ElectionLeaflets.org

It’s exciting to find the name-sake of our website thestraightchoice.org, proving all those LibDems were right when they complained about our choice for name of this website, and affirmed that “A Straight Choice” is a perfectly normal saying used in elections.

In this case, nobody in the Conservative Party is insinuating that either Gordon Brown or Ben Jeffreys is anything other than straight.

What they are instead suggesting is that the good people of Cheadle Constituency (whose collection of leaflets so far is here) have a “Straight Choice” between Gordon Brown and Ben Jeffreys.

But Gordon Brown isn’t actually standing in the Cheadle constituency. Instead there is a sitting LibDem MP Mark Hunter with a majority of 3657, as he explains on the corner of his leaflet.

That puts Ben, who has “always wanted to be a Conservative MP”, in a race with LibDem MP who is probably considerably more popular than Gordon Brown. So it’s best not to mention him in the blizzard of leaflets.

We don’t know the hidden negotiations. But a LibDem MP is not part of a Labour majority, so Ben is trying to argue against the desirability of a no-overall-control Parliament with the LibDems in the balance. The LibDems can then choose to form a coalition with the Labour, or with the Conservative block. But they’re not going to tell anyone in advance — and they probably don’t even know themselves, because it depends on which side offers them the best deal.

In political terms, this is known as horse-trading. One of the trades could be that the Labour Party needs to get a new leader. Who knows? The powers that be are concerned enough that they have arranged for an 18 day window, as well as professional mediation, to get the coalition settled.

In any case, what does it mean for the voters? For sure, a junior MP whose vote the Conservative Party can take for granted is going to be less able to bring home the bacon than a member of smallish LibDem Parliamentary block that holds the balance of power and set its price.

If Ben does win, it will take many years for him to work up through the ranks of the party to have anything close to the level of influence of a LibDem MP in a hung parliament — assuming that the Conservative Party remains in power for long enough.

This whole election is frightening game of poker where the players don’t even know what’s on their cards.

It’s going to get fevered in the coming weeks. You mark my words.

The buying up of Google Adwords is fast becoming the new version of, or at least comparable to,  posting election leaflets though peoples doors. This, for example,was the search results page for ‘Vince Cable’ just after the ‘Ask The Chancellor’ debates on Channel 4 this evening:

As you can see the Conservatives are buying up Adwords for the Lib Dem Shadow Chancellor. Nothing wrong with that, but what else is being brought and by by whom? Who’s spending what? Are there any really specific words that parties are buying up that only small numbers of people will ever think to search for but will convey niche messages?

Currently we have no way of knowing, but here’s an idea of how we could monitor it:

1) Write a script that grabs the days hot topic terms from various web pages. These might include:

• headlines or term extraction the press release pages of the main party webpages
• headlines or term extraction from bbc news politics front page
• term extraction from the Wikipedia page about the 2010 election
• names of PPCs from YourNextMP.com
• constituency names form TheyWorkForYou.com
• the YouGov leaderboard

run the script once or twice a day and add any new terms you find into a database table.

2) Write a script to do a google search once or twice a day using all the terms in the database and if there are any adwords on the results page that link to a (major) party website store them in a second database table.

If you fancy having a go at this please get in touch! It can be in any language you like and we can work out how to integrate it into The Straight Choice later.

The Prime Minister-in-waiting’s wife, Samantha Cameron, is officially pregnant, as of 22 March.

The Daily Mail explained:

The couple decided to reveal the news now, aides say, because Mrs Cameron is ’starting to show’.

They also felt that if they waited any longer, they might be accused of deliberately holding back until the election campaign to win votes.

The baby is likely to have been conceived during the Camerons’ Christmas holiday, which they spent at their constituency home in Witney, Oxfordshire.

Meanwhile, in Lancaster at around the same time, David Cameron appeared on the front cover of People Talk magazine cradling a baby.

As this is more than the second child of a two-person reproductive unit, the Daily Mail included the following context to assure readers that the leader-in-waiting was closed-minded about the risks and threats of over-population:

Answering a question on population growth from an audience member at the Woodstock Literary Festival in September, he said: ‘I don’t believe Britain is over-populated. I don’t have any plans to reduce it.

‘I would quite like to add to it, personally, by quite possibly one, at some stage in the future.’

Interestingly, the same exact paragraphs appear in the Guardian article with the by-line “Paul Owen and agencies”:

Answering a question on population growth from an audience member at the Woodstock Literary Festival in September, Cameron said: “I don’t believe Britain is overpopulated. I don’t have any plans to reduce it.

“I would quite like to add to it, personally, by quite possibly one, at some stage in the future.”

