Signs of confusion

This blog is often accused by its critics of being trivial, and there's few things more trivial than election (or in this case, buy-election) hoardings. Hands up one single person who's changed their vote based on a hoarding. We'd hope people are making their decisions based on something other than a roadsign anyway, otherwise we'd have to stop to relieve ourselves every time we passed a sign indicating a rest room.

But they're ubiquitous because every candidate in every election anywhere (well, anywhere they make corflute - that corrugated plastic the things are usually made from) believes their opponents are going to have them, so they have to as well.

LawsWatch's view is that candidates should sign a Corflute Truce at the beginning of every campaign, thus saving the greenhouse gases that go into making yards of plastic onto which the faces of some very unattractive people end up getting stuck.

The buy-election has seen an inevitable sprouting of such signs - and those made of other materials as well. We're distraught that Frog didn't enter the race with a range of hemp-based signs which could have been safely incinerated after the polls closed. And right before half the township - the half downwind - felt the irresistible urge to go to McDonalds.

The problem with signs is, once you've got a few hundred, you have to put them someplace. Every Council has different rules on where you're allowed to erect them, and then there's Transit New Zealand, which looks after state highways.

But if anyone should know where signs can and cannot be put, it's people who are already elected to Council. So with the recent spate of Vision signs breaking first the Council's rules and then Transit NZ's, there would seem to be only two possibilities. Either the diVisioners need the Diva to tell them how to tie their shoelaces. Or, to quote Allan Anderson, it was a case of diVision assuming "one standard for our masters and a different one for the peasants". This was an echo of Rana Waitai's earlier comment, that the diVisioners seemed to think they were "somehow exempt from things that apply to the rest of us".

Either option doesn't exactly recommend these people for Wanganui's highest office. But if LawsWatch had to bet, we'd put our money on the latter cause, particularly as Bob "Maddog" Walker had to be muzzled by an apologetic Diva after insisting his erection was going to remain on display in the Puriri St reserve.

Still, the whole "Signgate" affair - must we add "gate" to every scandal? - made a nice change for the Diva. For once he was the one following the incontinent elephant with the mop and bucket.

(Don't forget, the LawsWatch Polls site still has the Buy-Election poll running. Go there and vote if you haven't already).

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