LEAFLETS AND LETTERS

The last two and a half weeks have been busy with the distribution of my election leaflet and then, over the last few days, with the distribution of a personal letter to registered postal voters.  That's a lot of hard pavements to pound and a lot of letterboxes for trapped fingers.  The organisation of the leaflet distribution was pretty straight-forward as I had established a series of logical delivery rounds from both the 2009 County campaign and then fine-tuned for the  2011 District campaign.  The weather was mixed throughout.  Our local MP helped for a couple of sessions - the first in Bramford where we had sleet and snow, the second in Barham and Flowton in glorious weather.

Between all this pavement pounding I had to compose my postal vote letter and then by hand, individually fill in the salution and sign them.  Fortunately my signature is a swift swiggle which is a result of signing literally many thousands of company cheques over a lifetime's work.  Of course the salutions "Dear Mr Voter" needed to written as neatly as possible - a challenge with 900 letters to be done.  The most time consuming part however was the envelope stuffing.  However all were complete by Thursday afternoon for delivery between Thursday evening and this weekend.  Fortunately I had a helper on Friday so the task was halved and I got more delivered on Friday than I initially anticipated.

Here's my dining room table on Thursday afternoon once all the letters had been organised into the logic delivery rounds:-

During delivery it was amazing how many times the postal voter lived at the very end of a cul-de-sac!

It is difficult to estimate how many miles we both walked on Friday with so many drives to walk up and so many of the bungalows having side doors.  Inevitably though some letters had to be left over for Saturday and Sunday deliveries and it was a little disheartening to hand some over on Saturday morning only to be told that the voter had already filled in their ballot papers and posted them back.  A lesson for another campaign is to get these postal vote letters out earlier.  Or post them!

How the time has flown by - now there is less than two weeks to go to election day.  I suppose I ought to get a second leaflet out as for some people it is already two weeks since they received my first leaflet.  First though I need to give my poor feet a well earned rest - I don't think my legs are ready for that second leaflet distribution yet.

Feedback generally has been quite positive.  Some very pleasant people with easy conversations and "Good Luck" wishes.  Others who are quite proud never to have voted and the odd rude individual.  Probably my favourite conversation was with two more elderly ladies.  They were standing on a drive and I introduced myself and offered my leaflet.  "I'm not really interested in that sort of thing" was the response.  I said "Take a look anyway" and handed over my leaflet, then offered another to the second lady.  "Are you interested?" asked the first to the second and "Not really" came the reply.  I set off on my way but after a few yards turned round and catching their eye said "You know we are pledging to freeze council tax for four years".  "Ohhh!  You've got my vote!" came back the instance response.  I may need to remind them again on the 2nd May though.

In terms of the competition, I have crossed paths several times with the Liberal Democrat's main helper and bumped once into the UKIP candidate when we were both out in Little Blakenham.  Both the UKIP and the Liberal Democrats seem to have achieved a very comprehensive distribution of their leaflets.  No sign of either the Greens or Labour out and about on the campaign trail - unless you can tell me differently.