Now, the London Evening Standard is not my favourite newspaper by a long way, and I suspect some element of bias in the writing, but this article, a brief interview with Phillip Hammond, the new Transport Secretary, caught my attention and is worth comment.
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Back on politics again I’m afraid.
Another conversation I was having was about political manifestos, pledges, and promises in the run-up to election time.
A good friend of mine, who works for a large financial organisation, and has a degree in law, stated that he didn’t really know how to fix the economy, and so the politicians can talk until they’re blue in the face about what they’re going to do to fix it – it probably won’t influence his vote all that much.
A good point from a person who was far more qualified than any of the other people in the room at the time to talk about finances.
And I agree! I don’t know how to fix the budget. I don’t know how to tackle crime. I don’t know how to manage taxes and public spending. Most of the policies on offer sound good.
So I need politicians to be talking about more than those things. I need bigger, bolder statements about what each party will do.
And I’d quite like them to be about the environment, creating a sustainable future, taxing the rich and giving to the poor, helping other countries out with aid and trade (sticking plasters) and international justice (to fix the root causes).
So, who’s talking about these things then?
Tags: budget, election2010, manifestos, Politics
So the election is upon us and our household and circle of friends are taking it pretty seriously!
One thing that always bothers me is the imbalance of publicity. In the last council elections we had lots of publicity from Labour and the Tories, but there were at least two other candidates that we knew nothing about!
We had a conversation one night this week with a friend who, after the last election, had written to her local LibDem candidate asking why they hadn’t sent any publicity. They replied to say that they just didn’t have either the money to produce it or the manpower to deliver it.
This seems really unfair! And thinking about it I wonder why there isn’t help for candidates to do this. Perhaps part of the election deposit money could be used to independently produce and distribute a leaflet in which each candidate has a page or two with which to let us know who they are and what they stand for?
Is this too simple and obvious a solution? Is it not practical? Has it been tried before?
Of course, with the Internet we can choose to go and find out about parties and candidates easily and for free, but not everyone can do this, and not everyone is inclined too.
What would you do to improve election communications?
Tags: election2010, Politics, publicity
As a Christian I am challenged constantly by the teachings and example of Jesus Christ, and one of the things I see that he did a LOT of was interacting with, and showing compassion for the poor, the needy, the sick, the outcasts of society.
While I, in my personal life, find it really difficult to know how to go about doing this 1, one of the things I do to try to stop me feeling less guilty about not actually doing it is campainging 2.
Tags: campaigning, Politics, poverty
I’m lying in bed trying to fight off a cold – this equates to good blogging time!
Here’s an old draft that I summoned up from over a year ago. I meant to write about this Guardian article because it really resonated with me.
The sub-headline is “We’ll never get to grips with the ‘gangs’ problem unless we start talking to dangerous teenagers – not just about them”, which kinda sums up the article nicely.
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