As a Green Party supporter who believes my lying eyes that the ecosystem is a finite entity, it drives me nuts that a political leader is able to justify taking a view for its convenience to his personal lifestyle choice.

Even Wilkins Micawber, who always believed that something would turn up, knew that computing the accounts was essential when he said:

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

Are we too full of people? I don’t know. Depends on what kind of surprises the future has in store for us and how robust our economy is when faced with a crisis of physical resources — as opposed a crisis created by out of control pen-pushers.

It looks as though UKIP think we are, according to their leaflet delivered further down the River Ribble from Lancaster.

Somehow I don’t think they mean “Full” in the sense that I mean it, like “This boat is too full it’s going to capsize if there is a big wave”. It’s probably more in the sense of “This country is too full of foreigners, everywhere I look I can see more of them. But there is plenty of room for British people to have more babies.”

Over-population is such a politically messed-up hard question politicians don’t want to talk about it.

Will this question be asked during the election campaign, or we going to be less inquiring than the audience of the Woodstock literary festival?

This is a delightful leaflet from the Labour Party attacking the LibDems in some area of London using a tear-out headline quote from the Daily Mail.

Here, at TheStraightChoice, we do the homework for you.

If you search google for “My admiration for Thatcher” today, it produces the link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1257048/My-admiration-Margaret-Thatcher-Nick-Clegg.html

which actually takes you to the rather more dull:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1257048/Nick-Clegg-outlines-LibDem-terms-election-ends-hung-Parliament.html

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg today set out his four tests that Labour or the Tories will have to satisfy to win his support in the case of a hung Parliament.

The full text of the earlier version (that I presume was printed) begins halfway down that page:

The clearest enunciation yet of how the LibDems will decide who to back came after Mr Clegg declared his admiration for Margaret Thatcher.

In an apparent bid to woo old school Tory voters he said his party’s economic policies were more in tune with Lady Thatcher’s than those of David Cameron.

Mr Clegg told the Spectator Magazine he was now grown up enough to see that Lady Thatcher had been right about many policies.

The New Statesman magazine also wasted our time with a blog post about the story, linking to the Daily Mail retracted-headline non-story as well.

What’s the bloody use of this media?

The actual interview was in a front page article of the magazine on 11 March, with excerpts on the web that contained every single word that was used by the Daily Mail — the cheapskates.

Of course every damn politician in the UK admires Margaret Thatcher. She won three major elections and got stuff that she (and her party) wanted to get done. In the article, Nick Clegg says we should do to the banks what she did to the unions. Does anyone have a problem with that?

Meanwhile we need to only go back to 2007 and the start of the Brown premiership to read:

Brown: I’m a conviction politician like Thatcher

“I think Lady Thatcher saw the need for change,” he told a Downing Street press conference. “Whatever disagreements you have with her about certain policies – there was a large amount of unemployment at the time which perhaps could have been dealt with – we have got to understand that she saw the need for change.” He added: “I also admire the fact that she is a conviction politician… I am a conviction politician like her.”

And here’s the BBC news footage:

That’s the problem with videoed speeches and things on the web — they don’t look so good as a crappy headline from a paper you don’t even like, cut out in a fake zig-zaggy pattern to make it look like it’s been torn out in anger.

Around the world, people have struggled for the right to vote.

But in the UK, all you need to do is register to vote before an election.

To be certain of success for the upcoming elections, you must do something about it before 20 April.

Go to www.aboutmyvote.co.uk for details.

If you are unsure of whether you are registered, contact the Electoral Registration Office in your area and check if they have your name and address correct.

(Electoral administration is a local affair. In Liverpool, the webpage says they have put a copy of the electoral register in the Central Library.)

At least one in five students fail to register to vote, which means their concerns about university places and tuition fees do not count.

The same applies to other groups in society who have notoriously low turn-outs, such as the unemployed. The politicians who are fighting to win elections know who they are (from this register) and know they can safely ignore them in everything they do.

That’s why registering is so important; it tells the people in power who matters.

If you are a non-UK European citizen, you should still register as you have a right to vote in the local elections on the 6 May.

In a break from the tradition of bashing LibDem leaflets (Hey, I just follow the story), I’ve got a nasty case of the Tory’s attacking the sitting Libdem MP in Southport:

CALLS FOR ABUSIVE AIDE’S SACKING IGNORED

John Pugh MP was quick to distance himself from abusive and ageist remarks made against Conservative PPC Cllr Brenda Porter by his top aide, Mr Tony Dawson, in the Champion newspaper. Residents may therefore be very surprised that this assistant is still a trusted member of this MP’s staff.

SUPPORTING RESIDENTS OR INTERNET GAMES?

