Where I live we are really lucky to have a talented, determined and really successful Tidy Towns organisation which means we get to enjoy a beautiful, well maintained place that people take huge pride in.
As part of the keep our town tidy the Tidy Towns folk seem to have made an agreement with the political hierarchy that it would be a poster free zone for the General Elections.
You can totally buy into this arrangement in particular when you see other locations that are totally destroyed with a proliferation of posters, inevitably dominated by those candidates and political parties with the biggest budgets!
While many agree with the arrangement in our town, which without a doubt does help to keep the place tidy, I think it’s wrong.
I believe the election candidates should be entitled to allow the electorate to familiarise themselves with them and more importantly it hands a huge advantage to established, well known candidates who people are already familiar with and the very opposite to any less well known new faces.
Maybe a sensible quota of posters that each candidate is allowed in each location, relative to the size of that area is a better way to go with a strict regime about removing them post election.
Clearly posters aren’t the only way a candidate has to communicate to us, and they do have the options of literature through the letter box, social media, and the very best way of all to connect is by knocking on the door and chatting face to face.
While there is a tight election window, do we really want to hand anyone an unfair advantage, in particular to those who have been around the block already?
Greg
Greg Canty Fuzion Blog 