Some people say to us ‘why do you deliver so many leaflets? – that’s a waste and you’re the Green Party!”
There’s a few different parts of the jigsaw which together explain why we deliver leaflets regularly to you.
- Conservatives, Labour & Reform rely on masses of national free publicity through the media. Think about how often you hear Keir Starmer, Nigel Farage or the Conservatives mentioned or getting a chance to talk about our policies compared to the Green Party on TV, radio or social media. For people to be aware about the work we are doing we need to find other regular ways to keep in touch.
- We all know that social media is full of echo chambers, but we think politics is about constructively reaching out to people that don’t all think the same. It’s about building bridges and bringing people together to create positive change. So social media is not an easy place to reach people for local elections. Leaflets help us to reach everyone in a particular area.
- The Green Party can’t afford to pay for masses of social media advertising. To give you an example Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems spent over £13 million each at the General Election in 2019 (2024 figures not yet fully released but will be higher). Green Party spent £746000 in total, about 3% of the amount. We have to focus our shoe string budget on efforts in specific areas where we can make an impact for our communities. This is extremely difficult to do on social media, even if you pay for targeted advertising.
- We take seriously the paper we do use and almost all of our literature deliveries use recycled paper or card and vegetable inks. We’re always looking to improve what we do so welcome your feedback.
What we Can Do
We don’t really like means justifying the ends arguments. However, just to give you an indication:
If we persuade the Council to:
- Install renewable heating systems in just 5 houses rather than gas boilers
- OR Insulate 20 houses or 2 office blocks to reduce the heating bill by 15%
- OR Invest in just 1 safe cycle & walking route to a secondary school that just 5 children use for 1 year instead of their parents’ cars
IIf we do any one of this we will have saved the Carbon emissions of all the paper that the Green party used in the whole of Warwick District during the entire 2023 election.
Any more than 1 of these or larger numbers and we will be in credit!