Birkdale Libdem councillors appear to be more fixated with misleading spin if Cllr Iain Brodie Browne’s website blog is anything to go by. It would be nice to see councillors genuinely serving residential needs rather than playing childish games on the Internet. Birkdale residents deserve to know the truth rahter than time-worn Libdem propaganda. The Libdems do seem to have an unhealthy obsession with Internet chat rooms, which previously resulted in a member of Dr Pugh’s staff being SUED Watch this space!

So two months before an election, the following are the reasons the Southport Conservative party thinks you should vote for a new MP and government:

• Libdem’s John Pugh MP didn’t sack his full-time case worker, Tony Dawson, for publishing an “abusive and ageist remarks” about the Conservative Party’s candidate Councillor Brenda Porter in the local paper.
• Birkdale Libdem Councillor Iain Brodie Browne writes a blog
• A member of Dr Pugh’s staff was sued for his activities in an internet chat room

As the Southport Conservatives very well know, the member of Dr Pugh’s staff who got into trouble on an internet chat room is also Tony Dawson. But since you need three to make a crowd, they wrote it as if it was a different person.

Interestingly, the internet chat room issues were aired on the following Labour Party leaflets in 2005 when Tony Dawson was challenging Phil Woolas for his seat in Oldham.

These leaflets come from Southport Watch, and is another reason why we should have had this TheStraightChoice.org website years ago. We’re here for the long game.

The 2005 election in Oldham was one of the dirtiest in the country, with formal challenges to the validity of Tony Dawson’s nomination papers for allegedly not living at the address, doctored photographs, and complaints made to the Parliamentary expenses committee because Dawson had posted comments onto the internet chat room from computers in John Pugh’s office that had been paid for with Parliamentary expenses. A timeline of press stories is here.

The Internet chat room in question appears to have belonged to a campaign group called Coalition Against Removal of kids Emergency & other Services which has its top item on the left hand side “John Pugh’s Expulsion” in 2003.

I can see why a loyal member of John Pugh’s staff would be irritated with this organization enough to get wound up on their chat room. Unfortunately, the context isn’t available, but a mere couple of selected lines is all you need for Labour leaflets to go on about it in 2005, and for Conservative leaflets to go on about it in 2010.

(This is all disappointingly like the political handling of the emails from Climate research hacking incident, which has severely diminished our species chances of survival — And we thought the internet would make the world a more informed place!)

Now the “abusive and ageist” remarks were in a letter he wrote last year to the local Champion newspaper, the fallout of which appeared in this article.

“To be frank I was furious when I saw the letter in The Champion, even though it had been submitted by Mr Dawson in a personal capacity,” Mr Pugh said.

“Tony is employed as a good and caring caseworker and understandably not to deal with the press. He himself regrets the intemperate, silly and offensive tone of the letter which I do not excuse or condone.”

The remarks were that Councillor Brenda Porter was embarrassing and not “serious and capable”. This might be true, or it might not. I don’t know her age, or her performance on the council. Was it about that? Had she been selected as a candidate yet? All in all, it’s a bit rich to be “distressed” by this when your leaflets are dishing it out, isn’t it?

Which brings us to the final issue.

Cllr Iain Brodie Browne has a childish website blog.

Well, I can’t find this. All I can find is this type of press-release-style posting on the Birkdale Libdems website.

All very worthy.

What I can find here is Brenda Porter’s personal tellbrenda.com website, where she posts:

I am standing for Parliament because I care about my town and my country. I know I will be conscientious, caring and do a good job if elected as the MP for Southport. I am not in the business of sound bites, inaccuracies with information or slagging off the opposition to try and win a vote….not for me.

Quite right too.

Now show it by putting some appropriate material in your next election leaflet please!

In addition to this blog, TheStraightChoice.org has had a twitter account for quite a while.

thesc

Using the power of RSS and some magic hand-waving, Richard has designed:

labour_leaflets

libdem_leaflets

tory_leaflets

Everyone who is anyone can now follow the hard-copy updates from their favourite (or not so favourite) parties.

This ought to widen the appeal of the website, for although journos don’t yet really seem to get the point of TheStraightChoice.org, they certainly have cottoned on to Twitter in a big way, so much so that they often report what’s trending on Twitter as news.

Comments please for what other twitter channels people think we should have.

Personally, I wanted a combined BNP and UKIP account, because it would (a) seriously annoy them, and (b) I can’t see any substantive differences between their policies, now that the BNP is officially no longer racist. (Maybe someone with better eyes than me can spot the differences; they’re both vehement climate change denialists which, to me, over-rides all other considerations.)

