Wellington is the worst place to judge an election from

Several people I have talked to think National's billboards are ineffective. 'One suggested no one will change their vote as a result of them'. All the people who seem to think these billboards aren't working are in Wellington. Whereas people I talk to outside Wellington seem them as hugely significant.

For those that haven't seen them; the billboards are a neo con import, half red with the current Prime Minister and half blue with the Great Don and then a word on each side, or a short phrase contrasting the parties from a very cynical National perspective.

The Cabs/Cops one has been particularly effective with my uncle. The boards are doing exactly what they were intended to do... differentiate the 2 big parties and set the agenda.
The billboards also coincided with Labour's sink in the polls and National's rise. A conicidence?

What this shows again though is that Wellington is in it's own autistic bubble world. Not only do we see politics as more interesting that anyone else but we fail to understand what is happening in the rest of the country. (Me too!)

I had a friend who had Utopian visions of MPs being made to spend at least 10 months each year out of Wellington as part of a broader vision he called the 'Morris Minor society'. I think he got it wrong: it's everyone else that needs to spend time out in the provinces. There should be a Mao Zedong type programme where Wellington people are made to go and work in the regions slaving away in retail stores on Saturdays for 10 months of the year. Though you can hardly exempt MPs.