Thursday, April 08, 2010












Heavy Paper.

One of the omni-present features of politics is the letters and leaflets we print and deliver to voters pressing our message. Literally tons of paper is delivered in the months and weeks leading up to an election and the above photographs show one leaflet drop being sorted into walks for the volunteers to deliver.
About the only serious snag with our campaign HQ location above Paignton Conservative Club is that it is upstairs; in fact the committee room we are using in this picture is up two flights of stairs. We have sweated some serious pounds off in the last few months, I can tell you.

By now I will be astonished in everyone in Torbay has not had several leaflets from our team.
Although in common with every other political party our delivery network is not quite covering 100% of Torbay we have not had such a well organised and well manned delivery network in 'political living memory ' and certainly not since the dim and distant days of Sir Freddie.
There are several reasons why the network has built up so quickly and become so strong, partly it is because we have heavily concentrated on getting our message to voters directly since before the 2007 local elections; but mainly I think it has just been the willingness of more and more people to help us.
Every time we have planned a leaflet we have pushed the numbers ordered up; the delivery pictured above was an order of 70,000 - one for every individual voter in Torbay - and this entire drop of individually addressed letters was hand delivered by volunteers in a little over a fortnight. And unlike MP's who have a tax-funded communications allowance that allows for the posting of a lot of their propaganda, all the cost of printing and design our leaflets is covered by traditional fundraising and hundreds of small private donations.
Most people appreciate that we are keeping them informed; and the message in all of ours has been solidly positive; we are telling people what we will do, what I am all about, and why they should make us their positive choice. The feedback we have had from people about some of the other parties leaflet efforts has served to remind us what we learned in 2005; that negative campaigning, and simply attacking your opponent does not work and tends to put voters off.

If you would like copies of any of our leaflets you can email me on marcus4torbay@gmail.com and I will send you a full set.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mmmm. Its not the quantity that counts, its the quality of what is said.


'The whisper is louder than the shout' according to a current TV ad.

Chris said...

Go on Marcus, you have my vote this year

Mike Nuffield said...

The thing about leaflets though is that so many go straight from doormat to bin. At least if you deliver a lot there is a fighting chance some of it may be read. I'd say better too many than not enough. We had one Lib Dem one and a couple from Marcus. Nothing else so far from anyone.