“Calling all Londoners – Your City Needs You.” Or at least that is the message that is being broadcast 24 hours a day as the contest for the new position of Mayor heats up. There is a substantial site for the campaign [Mayor For London], posters have been springing up on every spare inch of wall space and almost every TV bulletin or newspaper oozes scandal or corruption or photo-opportunity.
In fact campaigning has been so widespread that it is rapidly nearing saturation point. Today, as I approached work, I was confronted with Ken Livingstone’s purple campaign bus, filled to the brim with grinning anorak-wearing octogenarians blasting poor quality pop-music with a half-hearted slightly embarrassed voice-over.
But who should you vote for? This is where Fantasy Mayor comes in. This seriously useful site first asks you who you were planning to vote for. And then it presents you with fifteen policy statements – you choose the degree to which you agree or disagree with them and then it presents you with a list of the candidates that you share most policy points with. The results are always interesting, and often not what you expect. Against all odds, I have ended up with Frank Dobson…