We will be having the local elections in England on Thursday. Not as grand or glitzy an occasion as the recent US Presidential campaign, but still, a small tree worth of leaflets have been shoved through the letterbox. I resent this for several reasons:
1. They make a draft - it's getting a bit nippy here in Northern England now, and the half shoved in leaflet creates a space for gusty winds!
2. The ones fully through the letter box land, unceremoniously on my tiles vestibule floor, the ones half in-half-out allow drissle-rain to blow in, and the ones on the floor stick to the tiles. Creating a vestibule floor which needs cleaning more often than it should! (Really the house is already looking like a squat, it's not needed!)
3. I just don't like the design of the leaflets, all brash and shouty. Campaign leaflets are really the McDonalds of the design world. Nothing aesthetically pleasing about them at all.
4. I read them and get cross - propaganda nonsense in the main, gurning photographs of self-serving people attempting to look friendly and self-less, all promoting policies I usually disagree with!
But today a leaflet flew through from the 'HOPE' party, a party against racism apparently. I agree with this wholeheartedly - the only time I have ever congratulated any of my children for acts of violence was when my eldest son hit a BNP party supporter in the Student Union.
However, I've read the leaflet from 'Hope party' and oh, it did make me cross, initially I reacted with predictable crossness, as any pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-middle-class woman should by creating anger at the statements quoted from the BNP. The standard, 'Phah' and 'Urgh' at the quote from a BNP officer about rape inflamed my feminist principles quite extravagantly!
I am looking at the newspaper link to this quote, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-552692/Sacked-The-BNP-candidate-said-women-like-gongs--need-struck-regularly.html
Yes I find those attitudes repulsive beyond words, just as I find all BNP attitudes repugnant,and yes Nick Eriksen is, in my opinion, a rather feeble excuse for a man. I would seriously wonder how damaging and harmful a childhood the man had to create such major psychological problems. I certainly wouldn't want to have lived his life. However, the Hope party is pro-porting to be against hatred and bigotry, surely it is enough to make a statement that they oppose the BNP's racist, violent and sexist views and then list their own policies? This negative and attacking form of political campaigning seems to me, such an bizarre form of politics. 'We can tell you what we are not, but have no means of telling you what we are.' Do ideologists now simply display their principles based on who they are not? This seems an ungrounded method at best...
...or is the Hope Party, a party for hope over hate, simply parasiting on my fear and bigotry of the unknown, of the unliked and the dreaded BNP? Just as the BNP parasite the fear and suspicion some people fear over the unknown and alien cultures that they seek to remove from our nation?
But now I have read and re-read the leaflet and just wondered, apart from 'Vote Hope Against Racism', what exactly are the policies of this party? I am all for voting against hate, as it requests I do...but what exactly would I be voting for? How will the Hope Party help the very deprived regions of Manchester? What is the policy for economic growth? What will be done to improved crime and homelessness? How will employment be encouraged? How will this party develop my children's schools or the local hospitals?
It theory, a party of 'Hope' may be just the answer for an idealist and politically disaffected individual such as myself, but creating a voting population simply by preying on the fears and hatred of people is what I would be voting against, and so Hope party, I'm sorry, but your hypocrisy has just lost you my vote.
1. They make a draft - it's getting a bit nippy here in Northern England now, and the half shoved in leaflet creates a space for gusty winds!
2. The ones fully through the letter box land, unceremoniously on my tiles vestibule floor, the ones half in-half-out allow drissle-rain to blow in, and the ones on the floor stick to the tiles. Creating a vestibule floor which needs cleaning more often than it should! (Really the house is already looking like a squat, it's not needed!)
3. I just don't like the design of the leaflets, all brash and shouty. Campaign leaflets are really the McDonalds of the design world. Nothing aesthetically pleasing about them at all.
4. I read them and get cross - propaganda nonsense in the main, gurning photographs of self-serving people attempting to look friendly and self-less, all promoting policies I usually disagree with!
But today a leaflet flew through from the 'HOPE' party, a party against racism apparently. I agree with this wholeheartedly - the only time I have ever congratulated any of my children for acts of violence was when my eldest son hit a BNP party supporter in the Student Union.
However, I've read the leaflet from 'Hope party' and oh, it did make me cross, initially I reacted with predictable crossness, as any pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-middle-class woman should by creating anger at the statements quoted from the BNP. The standard, 'Phah' and 'Urgh' at the quote from a BNP officer about rape inflamed my feminist principles quite extravagantly!
I am looking at the newspaper link to this quote, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-552692/Sacked-The-BNP-candidate-said-women-like-gongs--need-struck-regularly.html
Yes I find those attitudes repulsive beyond words, just as I find all BNP attitudes repugnant,and yes Nick Eriksen is, in my opinion, a rather feeble excuse for a man. I would seriously wonder how damaging and harmful a childhood the man had to create such major psychological problems. I certainly wouldn't want to have lived his life. However, the Hope party is pro-porting to be against hatred and bigotry, surely it is enough to make a statement that they oppose the BNP's racist, violent and sexist views and then list their own policies? This negative and attacking form of political campaigning seems to me, such an bizarre form of politics. 'We can tell you what we are not, but have no means of telling you what we are.' Do ideologists now simply display their principles based on who they are not? This seems an ungrounded method at best...
...or is the Hope Party, a party for hope over hate, simply parasiting on my fear and bigotry of the unknown, of the unliked and the dreaded BNP? Just as the BNP parasite the fear and suspicion some people fear over the unknown and alien cultures that they seek to remove from our nation?
But now I have read and re-read the leaflet and just wondered, apart from 'Vote Hope Against Racism', what exactly are the policies of this party? I am all for voting against hate, as it requests I do...but what exactly would I be voting for? How will the Hope Party help the very deprived regions of Manchester? What is the policy for economic growth? What will be done to improved crime and homelessness? How will employment be encouraged? How will this party develop my children's schools or the local hospitals?
It theory, a party of 'Hope' may be just the answer for an idealist and politically disaffected individual such as myself, but creating a voting population simply by preying on the fears and hatred of people is what I would be voting against, and so Hope party, I'm sorry, but your hypocrisy has just lost you my vote.
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