Software and liveware bedevil Labour canvassing
Gaberlunzie, who knows how local councils abhor the wrong flat nomenclature, so flat 6 in a three floor tenement has to be addressed as Flat 3/2, which easily gets transcribed into 32 has some sympathy for the software from England. Labour’s efforts to canvass support apparently have been hampered by crippling computer problems. Software imported from England was unable to recognise twin-number Scottish tenement addresses, leaving campaign organisers to record voting intentions manually. The computer program recorded tenements on the wrong streets or missed them out altogether. Other problems included the occupants of whole blocks recorded as living in one flat.
But the Brendan Perran writing for The Times also pointed to "largely inexperienced canvassers, dressed in hoodies and grubby jumpers — most of whom have been drafted from constituencies south of the border was defeatist and downbeat. Of the three staff ... the eldest was just a year out of university, their only taste of a by-election before this being the disastrous Crewe and Nantwich contest of last May, when the Conservatives snatched the seat from Labour in a by-election, overturning a 7,000 majority.
In addition, apparently hundreds of man hours have been wasted on pointless journeys as volunteers were sent canvassing with out-of-date maps.
Finally, Meanwhile, Margaret Curran, the gaffe-prone Labour candidate, is facing fresh accusations of arrogance and complacency after she admitted that she had not even read a personal letter, signed by herself and sent to every voter in the constituency. And "seeking to ingratiate herself with her prospective constituents, she described herself as someone who has “lived all her life” in the city’s east end. In fact she and her husband Robert, a former council official, live in a £600,000 villa in the exclusive Newlands area of the city’s southside."
Subsequent gaffes have included mailing a personalised appeal for support to the SNP candidate John Mason and enlisting the support of John Michie, an actor in the detective series Taggart, who was later revealed to have filmed a television appeal for Scottish independence.
Gone apparently are the "Mandleson-esque efficiency expect[ed] from the party’s early years in power, when it was at the cutting edge of election technology and organisation, spin and rebuttal were elevated to art forms."
Source: http://tinyurl.com/62swzs