#gradual dienshittidfication

[postapocalypticcottagecore]

A recent conversation on a forum that shall remain nameless (although if my avatar looks familiar from elsewhere then it's probably one of the ones you're thinking of) has led me to suspect that a lot of people vastly overestimate the amount of time and effort involved in becoming active in the political party of your choice.

For context, I'm a former party officer in my local (UK) Labour Party. I've met three MPs, am on a first-name basis with ouyr local one, I've been directly responsible for organising two one-off campaign events and an amendment to an important resolution at a meeting of the Executive Committee. What's my secret to becoming this kind of well-connected inside source?

Well, I filled out an apllication form on the party website and set up a direct debit for monthly party dues (£2.20, the concesionary rate because I'm on disability), and once a month I take a hort walk to a nearby snooker club (or a short bus ride to pub in the next town over, we had a branch merger and are alternating venues) where we have our meetings. We talk about various isues to do with either an upcoming election or whatever issues people want the local council to do something about, we come up with ideas for fixing them and we vote on whether or not to take those ideas further. There's other meetings or events sometimes, usually when we're in the run-up to an election. There's even the occasional purely social event, like when we were waiting for the results of a recall petition and our Parliamentary candidate (now our MP) hosted a rather nice party at a local hotel for everyone who'd turned out to campaign for it.

It's not all fun and games, admittedly: I managed to pull a muscle in my leg and do some sort of nerve damage from trying to deliver too many leaflets in one day, and canvassing for an election in the most bitterly cold Feburary weather I've ever known in my life is not an experience I want to repeat. Nor do I want to think about how close we came to a) being forever known as the local party who burned down their own campaign office (the breakers tripped before any harm was done but what absolute tuna melt plugs a space heater into the same power strip as the tea urn?) and b) appearing in Private Eye in a very unflattering context because nobody else knew how bad it would look to pose for a picture holding up campaign signs next to a street sign saying -I swear I'm not making this up- "Troon Avenue". If that picture ever does see the light of day, I'm the guy in the leather jacket and baseball cap who is visibly cringing and trying to hide behind his sign.

But it has its moments. I managed to get at least a token acknowledgement of Pride Month to happen in a town where it never had before, for example, and I might be able to get the town council to at least debate the idea of whether it really makes sense to lock up all the public toilets at 5PM. That's slightly more productive than raging impotently in here, right?