I’m in the process of reconsidering my election campaign in the light of the leaflets that have been coming through our door. I think I’ve been making a mistake. So far, I’ve been telling people what my policies are, but it seems that is not normal practice. What appears to be the acceptable method of campaigning is to use meaningless platitudes which sound all well and good until you start to scratch beneath the surface and realise they don’t actually tell you anything. ‘I will give my support to the local hospital’, ‘we support education’. I’m now going to try a few of my own to see how they work on you:
‘We are a party that supports freedom.’ Of course you might want to ask me for some specifics such as how this affects those imprisoned for serious crimes.
‘We are in favour of renewable energy.’ Your turn – ask me what I’m actually going to do about it and what sort of renewable energy I favour. You could ask me a bit about whether I’ve considered the environmental impact of it too.
‘We will provide and additional £2bn of funding for the NHS.’ – it’s getting good now – you need to ask me where I’m going to get the money from. Am I going to increase the amount of tax you pay or cut funding to, for example, education. Money doesn’t grow on trees, at least not the ones I’ve been peeing against recently.
You get the general idea. It strikes me that politicians treat the electorate as though they’re stupid and rely on them not bothering to look beyond the niceties to what is underneath. I guess they’d get a big of a shock if we all started voting for honesty. ‘Much as we’d like to give more money to education, it is wasted on most children so we’ll weed out the time wasters and focus on the ones that want to learn.’ ‘We can’t afford to spend more and more in the NHS so anyone whose lifestyle has contributed to their condition will be refused treatment. That includes being a smoker, being overweight, being pregnant, injuring yourself playing sport, accidents while doing DIY, illness caused through excessive alcohol or other forms of merriment and any illness caught by being too sociable such as the common cold.’ Do you think it will catch on?
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