At the moment Scotland is in the throes of an election, so on Saturday morning I had the joy of a big wodge of political junk mail being thrust through my door, all wrapped up in a pizza delivery leaflet.
One leaflet in particular caught my eye. It was from the Liberal Democrats, who I would normally vote for (being solidly bleeding-heart liberal and middle class). However, in a bid to encourage people to vote tactically, they included the following bar graph:
It's a two horse race: Tories and SNP have no chance of winning in this area, so vote Lib Dem or get Labour!
It took me a while, in my addled pre-breakfast state, to work out what was wrong with this graph, but when I did I was extremely irritated. The Liberal Democrats have a bit of a reputation for sharp practice in local election campaigns, but to me this is a vote-loser. The most charitable explanation is that it's a formatting error - they chopped off the top of the Labour bar to fit more stuff on the leaflet - but frankly, so what? As far as I'm concerned, this is a blatant and stupid attempt to mislead the electorate. Having politicians who lie to you is one thing - but you at least expect them to be good at it.
The ironic thing is that on the back of this self-same leaflet was a big blank area, headed by the question, "tell us about problems in your area" - so if anybody bothered to reply, the Liberal Democrat office will be awash with these bar graphs. Wonder if they've noticed. I wonder if they care.
15 comments:
They're politicians... they're after a meal ticket on the public purse.
I'm assuming that the leaflet is for a local election because otherwise the other worrying fact would be that the SNP are apparently ahead in the latest poll - with Lib Dems in third. This would mean that this bar graph is just plainly inaccurate or skewed to fit their needs.
It would appear that the Lib Dems may be trying to jump on the anti-Labour bandwagon that the SNP have been drving so effectively. I think they'd do better to try and sound more credible and puposeful (by getting a leader with more gravitas than Nicol Stephen).
IIRC, it was actually the results of the last MSP election rather than anything more current. That I don't have such a problem with - it's at least arguable that that is a relevant statistic.
I'm just disappointed that the levels of mendacity and attention to detail have fallen so low. What's doubly upsetting is that, in all probability, hardly anybody else noticed.
It is unfortunate that many of these inconsistencies are lost in the verbiage that is pumped in our direction at election time.
We even got bumph from Glasgow council telling us how well they'd been doing and what their surplus was. Lord knows what they spent sending us that marketing crap instead of spending it on something less inclined to look like a neck-saving exercise. Perhaps not taxing us in the bleedin' firstplace!
You'd think that someone somewhere would realise that the drive for popularity/notoriety begins long before the election beckons. So many folk are ill-informed of party policies that this last marketing push becomes a terrible victory for style over substance.
Makes me think of Brewster's Millions and "None of the Above".
Exactly.
I'm in danger of voting for an independent, purely because she lobbied on behalf of sufferes from Coeliac Disease last year (close enough to my own ulcerative colitis to be of benefit to me). But I don't know anything else about her - which puts her in the same camp as all the other condidates, none of whom I've ever heard of.
There are lies, damn lies, and politics.
It's just so blatant. That's the upsetting thing.
Nothing nearly so blatant as what's going in the States right now, vis-a-vis the Bush administration.
Disclaimer: Bush is not prosecuted in the south. Thank you very much. We take care of our own.
As I was shredding my weekly pile of mail, one bit of vox populi caught my eye: A rather big postcard with a picture of some hurricane devastation and directions on how to reach a website thanking the next administration in advance for not making the errors of the last. --- errk.
I'm still scratching my head over the graph Matt put up. What's hard to understand about it? I don't follow UK politics, but the graph and plea to cross party lines are standard fare here in the States. Anyone who remembers Ross Perot's bid for election under his Reform Party in 1992 might recall the introduction of the term 'spoiler' into our political lexicon, as in "Perot acted as a spoiler, drawing votes that would have gone to George Bush and thereby handing a victory to Bill Clinton". Yeah, that's the same Bill Clinton who was later inspired to stop making deposits into government credit accounts because no one watched those like they did the debits. So, I leave it to you to decide for yourself if the 'spoiler' card is one worth playing.
The problem with it is, the bars on the graph don't tally with the numbers! This graph implies that the difference between Labour and Lib Dems (9%) is smaller than the difference between Lib Dem and the SNP (5%)! Given that most people won't even look at the numbers, it's misleading - and what's worse, it's blatant and it's unnecessary. It's not the negativity (although I disapprove of that), it's the fact that the misdirection is so poorly constructed.
I know what you're saying, Matt. The designers of the graph hope you'll see that a 5% (SNP) or a 6% (Tory) deficit is indefatigable because of party line voting; but, in the hope enough of the SNP or Tory will decide to vote anti-Labor (that is where my knowledge of the voting priorities of UK parties ends), a 9% deficit (Lib Dem) is surmountable. It's not an up/down perception thing, it's a left/right perception.
How reliable a prediction is this? I dunno. I'd have to know the voting records of the parties, how well they turn out traditionally, and if there are intangibles such as a severe and abiding hatred of one group for the others.
I heard Sean Connery babbling about it, today.
Him? huh. "The Shcottish people do not want to be ruled from Weshtminshter. They want to be ruled from the Sheychelles."
Yeah - ask him what he thinks about the SNP income tax proposals!
I'm pretty sure he doesn't reside anywhere near the UK, if he's at all concerned about income tax.
Hey, I'd live in the Seychelles too, if only for the lax tax regime.
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