Taking recycling to extremes

4:17pm Monday 3rd September 2007

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AN E-MAIL from the chairman of my party has arrived, instructing me to prepare for a snap General Election.

It seems only yesterday that I was knocking on doors and asking for the opportunity to serve North West Hampshire for a third term. (That was the election when the then Prime Minister assured us he would serve a full-term. Within two years, he was off - and it may be that the Parliament survives but a short time longer.) One sentence from the chairman's e-mail sailed right over my head: "Check that you have carried out all the data cleaning tasks in BlueChip or FilePlan that have been required by the IT team."

This act of software sanitation is being ignored. But another instruction was clearly understood: "Please start building up your photograph library."

This requires a large cast - a policeman, a nurse, a teacher, a commuter, a pensioner, a student, a shopkeeper and a furry animal or two.

It also requires props - a hospital whose services might be reduced, an airfield on which a megashed might be built, a rural post office that might be closed and a road that has been flooded.

Putting them together requires planning, travel - and a patient and inexpensive photographer.

It was time for lateral thinking.

My leader is anxious that I should reduce the size of my carbon footprint and mimimise my travel - and I am proud to belong to a party that is cautious about changing its policies.

I looked at my last election address, confident that there is not a voter in North West Hampshire who remembers a word of it or who still has a copy.

There was the requisite cast, captured next to the smiling prospective candidate with a blue rosette; there were the messages about a square deal for Hampshire, more bobbies on the beat, more frontline investment in schools and hospitals, and more decisions taken locally.

It struck me that not a word needed changing; and, in the past two years, my hairline has stopped receding and I was safe from any accusation of mis-selling.

While there would be some disappointment from the photographer at loss of trade, the printer would be happy because he would simply have to change the date of the election and run off the copy that he already has. And no one would be able to accuse me of changing my mind.

Now, I just have to sell the idea to the chairman and the party agent!

www.sirgeorgeyoung.org.uk