leyton.org

Perhaps it’s because I’m a political-geek, and that I spend much of my free time reading up on the latest political developments, or even writing about my take on things. Or maybe there is an element of truth to my impression that the political debate that is going on around the Scottish elections is really very good.

A UK parliament election gets whipped up by the popular media in particular directions, and it seems to be nothing more than party leaders stalking about in their battle buses, making trite statements that are barely distinguishable from one another (”Cut crime”, “Support the NHS”, etc. etc. Like they’d do the opposite… Sheeesh), and generally treat the electors like muppets.

For the Scottish elections we’ve had generally good quality flyers through the door. That’s not to say they don’t trot out much of the same thing, and there’s a strong negative message in many of them (Labour’s in particular), but that they make some distinguishing points.

But the flyer-through-the-door doesn’t (to me anyway), make much of a factor in my decision making process for where to cast my votes. It’s more what I’m reading in the press, seeing on the political programming. In that regard, I think both STV and BBC Scotland have done quite well. Sure, they’re sometimes a bit light, and the BBC Scotland debates have nowhere near enough public participation (Seems to be all ’selected’ for relevance to the discussion at hand).

We’ve even had (though I’ve not seen) head-to-head debates between the four main party leaders. Something I think we would benefit from seeing at a UK-level between the three main party leaders, especially given Prime Minister’s Question time is all about theatre, and point scoring, and rarely about policy proposals.

In particular, much of the weblog discussions have been interesting, but I’m struck by how few candidates seem to have grasped the nettle and put something up. Perhaps the candidates have moved on to the black-hole that are ’social networking sites’. I’m on Facebook, but that’s it. But even those that have created a website seem to have the annoying habit of just putting policy statements on. Rarely do they talk about what they’re doing, or give a more personal view of it. Indygal is perhaps the best example I’ve come across recently of a personal, political, weblog that’s written by the candidate (rather than some PFY in campaign HQ).

But exceptions aside, comparing to the last General Election, the ’signal to noise ration’ is good. Lots of points being made, lots of policies being proposed, and plenty of outlets for the candidates and parties to get their message across.

All said, it’s quite good, and judging by the increase in weblog posts recently, it looks set to keep improving through to, and after, the election itself on May 3rd. I just hope some of it rubs off on the public-at-large, and we get a good turnout.