Yorkshire and Lincolnshire: Close encounters

Len Tingle Political Editor, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire

The Yes and No campaigns are limbering up to fight the referendum for a Regional Assembly. Politics Show Yorkshire and Lincolnshire became involved.

Don't bother getting politicians involved. Politicians are boring.

"Find some other way of getting your message across", former Conservative MP John Watson is overheard telling a group of students at Leeds Metropolitan University on Politics Show Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

No campaign

John Watson is the front man for the Yorkshire Says No Campaign which is gearing up to fight next year's referendum on whether or not there should be a directly elected Assembly for Yorkshire and the Humber.

The students are all final year undergraduates at Leeds Metropolitan University's school of Public Relations.

Although it is several months before the real campaigns get underway, the Politics Show has spend the past month allowing the students to demonstrate how the next generation of spin doctors would run them.

Aliens beam down and can't understand why we need more politicians!

They take John Watson at his word.

Given a camera crew, graphic designers and the technical wizardry of the Politics Show Production team they put together a TV advertisement which involves a couple of green skinned aliens beaming down to Ilkley Moor.

The aliens burst into fits of uncontrollable giggles to find a country with over 600 MPs that wants to spend another £25 m creating a regional parliament!

The cameras roll as the student PR's from Leeds Metropolitan University direct their aliens

Yes campaign

Meanwhile another team of PR students are consulting with Yorkshire and the Humber's Yes campaign director Helen Thomas.

They concentrate on what a new assembly can achieve for the region.

As the Politics Show camera team roll they arrange for overflowing dustbins to be emptied and water soluble paint to be cleared to create graffiti free walls and streets.

As darkness falls the students recreate a mugging before instantly improving street lighting and the personal safety of pedestrians.

A Regional Assembly could provide more police and street lighting

Both sides agree that it is far easier to grab attention for the No campaign.

"It is nothing to do with whether their argument is better than ours," says the Yes group member Anna Keenan.

They can use ridicule and irony to knock down the idea of a regional Assembly.

It is far harder for us to put the positive arguments forward because those techniques do not work when you are trying to promote something which will make a serious impact on people's lives.

As Political Editor Len Tingle points out, the exercise with the PR students could well have exposed the difficulties that the Yes campaign will have when the two sides get to work in earnest before next autumn's referendum. Its opponents are not just the Yorkshire Says No team.

They also need to raise awareness of what they see as the benefits of a regional assembly without the benefit of many of the attention grabbing weapons the ad writers normally have in their arsenals.

The Politics Show

Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Politics Show - full programme

Join presenter Cathy Killick for The Politics Show on BBC One on Sundays at Noon.

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