The First Canvasser of Spring

At one time it was said that Spring started when the first cuckoo was head. With the decline in cuckoo numbers a better marker would be the sound of the first lawnmower of Spring. The arrival of Spring is one of those nebulous affairs which seems to vary between the hard-line “it’s March so it must be spring”, the more prosaic marking of the vernal equinox or the pragmatic approach based on the whims of nature. This year, as we have an election coming up it is easier to mark this by the arrival of the first political canvassers. We haven’t had anyone around yet but we have received our first leaflet.

Surprisingly, given that UK General Elections are now meant to be a fixed 5 years apart, the pre-election world of bullshit seems to start earlier and earlier. It’s a bit like the supermarkets pushing the limits of how far the average customer can stomach Christmas tat in the run up to 25th December (the earliest I have seen was August but I know a supermarket buyer who mentioned they were arranging supplies in Februrary and hoped they hadn’t left it too late.) Even with an interest in politics I would have thought that 6 weeks is about as much of the lies and disinformation that most sane people could put up with but the current election campaign appears to have been dragging on for about 57 months.

Out of interest, the first leaflet through the letter box was from the SNP who are most likely to be battling out our constituency with the Labour party. Our sitting MP is actually an independent although he didn’t start out that way. He was thrown out of the Labour party for various misdemeanours including drink-driving, punching a Labour whip, head-butting a Conservative MP, removing an electronic tag, having another stooshie in a Commons bar and causing a commotion at Edinburgh airport. He is currently awaiting trial for another assault incident. Needless to say he is something of an embarrassment locally and most people would be quite happy with having a local MP who is slightly less pugnacious and preferably less rude about their constituents.

Having looked at the SNP and Labour candidates they both appear to be in the “mostly harmless” category - to coin a Douglas Adams phrase. The SNP candidate is a local councillor and runs a barber shop in a neighbouring town and the Labour candidate is a former MSP who, as far as I can tell, doesn’t have a reputation for nutting people. As far as constituency MPs go I’d be happy with either of them and it shouldn’t be underestimated how useful a good constituency MP can be. My brother had various problems with a government department’s handling of his personal data but his constituency MP helped no end to sort the matter out. This kind of thing goes unnoticed but it is a valuable role that MPs play.

I’m expecting all sorts of party political propaganda to be shoved through the door in the next few weeks. What surprised me about the SNP leaflet is how tame it seems. No mention of independence or the referendum but it introduces the candidate and states what they will be fighting for (less austerity, holding the parliament to account and dumping Trident). I’m interested to see what the other parties come up with although most of their pronouncements in Scotland seem to be about what a bunch of bastards the SNP are. Beyond that there are the usual platitudes about hard working families (whatever they are).

Of course we won’t be told what shady deals have been done with those with moneyed interest and power. I suspect that most senior politicians have more than one skeleton in the closet although I was quite interested in an article written by Peter Oborne in the Spectator magazine about Ed Milliband (Oborne, you may recall, resigned from the Telegraph on a matter of principle over big business dictating editorial policy). He asks the question of why the media hates Ed Milliband. Apparently he has told Rupert Murdoch, large corporations, war mongering Americans, right wing media moguls, neoconservatives and even Tony Blair to collectively go to Hell. That might be political suicide but I’m now rather warming to the guy.