Like big beefy best-of-British bullies, UKIP have spent the last few months being obnoxious to various high officials in the EU, and posting videos of their antics on YouTube. It’s embarrassing. They’re being like that horrible child who never wanted to go on the summer picnic in the first place, and whose behaviour is so beastly that he causes the whole family to get sent away. Maybe that’s their game.

Meanwhile, some leaflets.

The candidates list is now available on their website. (YourNextMP.com got there ahead of me.) According to the leaflets.

David Hughes has lived in Bournemouth for 12 years, is retired from business, and is a member of a local church ministry. He thinks we should Ban the Human Rights Act and Build More Prisons, and Stop Giving £60Million A Day to the E.U.. His standard candidate webpage Issue 3 says “Stop paying the EU £45 million every day”.

John Stocker has lived in St Albans for 35 years and comes from a background of the Royal Navy, the offshore oil industry and ran his own group of construction companies. He is particularly against “Green” and climate change policies. His leaflet explains that Britain pays £40 million a day out of our taxes direct to Brussels, while the standard candidate webpage Issue 3 says “Stop paying the EU £45 million every day”.

David Duxbury has lived in South Ribble for 40 years, runs a pet crematorium and is a elected to South Ribble Borough Council. His leaflet explains that Britain pays £40 million a day out of our taxes direct to Brussels, while the standard candidate webpage Issue 3 says “Stop paying the EU £45 million every day”.

Darren Haley has lived for 7 years in the constituency of Selby & Ainsty, and is a senior officer at HMP Leeds. He promises to give a minimum of 50 hours per week on average if elected. He avoids mentioning an inconsistent amount of money we pay the EU every day.

I don’t actually know where these figures come from, but the fact that they’re all different probably means they are just made up. They’re probably forgetting to subtract any of the money we get back from the EU in terms of Farm Subsidies and other stuff like that. I can’t find any information about it on the UKIP webpage. Maybe their members don’t really care if their factoids can be substantiated or not. With so many of their supporters being involved in the financial industry, you can’t hold them to too high a standard on matters of money, can you? Eh?

Update: Last year’s BNP stock image story can be found here, and John Reid’s worthless personal assurance during the Hartlepool by-election is discussed here.

I haven’t been blogging for the past two weeks owing to an opportunistic holiday to Scotland to take advantage of the weather.

The day before I left (two weeks ago) I was up at 6:30am in the drizzle delivering Green Party rebuttal leaflets to the nasty LibDem leaflet on my beat in St Michael’s Ward. It’s not possible to get out of this job, because they just give twice as many leaflets to my partner Becka to deliver, knowing she can’t do it all on her own and will arm-twist me until it hurts.

I’m finding that an MP3 player is an invaluable device for keeping the mind occupied as I go to door after door getting my fingers scraped raw by the mailslot lids. There are a good number of BBC Radio 4 political podcasts to listen to, but what I’d really prefer are some campaign podcasts from the parties to put me in the mood.

WHERE ARE THE PARTY POLITICAL PODCASTS?

The Labour Party has a bunch of YouTube videos. So does the LibDems, as does the Green Party, and UKIP (including all those nasty ones they’re so proud of. Bless.)

Only the Conservative Party has any podcasts. Except most of them fail to download and the last one was from 18 January with David Cameron telling you to go to their website.

This is rubbish. This is such an annoying omission that I am forced to contact the parties.

The Labour Party won’t let you send them an email. You have to use this crappy contact form that requires you to fill in your full address and forces you to select from the following subjects:

• Policy Enquiry – Health, Education, Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Trade and Industry, Work and Pensions, Environment and Rural Affairs, Other
• Membership – Join the Labour Party, Change membership information, Other membership enquiry, Contact your local Labour Party
• Contacting your Elected Representatives – How to contact your MP, How to contact your local council

What if I want to tell them something about the content+design of their webpage that would improve it? Maybe they don’t want to know. Well done those painfully, excessively smart people at Tangent Labs. I suppose we’d get suspicious if the Labour Party had significantly more nous regarding the design of their party webpage than they have been in overseeing the general web presences of the government for the last ten years.

I dialed “Policy – Other” and wrote:

Any chance of having some podcasts here instead of only YouTube videos? Some of us have to go out and deliver leaflets and it would be good to have something to listen to to motivate us on our rounds.

After my rounds, I came back and said to Becka: “I don’t know what you were complaining about. I found it a lot easier to fold the rebuttal leaflet in to the main leaflet I was delivering at the same time.”

She said: “You idiot! You’re not supposed to do that. The two leaflets needed to go through the mailbox separately so that they flutter down onto the doormat separately and not get tossed into the bin at once.”