And here’s not how to write a good political leaflet.

1) A little design goes a long way – cheaply produced leaflets are fine, cheaply looking leaflets are not – If you cannot design the leaflets yourself/do it in house, you should be able to find somebody to do it for you in return for a little plug on the leaflet itself. If you can’t find someone, request for such a person… on the leaflet.

2) Include a comprehensive contact list of local candidates and activists, plus council service numbers on each leaflet. Formatted so they can be cut/torn out and stuck to the fridge.

3) Give recipients the option to receive an email version of the leaflet only, or even not to get one altogether. May sound risky, but might be seen as a positive step given green concerns or just general nuisance.

4) Make it easy for recipients to respond to the leaflet either via the internet or through posting back a section of the leaflet. This way you can get feedback about genuine local concerns and it would be even better if these postings were replied to.

heh AVPS – that is a very bad leaflet!

Why have a post dedicated to how to write labour party leaflets on a non-party site?

@Tinter

Why have a post dedicated to how to write labour party leaflets on a non-party site?

Er, ‘cos it’s not about writing Labour Party leaflets, but leaflets in general?

Reading’s a wonderful thing.

No, it talks entirely about labour and recommends that a few labour leaflets are better than none amongst other things. I’m sure with 5mins editing it could have been fine, but as is it really doesn’t read like a LibCon post at the moment.

It was originally published on don paskini’s own blog and started a discussion amongst Labour voters; I imagine Sunny lifted it because he thought it applied to most if not all political parties.

Even though it does apply to various parties – I don’t think there is a ban here on anyone advocating (or criticising) any of the political parties.

I know Labour advocacy isn’t a regular occurrence here but it’s not that bad, even sometimes?

Oh, I don’t generally post every time a party is advocated- Greens, Lib Dems, Labour, get a few far lefties nowdays it seems, its all fine. Personally, however, I think theres a space between advocating the policies and positions of parties, which can be an interesting discussion for everyone, and advocating on how a party should fight the ground war which really is only of interest to one group and is probably better on places like LabourList, LibDemVoice, ect.

Just copy some photos of honest looking people off the Internet and pretend they vote for you. For best results use photos of people from another country so there’s less chance of getting caught out.

Use lots of graphs but don’t explain what they mean. Don’t even label the axes. The fact that they are in primary colours is enough.

Also, bitch as much as you possibly can about the previous election results and the dirty tactics of your opponant. Everyone loves a bad loser.

Include large photos of Esther Rantzen alongside the name of your principal opponent. Your opponent’s supporters won’t read the leaflet (and thus realise its origin) but will be suitably discouraged from backing your foe.

I saw a Glasgow Labour leaflet at the last Euro election which spent a disproportionate amount of space going on about how unfair it was that waiters had to top up rheir wages with tips.

A bad thing of course, but there are much bigger issues affecting the poor in Glasgow.

I can remember in the 70s a Tory leaflet which was headlined ‘We are the People’ – wish I’d kept it as it must have been one of the last openly sectarian leaflets in Scotland from a major party.

“information about what Labour is trying to do” … “about how Labour cares”

If this is a general post about leaflets then the use of the word Labour is redundant, but if the post is to be taken at face value why are you lying about it?

Alternatively if you wish to make the excuse that you couldn’t be bothered to publish an original piece and you couldn’t be bothered to edit it either, then by your actions you are equating the values of ‘Labour’ with laziness. The perversity of which is quite ironic really.

With this kind of effort Labour activists deserve all the beatings they are going to get.