Thursday, April 26, 2007

A Plethora of Pamphlets

Go away for couple of days and what do you come home to, a torrent, a flood, a surge, and a veritable plethora of pamphlets from the political parties. The biggest, for a change, was from our local Labour MSP hopeful; normally its been the Conservatives or the Lib Dems who both assume that all those they are trying to persuade to vote for them are visually impaired - they use a 28-point font size.

The Scottish Labour pamphlet includes pictures of Mary Lockhart, for she is the potential one, with the Joker, Hilary Benn, Patricia Ferguson etc - this is designed, I assume, to boost her election chances by indicating she knows them, or at least they're prepared to have their photograph taken with her. Inside it's the usual rhetoric - I promise - seems to be her election platform. It's not unusual, but of course they are unsustainable. Perhaps her best jibe is against the local sitting MSP, a Lib Dem, who she accuses of "ignoring the aspirations of Borderers to concentrate on profit from development and promotion of a high cost, high amenity, commuter belt." Now that begs the question of why then did Labour support the reopening of the Waverley Line to Edinburgh, whose sole, real, purpose is to allow for the building of housing estates in the Central Borders? She accuses the Lib Dem MSP, known at Holyrood as Pudding, of being a Tory in disguise - God help the Tories.

The SSP pamphlet is the usual Sheridan diatribe. "It's the new socialist party set up by myself and Rosemary Byrne," is how it starts off. Well there's your cover blown Tommy.

The Lib Dem brochure has a cover shot over Charles Kennedy and Stephen Nicholson (Nicol Stephen, you berk - Ed). It also has a glowing endorsement from Charles Kennedy of "Scotland's next First Minister." These words from Mr. Kennedy are somehow supposed to be good for Nicol Stephen. Just in case that doesn't work there's a photo of Stephen holding a small child - that'll swing it.

The SNP brochure has a big picture of The Salmon on one side, although the big picture makes him look slimmer and taller. No doubt something to do with the printing process and nothing to do with Photoshop.

Then there are those from the BNP (puke), the Senior Citizens Party (laughable) and Scottish Voice (Plenty of dollars but more than a day late). The Conservatives who have bombarded us for weeks send out a simple, "make sure your regional vote counts," message. And there was I thinking that was someone else's job.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Satirical and highly amusing, smacks of Mathew Parris in his 'hey day' as parliamentary sketch writer for the Times. Although I am a Scot, I live mostly in Dublin and sadly have lost the inside track on local politics, ergo I am not in a position to contribute much to the debate.
This stuff should be in a column in a national newspaper (Scotsman please note!) else create your own, I suggest "The Havering Times".

Anonymous said...

Thoroughly enjoyed it (even thogh my politics make you puke!)
I like the idea of a "havering Times", I'd subscribe if it wouldn't cause your tummy to heave.
I wouldn't even say what I really think. Promise!

Richard Havers said...

Helena, please say w3hat you think - I do! Subscription is free, like all the best things in life.

Richard Havers said...

David, you flatter me. I had to go and speak to the Melrose Probus club this morning and was hard pressed to think of what to write - it was the first load of tosh that came into my head. The beauty of politics is that there's no inside track, it's all way off track!

Anonymous said...

Well Richard, I live in a village in Cambridgeshire and Lib Dems are always very active with leaflets, it always has been one of their strengths, even if they do write a load of rubbish.

The "Havering Timnes" does have a nice ring to it...