So, a week on from the election and things are starting to settle down – Euros notwithstanding… I suspect our hustings ultimately made little difference to the election result, but it was a good exercise in enabling democracy and helped promote us a little more, albeit organising it all was utterly exhausting!
Our congratulations to Paul Kohler, the new Wimbledon MP, and Siobhain McDonagh, the Mitcham and Morden MP, who fought her eighth successful general election campaign. We look forward to engaging with them both in the coming months and years.
We will be reviewing the hustings process as part of our marketing strategy and the upgrading of our website at our monthly trustee meeting next week. I’ve touched on this before but from time to time it’s important for us all, both as individuals and via the organisations we associate with, to review whether what we do is an effective use of our time and resources.
A key question in this regard that comes up now and again is the target audience for our charity. In essence we are here for everyone, because that is what the original objectives were all about, but given our very small size, we do have to consider carefully the extent we can achieve that. Where should we best target our focus.
One criticism that was made of our hustings was that there were some people attending from outside the area. It’s true we didn’t make it a specific condition that attendees had to be local constituents. We just assumed they would be! I suspect some of the candidates present had supporters who might have not been local voters. Maybe that’s something we should address next time (if indeed we do any hustings again) but it does bring us back to the central question of who we are here for – and our purpose more generally.
I’ll be honest and admit that there have been numerous occasions in my life when I’ve done things when it just seemed the right thing to do at the time because of some short-term goals but without any longer-term plan behind it. In hindsight, for example, I now wonder, as I negotiate a challenging divorce, whether our family might have made some different choices how we spent our time and resources. However, none of us can change the past, we can only deal with the consequences of those choices – and learn lessons for the future.
Many of us go through life satisfying our immediate needs and wants without thinking of a longer-term plan. The famous economist John Maynard Keynes once said, ‘in the long run we are all dead’. A less than cheery thought, though a quote oft misconstrued. Certainly, current consumption appears to take up an increasing focus in today’s customer orientated world.
A new government often brings with it renewed hope for a brighter future. Economists often talk about growth as being a key target and the new government has sought to highlight that already as part of its financial strategy. Whilst I understand that, given the need to address structural and fairness issues in our economy, our international competitiveness and local employment markets, I do think sometimes growth should be focussed more on personal growth targets by our leaders alongside support for our neighbours, the wider community and the environment.
Personally, I get quite concerned with questions about the balance between investment and consumption and the headlong pursuit of this – to the exclusion of other quality of life goals. Perhaps that’s easy for me to say, sitting here right now navel gazing whilst others rush around doing important daily routines. It’s always struck me that a writer’s life might be a pretty cushy one, but most of them have choices in which words to use to sell to the market. Choices. There will be a few on a football pitch in Berlin on Sunday… I’ll update you on some of ours next time.