Election day is fast approaching and the leaflets are stacking up. We’ve had more election leaflets than takeaway menus through the door lately!
I don’t know about anyone else but none of the leaflets are actually helping me decide who to vote for. All the favourite NIMBY issues are covered, lots of helpful comments about who can win, who would ‘get in’ if you wasted your vote, where people live, what terrible deeds the other party has committed, and so on. They do waste a tiny bit of space on their own policies, but practically none on anything as boring as evidence.
To be fair, all the leaflets are a complete waste of paper, but somehow the Lib Dem leaflets always manage to wind me up the most. Perhaps it’s because they really don’t just appear at election time- they annoy me all year long! That and their habit of being ever so slightly economical with the truth. After years of campaigning on protecting green fields the most high profile exposure has been green field gate gate. Shortly afterwards we got a leaflet with three ‘facts’ about the Boorley Green development- perhaps it would have been better to be up-front about the complexities of local planning. A step in the right direction but they seem to be suggesting that it’s a choice between the golf course and all the other countryside that’s helpfully coloured in green. Let’s see how that map looks in 50 years.
Amazingly they’ve moved on from protecting the countryside. (The last leaflet didn’t mention it once!) Unfortunately the new topics are about what the Conservatives are doing, not about what the Lib Dems are promising to do. So negative as well as misleading.
Apparently the county council has been wasting money on new offices. No mention of the Lib Dem’s own office move but it’s the £12,000 price tag for 6 taps that really stands out. It would be nice if they explained how you can spend that much on taps, except that might make them appear even more petty.
And finally, my personal favourite is how the county council is ‘wasting’ money on streaming meetings. Now you could quibble about the exact cost (I expect you get what you pay for to some extent) but it seems to me like they’re actually saying it’s not worth spending money on improving transparency and democracy. Given the track record of the town council, I can understand that. It would have been great to see what happened in Botley recently as well, but that wasn’t available online either. Sadly, democracy costs money. I wonder how much money the by-election is costing. Remind me why we actually need a by-election?
Photo © Richard Jacks
Notes from a small field 
We need the Eastleigh by election because the LibDem MP got caught lying but thats not the first time Eastleigh has been lied to by the LibDems is it. For all the fuss this by election has created with leaflets through doors, canvassers on your door step and my personal pet hate, telephone canvassing there has been a massive boost to trade in Eastleigh and I am sure when local businesses look at next months takings there will be a few saying I wish we could have a by-election every month. I just hope the people of Eastleigh realise just how bad things are getting in this country and vote for the only party that is saying this can’t go on. This is a golden opportunity for the people of Eastleigh to shout out what everyone in the country is shouting out, Enough is Enough and that can only be done with a UKIP vote.
Very happy to have escaped any telephone canvassing here! Only had one (UKIP) canvaser knock on the door but she just handed me a leaflet and ran away- guess our letter box is a bit unfriendly.
Out of interest, do you know if UKIP have a manifesto for the Eastleigh by-election? I’ve been trying to find out if Diane really did promise a binding referendum on local planning and, if so, whether that’s even possible or just another empty politician promise.
It would also be good to get some feedback from UKIP on some of these Euromyths.
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