They’re back!

It’s election time again and the country’s lamp posts and telegraph poles have been festooned with an assortment of dodgy-looking mug-shots that do little to improve the view.

Let’s face it, by and large pictures of politicians aren’t pretty. Even the polished practitioners of national politics struggle to look good when their faces are blown up to poster-size and put on display. Local wannabe councillors have no chance.

One such unfortunate suddenly appeared on the telephone pole outside our house recently. When I went to bed at midnight the pole was bare… the following morning at 7am there he was, grinning down at the house like some voyeuristic lecher. Was this supposed to inspire me to vote for this man? Think again! It makes you wonder who’s giving these people their marketing advice.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t for the life of me work out how poster politics is supposed to work. Yes, it raises public awareness, but more often than not it’s the groan-and-cringe kind of awareness that does nobody any favours. And let’s be blunt here, on balance your typical local election candidate isn’t particularly pleasant to look at; it’s no beauty contest, that’s for sure. So what do you have? Just a bunch of ugly mug-shots sullying the Irish landscape, and for what? Do they tell me what these people stand for? Do they tell me what they plan to do for me, my family and my community if I help elect them? No, they just distract and irritate me, and if anything have the opposite effect.

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