvious that it was from them, but was presumably intended as a "subtle" attack on Labour and the Conservatives to make us think - we must vote for someone else! The paper was very sensationalist and, in my view, made a spectacle of the whole issue. But I suppose, that's the nature of modern politics.
There are a number of problems with these electioneering tactics. It's a big waste of paper. Luckily here in Cardiff we are fortunate to be provided by the council with recycling opportunities for such wastage. Secondly however, it's sensationalist style really does dumb down the political debate.
But I'm not going to on a big rant about dumbing down because that's been done far too often. Instead I would like to suggest that at least it gets us talking about it, and it may, in at least some cases get people looking at something related to the elections, if only for a brief second.
Well after this local election double-blog bonanza I am all blogged out.
I'm off to wait for Peter Snow and his swingometer (if you were reading yesterday's blog - this is NOT an innuendo - everyone knows I'm hot for Jon Snow.)
Keep media savvy x
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