Politics is something that [obviously] divides people – not just across party lines, but also into camps of those who simply detest politics and politicians altogether, and those of us who really believe in it as a driving force to make a difference in society.
Although I fall into the later category, I empathise strongly with those who have become disenfranchised thanks to the years of sleaze, protracted war, economic meltdown…
As a recently paid up Member of the Labour Party, the lead up to the next General Election is a particularly interesting time for me. It really is the only time I am prepared to engage in party political discussion with friends – normally I’m very happy to talk ideas, policy, ethics, but now issues of personality and competence are also suddenly pretty important. These are big issues for people and can quite easily overshadow the root policies and [more importantly] principles that as a society we need to get to grips with. Sometimes politicians push the competence argument rather than engage in policy discussion because it plays to their advantage either to embarrass their adversary, or to cloud a debate because policy decisions just haven’t been made yet.
Frankly I am unsurprised that so many people, especially young people, are so disenfranchised with politics. Recent months have proved that we’re in a real slump, new sleaze allegations come out every week – from Labour politicians selling their influence to lobbyists for a measly £5 grand, to the Tories proving that they have no real sway amongst their UDP allies in a key vote on the transfer of justice and policing in Northern Ireland. What a shambles at the highest level, but even at the day to day, street level there are significant problems. I’d go so far as to say that British politics runs about 20 years or more behind the progress of commercial business. They could learn a lot from the operation of some of the big corporates, how they handle PR and generate ideas within the company.
I was particularly surprised to receive a Labour welcome letter in the post last week, officially headed by Gordon Brown MP, containing no less than three typographical errors. It was printed on pretty low grade 60 or 70gsm stock, printed on both sides, and well… it really didn’t feel very valuable. I realise that this kind of thing would be silly to waste limited financial resources on, but taking care of new members is important, and attention to detail is important in building trust. You want to feel special and included when you sign up to something as important as a political party.
Hoping to do my bit, I also sent a few emails offering some of my [very limited] time to volunteer, making it very, very clear that I work rather long hours and can only really field calls in the evenings. This was followed up by numerous voicemails at 10:00AM each day from dowdy old men telling me it was “sensible” to attend a stall that they had set up somewhere near Paddington at the weekend.
Now I don’t know too much about the local political machine in Westminster, but when someone with years of experience in design for web and SEO offers their free services, I’d probably be tempted to snap them up for something more valuable than sitting on a stall handing out leaflets.
Competency, clarity, quality of information… The role of the graphic designer and the huge power of the internet seem like they could be pretty useful applied here. A lot of people I know are quite unclear about the policy differences between the three major political parties, and with many key issues I am none the wiser. Reading their central websites is helpful with about 50% of the information you might expect, but there’s still a lot of core issues unaddressed. I suspect this is purposeful, but its bad news for open democracy. I’d really, really, really like to see an independently run website that lists 50 or so of the most important issues at a national level, and gets definitive policy information, in plain English, from Labour, The Conservatives and The Lib Dems. I really don’t see why this doesn’t exist, there are a few sites that go about 10% of the way toward this, but nothing very substantial. No wonder noone turns out to vote when they have no clue what each party stands for or how they’re ever going to achieve their objectives.
A lot of the sites around the fringes of politics, like research organisations also suffer the fate of incredibly poor communication and UX, for example Ipsos Mori‘s site is just a monolith of textual information and links that require about 5 levels of navigation before getting to much information of interest or value. Enter at your own peril.
However, one of the most innovative political sites I found recently is Tweetelection built by the guys over at Sense. It “harvests and analyses thousands of tweets each day so that you can see what Tweeters have been saying about the three main political parties in the past 7 days.” And it’s beautifully designed with lots of pretty graphical representations, cute pie and bar charts and all that. Nice!
There are a lot of politicians on Twitter actually and Tweetminster can help you find your local ones. My favourite political Twitter account has to be @eyespymp though, who publish the [often very amusing] location and activities of a lot of fairly high profile MPs every single day. If you’ve ever wondered where Harriet Harman is eating her lunch, or what club Ed Balls has ended up at after the end of a hard party conference, then this is the account to follow!
Voting online seems a million years away, which is a shame, as I think the convenience factor is a strong barrier in turning people off voting. I know there are assumed risks in offering this, from straight up fraud and security vulnerabilities through to opening up the vote to snap decisions based on what users have just seen, but I believe that these could be overcome. We do after all live in the age of online banking – which has phenomenal security issues that in the main are overcome, and social networking where political and social issues are discussed openly every single day… do we really need to stroll down to the local school in the pissing rain to put of scrap of paper with an ‘X’ on it into a cardbord box? This seems like it has just the same vulnerabilities to me… in fact I don’t think many people really care about defrauding the vote – phishing for Paypal passwords has got to be a lot more lucrative.
To be honest my patience is quite short with this kind of thing, and that’s probably as far as my volunteering will now go. Instead I’m headed down to the Samaritans next month to give some of my valuable time to genuinely help people! Much more beneficial use of my time I think, and they seem a million times better organised and more professional than the political scene.
If you know of any sites that are related to British politics that you think are innovative, well thought out, have well considered UX, or are just plain pretty, then please let me know about them!
Featured photo courtesy of World Economic Forum
