Flyer Review: Andrew Dickson (Lib)
Large Flyer: Outside, Inside
Small Flyer: Front, Back
I was going to moan about all being quiet on the Lib front, but
atreic was kind enough to supply me with one of the Small Flyers and one of the Large ones popped through the Rivendellian door today. Andrew Dickson is the person whose party I want to vote for - possibly not the best reason to vote for someone, but the one I suspect I'll end up using.
The small flyer is almost a placeholder flyer. The picture on the front tells me "Andrew Dickson would like you to think that he's a family man, but unfortunately he doesn't have a family, so here is a picture of him with his dogs". On the back we have a list of campaign promises presented in a slightly emotive fashion, however they really are only a set of bullet points. Whilst you might entirely plausibly be able to fund 10,000 more police (has anyone noticed how all the parties are pimping police?) by scrapping Labour's silly ID card scheme they give no indication of how they plan to produce Cleaner transport & Cleaner energy. And whatever happened to One penny on income tax, it appears we have Only one Tax Increase now - and I'm not sure that one increase will actually produce enough funds for what they suggest. And of course, here we have the LD's LIT claim; quite how Dickson and Lansley manage to fit a difference of over £1000 between average and typical, particularly since I suspect both families (if they live in Cambridge) are only paying about £1000 in Council Tax currently in a year… can we have some independently verifiable figures please people? Oh, it's too late now.
The Large flyer has the, by now traditional, claim that voting Labour only lets the Tory in. This is, of course, really irritating since in practice (as you can tell if you look at their graph which has a commendable lack of zero truncation) the LDs and Labour are about neck and neck. If all the LD and Lab voters voted for one or the other then they'd beat the Tory, but simple sniping like this isn't going to work.
On the back we have a similar bio to the one on the small flyer, with the same photo, but we also discover that Andrew does actually have a family - I must have been wrong about that…. We also find one of those faux-handwriting letters. Personally I think they make you look like a prat, but they seem to be all the rage this millennium. You can tell he's targetting a Tory constituency as well, and he's a bit sneaky in the way he associates the Liberal Democrats with the Liberal Party - an association that may be historically valid, but is a lot more dubious politically.
Right, on to the inside. Ooo, here we have a little box for each of the promises we had on the smaller flyer. Actually, no we don't, it's just a similar list. Oh, well. Now, what was I quibbling about above? Policemen: they appear to want to cut paperwork - nice idea, lets see you do it. Support for alternative fuels is hardly a detailed policy for Cleaner Transport. The tax increase only gets a sneaky mention under Free personal care when you need it and No tuition fees, no top-up fees. The Local Income Tax box points out that there are potential efficiencies in centralising the collection of that with the current Income Tax, but fails to note that this could easily lead to it just becoming another sneak method of funding National Government (like the 11th penny in NI). And someone should point out that merely not having to pay fees doesn't make University affordable for every student….
To a great extent I have to commend these flyer for saying a lot of Stuff. What they fail to do though is provide any backing for the Stuff - a criticism that I could have leveled at Lansley's Flyers if they'd said more than they do. On the other hand I still feel that I'm voting for the Party not the Man, and this irks me.
Small Flyer: Front, Back
I was going to moan about all being quiet on the Lib front, but
atreic was kind enough to supply me with one of the Small Flyers and one of the Large ones popped through the Rivendellian door today. Andrew Dickson is the person whose party I want to vote for - possibly not the best reason to vote for someone, but the one I suspect I'll end up using.
The small flyer is almost a placeholder flyer. The picture on the front tells me "Andrew Dickson would like you to think that he's a family man, but unfortunately he doesn't have a family, so here is a picture of him with his dogs". On the back we have a list of campaign promises presented in a slightly emotive fashion, however they really are only a set of bullet points. Whilst you might entirely plausibly be able to fund 10,000 more police (has anyone noticed how all the parties are pimping police?) by scrapping Labour's silly ID card scheme they give no indication of how they plan to produce Cleaner transport & Cleaner energy. And whatever happened to One penny on income tax, it appears we have Only one Tax Increase now - and I'm not sure that one increase will actually produce enough funds for what they suggest. And of course, here we have the LD's LIT claim; quite how Dickson and Lansley manage to fit a difference of over £1000 between average and typical, particularly since I suspect both families (if they live in Cambridge) are only paying about £1000 in Council Tax currently in a year… can we have some independently verifiable figures please people? Oh, it's too late now.
The Large flyer has the, by now traditional, claim that voting Labour only lets the Tory in. This is, of course, really irritating since in practice (as you can tell if you look at their graph which has a commendable lack of zero truncation) the LDs and Labour are about neck and neck. If all the LD and Lab voters voted for one or the other then they'd beat the Tory, but simple sniping like this isn't going to work.
On the back we have a similar bio to the one on the small flyer, with the same photo, but we also discover that Andrew does actually have a family - I must have been wrong about that…. We also find one of those faux-handwriting letters. Personally I think they make you look like a prat, but they seem to be all the rage this millennium. You can tell he's targetting a Tory constituency as well, and he's a bit sneaky in the way he associates the Liberal Democrats with the Liberal Party - an association that may be historically valid, but is a lot more dubious politically.
Right, on to the inside. Ooo, here we have a little box for each of the promises we had on the smaller flyer. Actually, no we don't, it's just a similar list. Oh, well. Now, what was I quibbling about above? Policemen: they appear to want to cut paperwork - nice idea, lets see you do it. Support for alternative fuels is hardly a detailed policy for Cleaner Transport. The tax increase only gets a sneaky mention under Free personal care when you need it and No tuition fees, no top-up fees. The Local Income Tax box points out that there are potential efficiencies in centralising the collection of that with the current Income Tax, but fails to note that this could easily lead to it just becoming another sneak method of funding National Government (like the 11th penny in NI). And someone should point out that merely not having to pay fees doesn't make University affordable for every student….
To a great extent I have to commend these flyer for saying a lot of Stuff. What they fail to do though is provide any backing for the Stuff - a criticism that I could have leveled at Lansley's Flyers if they'd said more than they do. On the other hand I still feel that I'm voting for the Party not the Man, and this irks me.