Sign O The Times

The signs are going up around town and today Harry and I covered South Dunedin.

Here’s my analysis of the election signage I’ve seen so far:

National (or more appropriately the Party for Global Corporate Shareholders) seem to have an inconsistent approach to signage. In Auckland they’ve got large, pale blue advertising hoardings paid for by their mates in the Business Roundtable who are itching for a chance to put the boot into workers again properly. (It’s been nearly a decade and they’ve had to put up with only a high degree of inequality and moderately fat dividends.)
However despite all the cash the hoardings are only average, which proves that money can’t buy style.
In Dunedin they have concentrated on smaller signs with pictures of John Key looking like one of those guys who are responsible for the world financial meltdown next to Conway Powell looking like a heavily made up candidate dumped to number 58 on the list. Which is, in both cases, entirely accurate.
I looked up Conway on the ODT and got this hilarious result. 

“Labour” (should that be Liberals) billboard’s are graphically superior and quite effective with a couple of big ticks. Interestingly they don’t bother to say what they actually stand for. Which is a good question – what do Labour stand for? They have obviously decided that there is no point running a campaign on their flip flop, bob each way, $10 billion student debt, free trade with the Burmese military dictatorship policies so have concentrated entirely on “vote for me” class president style billboards. 

The Greens have recovered from their disastrous, unreadable 2005 signage by going for some planetary consciousness branding, but it still is pretty unreadable. I’ve heard rumours that they have done a makeover on Russel Norman.

I noticed a couple of Democrats for Social Credit signs as well. They are very small and seem to feature what looks like a giant flapping turkey.

Apart from that there are no ACT signs, no NZ First, no Jim Anderton Progressive Coalition did I tell you my name was Jim Anderton Party signs, no United Future or no Christian fundamentalist witchburning Party signs anywhere.

C’mon guys, if a grassroots, member-driven party with no big business handouts like the Alliance can get its signs up in Dunedin, why can’t you get your act together?

(I did however see some ACT signs in Auckland – I guess ACT are a very Auckland party. They seem to have chosen a kind of jaundiced yellow as their campaign colour. Now where have I seen that colour before . . ?)