It’s election time and one of the things I’ve been watching with growing amusement is the growth in the population of campaign signage along the side of the road on my way to work.
First there was just the nationals, labour and liberal candidates, usually separately. Then there were the Kevin Rudd ones put up next to the labour candidate’s ones as if to reinforce the candidate’s legitimacy. Then there were the union and “your rights at work” and “John Howard has sold off your rights” ones that popped up next to the afore mentioned Rudd/local candidate pairing. Then a few independent candidates and minor parties (greens, One nation etc) started putting their own ones up.
Then came the really amusing development – Stratification. I started to see labour candidate signs appearing immediately in front of liberal and national signs (and vica versa), as if to try and block them out. Then a couple of days later another sign from the obscured candidate would appear in front of the obscuring sign – to reclaim the limelight, but perhaps the most bizarre part is that the originally obscured sign would still be there. You’d think they’d just pick the obscured sign up and move it back into visibility or move it back in front of the new obscuring sign (like some perverse and ridiculous game of electioneering leap frog) but no. Instead you just end up with these rows of signs alternating red-blue-red-blue… or red-green-red-green.. each trying to block out the view to the one before it. It is all just really rather amusing in it’s absurdity.