A voter looked at the Conservative manifesto for the Council. It’s got some nice pictures, and not too many words. What do you mean, “Cut Red Tape?”, she said.
People ask the trickiest questions. The trouble is that people won’t read anything that’s too long. I said that I had written a piece for my next leaflet, and was asked to cut it down to 150 words. But if it’s too short the words are just soundbites.
I talked about our wish to reduce the layers of Government planned by the new authority – the County, the area committees, the belonging communities and parish councils – and our desire to have local one stop shops for people to easily access Council services, to use the voluntary sector and to increase the proportion of front line staff. And I think she accepted what we meant by the three words.
I haven’t worked out in my mind the best approach to get a message across; I’m not sure it’s right to impose on people’s time with lengthy comment; most, with an instinctive distrust of politicians won’t want that anyway. And you can’t speak to 4,000+ people.
Perhaps that’s one of the reasons politicians speak a different language. You do have to use the soundbites, hope people sense the philosophy underlying them and be ready to explain if challenged – by word, email or comment.
People ask the trickiest questions. The trouble is that people won’t read anything that’s too long. I said that I had written a piece for my next leaflet, and was asked to cut it down to 150 words. But if it’s too short the words are just soundbites.
I talked about our wish to reduce the layers of Government planned by the new authority – the County, the area committees, the belonging communities and parish councils – and our desire to have local one stop shops for people to easily access Council services, to use the voluntary sector and to increase the proportion of front line staff. And I think she accepted what we meant by the three words.
I haven’t worked out in my mind the best approach to get a message across; I’m not sure it’s right to impose on people’s time with lengthy comment; most, with an instinctive distrust of politicians won’t want that anyway. And you can’t speak to 4,000+ people.
Perhaps that’s one of the reasons politicians speak a different language. You do have to use the soundbites, hope people sense the philosophy underlying them and be ready to explain if challenged – by word, email or comment.
1 comment:
4000+ people is an awful lot of opinions. Talking about politicians speaking a different language, I've always noticed that whenever they are asked an important question they always find a way to avert the answer. Clever that. Or is it just plain ignorant. Perhaps they just don't know the answer.
CJ xx
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