Irish Election are pleased to announce our collection of Irish 
This is… exploitative?
Read more about: Crime, Irish Election, Labour Party, Video
Labour have just launched their latest campaign video, “This is Bernard” , as part of their campaign for safe and secure communities. And I don’t like it.
A lot of communities have got problems with crime and anti-social behaviour. Rarely is it so bad though that people end up being kept prisoner in their own homes though (seriously, think about that. Despite the fact that it’s constantly used as an example of the consequences of anti-social behaviour, how often does it actually happen?). It’s a straw man that’s been touted about so much in the media that people start to believe is actually representative of the crime situation in this country.
For most people, this isn’t something that they can actually relate to. What would be better would be to show the real problems that people face (joyriders, kids drinking in public places, intimidation etc) and how Labour plan to tackle this, instead of inventing this scenario and expecting people to relate to it.
This isn’t what a crime and justice policy should be focused on. What most people want to see if a few extra gardaí on the beat in their area, and to be fair, this is one of Labour’s five key priorities. But this kind of fear-mongering, of depicting crime as being this constant threat that’s omnipresent and terrorising the vulnerable is at best inaccurate and ineffective and at worst, ill-thought out and directionless.
Also, just on an aside, is someone making it intentionally difficult to find these campaign videos on YouTube? The tags for this one were “bernard”, “irishelection.tv”, “votetube” and “election2007″. Um, how about “Labour”?
Well none of the “This is…” videos have provided solutions, they’ve all just highlighted problems (that may or may not be prevalent in Ireland today).
And I don’t think Labour expect people to relate to this, just like many won’t relate to the “Margaret” video - they’re just playing on issues that the public has accepted to exist, real or imagined, and hope to plant a suggestion that they exist as a result of FF/PD being in power, or more importantly Labour not.
A lot of what I’ve seen from most parties has been pie-in-the-sky electioneering, offer the public what they want to hear without there being any real potential for a solution… take for example FG’s promise to be tougher on criminals (which suggests longer sentences and more convictions to me) and to be tougher on bail conditions (which suggests fewer bail permits etc.). That’s all well and good, but FG will be the first to criticise FF/PD for prison overcrowding and at this stage with the best laid plans it will still take years to resolve this issue - so where are FG going to put all these criminals on their extra long sentences?
Same goes for the promise of more hospital beds - it doesn’t matter what the patient lies on if there’s no room for them or no staff to see to them at a reasonable rate, but this gets glossed over.