Manifestos

Today saw the release of the combined candidate manifestos for the Guernsey election next month. My concern that with island-wide voting for 38 deputies, the amount of informative material for the electorate to consume would be overwhelming seems to be have proven accurate, given the PDF version is a hefty 118 pages long, and even then 6 prospective candidates have not included anything.

It’s also a pretty depressing read. There are 119 candidates, and ideally when applying my personal filters of “I’m confident they’re not a racist” and “I’m confident they’re not a paedophile”, I would like there to be 119 candidates remaining. Sadly, that is not the case. There are a lot of old white men with moustaches. Margaret Thatcher was famously pogonophobic and wouldn’t allow men with facial hair in her cabinet, and frankly I also don’t trust said old white men with moustaches to represent my interests in government fairly and without any self-interest. It ain’t Movember, either shave or don’t, doing both and neither is not befitting of you.

I have no interest in running to be a deputy, or becoming any kind of politician ever - but I could also put together a manifesto that would probably be in the top 10% of those of those on display here. Manifestos aren’t everything - policy ought to be - but trying to sift through all this information to compare stances on issues I care about is tedious, and it’s much easier to dismiss someone based on the fact their picture is a selfie at a less than flattering angle with poor lighting. Have these people not heard of the golden hour?

There is a lot more I could go on about, and the good news is that given there’s a whole month until the election, expect a lot more complaining along these lines. Hopefully along the way I happen across some candidates that I do actually have some faith in and be able to come through with a positive spin in the end.