Toronto has one of the best systems for containing the madness of those well oiled with corporate donations, advertising machines, that are our political parties.  It uses a set of regulations to really hem in the space available for such advertising.  Largely this amounts to giving power to residents and people living in adjoining buildings to say no to the presence of such materials in their area.

For the most part, this totally changes the game of political advertising.  Rather than a comic rat race of vans and party die hards racing to claim pole position on the streets, political canvassers have to solicit permission from supporters and residents to mount election materials.  If you ever felt your neighbourhood was invaded by these alien outside forces that appear every couple of years, you can imagine the glee this right to refuse would give you.   Such regulations here would limit the insanity of Irish election postering, it would also mean that the amount of posters would be determined less by who can afford to hire teams of under paid canvassers and more by what actual support they have in an area.

There’s a stark flip side to all of this as well.  Dublin currently inhabits this bizarre enchantment with the street artist. It’s probably the romance suggested by a  bit of illegal high jinx, we all want to take up the spray can and break creativity out across the grey walls of the city. It incites glee in us.  We’ll happily stick with the sentiment and ignore the fact that most of what’s produced is fairly derivative.  Of course, we’ll also ignore the pathetic state of our general littering laws and how they relate to the more mundane world of daily community and cultural postering. The stuff thats not really “art art” but more to get word out, and maybe sometimes it hits the nail on the head with design.

Whatever about the elections, postering laws in this city are beyond draconian - trying to comply with the protocols established around them is useless.  

In essence, they limit the right to postering space to political organisations, though the city will discriminate against the left on a regular basis.  They create heart ache between venues and promoters if materials go astray and turn into litter, causing huge fines for the owners.  Mostly, we are all confined to the echo chamber of online promotion within the labyrinths of our own social networks.  It cuts us off from each other.

Bizarrely enough too, there’s been little outrage about the recent Sunday Tribune article about IPA.  Get this – a corporate entity, using pubic hoardings to raise revenue for itself and no one has any fucking idea what monies goes to the public coffer as a result of it?     It’s a sad reality that we live in a city where the poster and flyer art that signals the wealth of activity and culture that happens here is confined to indoor commercial premises that tolerate postering.  And there’s even an enclosure there, with Micromedia, ferocious club promoters turned territorial rottweilers closing off much available space with perspex.