What I wrote at Lib Dem Voice

January 28, 2007

For anyone who's ever delivered a leaflet

Now here’s a petition to No. 10 with which we can all sympathise:
Delivering to the public is an important part of political engagement. We call for legislation to make it easier for voters to be engaged by requiring all letter boxes to be:
  1. Located at a clear height
  2. Easy to post through
  3. Designed to allow leaflets to be posted without destroying them
  4. Designed to protect people's hands when posting
  5. Dog proof
In addition we call for doors to have the number clearly displayed and doorbells to be easy to find (with defunct doorbell buttons removed).
Hat-tip to Tim Roll-Pickering for highlighting this often-overlooked issue. But will the politicians listen?

6 comments:

Jonny Wright said...

Remember this news story from a couple of weeks ago? That's gotta be the clincher. Labour this time, but wait till they start doing it to us! No, in fact, they've done it to us already. I was out on the doorsteps in Jericho & Osney last May, solid Labour territory, and a family set their miniature poodle on me. Didn't do much damage, but at least I can say I got attacked for the cause!

An interesting day for me, my first election campaign since I joined, but it felt like a complete waste of time afterwards, because we were never going to win J&O - but we only lost Carfax by 12 swing votes. I could so easily have got a score of votes out of College, especially with the Greens being anti-lab. One that got away, eh ... :-(

Tim Roll-Pickering said...

I've had my hand bitten by a dog in Bethnal Green when leafletting for the 2004 London Mayor/Greater London Talking Shop/Euro elections - luckily I managed to get it out quickly enough. The owner open the door and said she'd vote for us.

Paul Burgin said...

As a Labour man in a Tory area I have much sympathy with this issue and will mention it on 18 Doughty Street tonight!

Nich Starling said...

And they should get rid of the ones with the double brush inside with spring loaded double flaps that seem to have sharpened edges. The number of times I've cut knuckles on them ...

Stephen Tall said...

Norfolk Blogger - they're for households who wish to have their post dusted before they receive it.

(PS: for avoidance of doubt, I'm not actually suggesting legislation. Tongue is firmly in cheek.)

Anonymous said...

My pet hate leafletting are those bloody letterboxes at the BOTTOM of the door! After spending a couple of hours leafletting in a relatively new estate with those letterboxes - i don't think i'll be bending over (ahem) for some weeks now!