YOU can tell we’re due an election as our lampposts have become populated with posters of the good, the bad and the very, very ugly.
I’ve never understood why politicians here bother putting their photos on posters in the first place. When it comes to the big two – the DUP and Sinn Féin – you could put a picture of a goat on the poster and as long as it’s accompanied by the name of the party, and the colours of the relevant national flag, they’re guaranteed the votes.
I suspect the temptation to get their image atop a lamppost is just too strong for many aspiring politicos; after all, politics has been described as showbiz for ugly people, and nowhere is this better demonstrated than here. Not that I can talk – I’ve long since opted for a cartoon on my tour posters rather than inflict my visage on unsuspecting civilians, possibly causing lasting psychological damage.
If you happen to be standing for Jim Allister’s TUV party then you’ll have company on your election poster, whether you want it or not. Each TUV candidate has the dear leader leering over their shoulder – a bewildering sight for most, unless you happen to be a refugee from North Korea.
Thankfully, there have been signs of revolt with this most recent election in the shape of Belfast businessman Justin Lowry. Justin has spent £500 erecting 100 posters with an image of Kermit the Frog and the message, ‘Vote for the Muppets party, you’re going to get one anyway’. I had a similar dig some years ago, when I stuck a spoof election poster of myself – gifted by my friend Terry McHugh – on a rural lamppost. I only left it up long enough to take the photo as I was too fearful of being voted in.
An indication of the level of popular disenchantment with our political class is the relative deficit of canvassers on our doors; while election material still pops through letter boxes, those delivering it are nowhere to be seen. I have an image of canvassers playing what, in my day, was called ‘knock, knock’, where you knocked a door and ran away before those indoors came out.
Would-be politicians stopped calling at the O’Kane household years ago; the last one stupid enough to ring my doorbell endured an interrogation akin to those done at Castlereagh holding centre.
Is it any surprise that the standing of our political class has fallen so low when, this week, we learned that non-working MLAs remain in receipt of a full pension, even though they haven’t worked in over two-and-a-half years? A certain famous beer doesn’t do jobs, but if they did, they’d do MLAs.
My antipathy towards politicians and my attempts at embarrassing, annoying and generally harassing them pale in comparison to my wife’s late Granny Olive, whose imagination and spirit I can but aspire to emulate. Each election, Olive carefully collected all political material pushed through her letterbox and would take great glee in posting wads of election pamphlets back to each party in unstamped envelopes labelled ‘junk mail’, only disappointed that she couldn’t see the faces on party officials when they opened the envelope they’d had to pay to receive.
I’ve no doubt this was suspected as dirty tricks by political opponents rather than the actions of a motivated octogenarian with a wicked sense of humour.
Sadly, Olive has long since gone to the big election in the sky – I like to think of St Peter greeting her at the pearly gates while covering his letter box to stop her returning some unsolicited religious material she’d brought with her.
Speaking of which, she also liked to fill old purses with religious tracts and leave them in public places for some unsuspecting person to find, and watch with joy from a nearby bus-stop as their face fell when they opened it, but that’s another story.
I would, however, like to make a serious suggestion with regard to election posters – make it compulsory for each candidate or party to use an identifiable coloured cable tie when attaching their posters to lampposts. Instead of properly cutting their posters down, too many simply pull them off, leaving plastic cable ties attached. These eventually fall down the lamppost, settling at a level where they can catch the eye of passing pedestrians.
Then again when you consider what we have to look at on the posters, maybe blindness would be a relief.
