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Wednesday, 14 November 2012

What Interests People Politically?

UKpollingreport has an interesting post on what people pay attention to in politics.  Much of the time the answer appears to be not much.  Many people simply aren't interested most of the time. There also appears to be a bias towards paying attention to the picturesque, such as "pleb gate", rather than the more important but less easy to grasp, such as the utter failure of the government's economic policy.

I would add that small local issues can be very important but the effect if often extremely localised.  Out door knocking in recent weeks, I found a lot of different interests in different parts of Kensal Green. Napier Road residents were interested in their seven day parking zone, which was of no interest to people living on Springwell Avenue.  Springwell Avenue residents were more excited by the local littering and environmental problems around Park Parade. Similarly residents in High Street Harlesden have lots of concerns about the noise nuisance from the nearby bars.  In other words, the residents are concerned by things that impact upon them directly; much less by important issues that seem more abstract.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Silly plebs with their silly little concerns, eh?
Must be awful that they are not interested in big important things.

Oh, the life of a politician is so hard, what with their constituents being so stupid..

Anonymous said...

I'm astonished that it's taken Cllr Powney so many years to realise what matters to real people. Perhaps this is unfair, but his whole focus always seems to be dialectic and toeing the party line, rather than working for the good of those who elected him. I'm afraid it may be the classic example of going into local politics for what are, frankly, quite the wrong reasons. Being a local councillor is about listening to and helping local people. Empathy, listening, reacting and acting for them, not for some imposed blinkered and unbending goal that has no relevance to their real lives. There's two kinds of local councillors: sadly, I suspect James is a Politican rather than a community minded worker.

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