Bouncing ideas off the voters

Nothing summed up the first week of the election campaign like the incident in Maynooth in which a man was attacked by a Fine Gael poster. Aggressive advertising is a worrying feature of modern elections. But while this was apparently an accident, the victim still needed five stitches in the head after being hit by a representation of Bernard Durkan TD, which had been dislodged from a pole in high winds.

Elections are exciting times in the life of a democracy. People are having new ideas bounced off them (sometimes literally, as we've seen) and everybody has an opinion on how the country could be better run. But as the Maynooth incident highlights, elections can be stressful times too, with intense competition for the public's attention.

This is especially true in urban areas, where the already high number of signs reaches record levels during a campaign. As election fever grips Dublin, even the road signs have political overtones, arguing for "No left turn", "No right turn" or "No U-turns", depending on where they stand. Some venture predictions about future prospects ("Clearway Ahead"/ "Dead End"), or downbeat assessments of the existing situation ("You are here"). Others propose environmentalist policies ("Pedestrians Only") or pour scorn on opponents' calculations ("Way Out").

The confusion is worsened when election slogans blend with consumer advertisements. For example, Sinn Féin's "Delivering for Dublin" sounds like the mission statement of a post office, and all that's missing is a peaked cap on Gerry Adams. Meanwhile, Fine Gael's "Vision with Purpose" could be an ad for a specialist optician. Indeed, an optician's shop in Grafton Street currently has a poster saying: "Eliminate glare with polarising sunglasses." Which is not a comment on the competing economic manifestos and how to make sense of them, but it could be.

Speaking of which, the short-lived idea of having the manifestos submitted for independent analysis by economists only showed what a stranglehold economists now have on us. The general population delegates many big decisions to panels of experts - the choice of a Rose of Tralee, to name one - but this was a step too far. It would be at least as valid to have the candidates' election portraits analysed by a panel of plastic surgeons to see which are telling the biggest lies.

Another good idea would be to submit the various metaphors used by politicians to a group of independent literary experts, to see if they stand up. Metaphors have been flying (there's another one) since the start of the campaign, but few are developed meaningfully, and many - such as the one used earlier in this sentence - are abandoned in mid-air. Any damn fool can start one, but it takes leadership qualities to carry a metaphor to its logical conclusion.

THE first week of the campaign has been a Ceaucescu era of dubiously constructed images. This is especially true of the finance debate, which has seen the economic gravy train derailed by leaves of complacency on the track, plunging over the cutting edge of new technology into a black hole in the opposition's figures, with no survivors.

A good metaphor can decide an election. The "Rainbow Coalition" - named after an optical illusion which is pleasant to look at but fades quickly - found this out to its cost. But there has yet to be a truly telling metaphor in this campaign. Which may be why the election has not caught the public imagination, apart from pie-throwing incidents and one or two novel promises, such as Labour's new bank holidays.

Incidentally, there has been a lot of discussion about when these holidays would be, if they came to pass, with arguments for Valentine's Day, midsummer's day, and so on. But my idea is that, given the unreliability of Irish weather, often at its worst on long weekends, any new holidays should not have fixed dates at all. This is a radical proposal, I know. But I believe the Government should pick the dates at a few hours' notice, on the recommendation of a panel of meteorologists. The decision would then be communicated to the media, with the Nine O'Clock News going live to an excited Charlie Bird, who would announce that nobody need go to work in the morning. Then it would be over to George Lee for a sober assessment of the cost implications, which would be very helpful because I sure as hell haven't calculated them.

So there you have it. I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to the second week of campaigning, as the parties seek to secure their positions in the polls (and hopefully on the poles, too). There's a lot of confusion out there, but, to quote every candidate who ever stood for election, there's also a very good feeling on the ground. Unless, of course, you've been hit by a poster.