FF used drop brown envelopes in the door asking for donations, and would call back with in the hour for it, like the Easter Dues, i kid you not. FF had more stickers than anyone else (bring back jack ’77) Fine Gael had more candidates than anyone else (5 candidates in a four seater?)
Labour had more posters than anyone, all double sided cardboard stapled, no fecking cori board & plastic ties in those days. WP had the bigger canvas teams (like SF now) and WP had stickers (no pun) and they had Pat McCartan and the women loved Pat. Then DL came along (no pun DL paper size) they had more printed material than most. PDs, GP and SF didn’t feature much but we had H-blocks and Indies and Indie Labours and disgruntled folk who didn’t get on the party ticket and community candidates against rates & ground rent. We even had a candidate that was DL then Labour then he joined FF (pop quiz, he’s still in DCC, i think)
But best of all as a kid was polling day, the buzz outside the polling station (all illegal now), the day off school, the grushie for FF stickers, which were used to deface FG posters (others not me), the FF motorcades with Jingles ‘fianna,fianna,fianna-fail’ off tanoy speakers, like an ice cream van, the kids with bikes could try and keep up with the Merc, if you had a bike.
Nowadays its spend spend spend for a year in advance and that slips past the SIPO radar, I think millionaires get to spend more that way. Its a TV games show for big celeb TDs and Party hog wash. Have you seen these people in the last 5 years? some you have, have you seen them lead a campaign? (im not guessing the default answer as ‘no’, but I ask you to ask yourself these questions) have you heard them speak in public or in the Dail for that matter? Other than xmas cards and party propaganda what has your local TD done to communicate with you? I’ve seen first hand the level of debate my local TDs engage in.. not much… I’ll stand off my soap box now. Best of luck finding someone credible enough to exercise your franchise with, now the hardest thing will be to vote, (last time, pen & paper, do it for old time sake.)
you can’t buy votes, but you can buy razzmatazz which can get you votes, you can’t buy ideology that easily, now that it is an endangered species.
[1] ff poster. I didn’t see Irish Ferries workers carrying that poster.