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#askboris

By July 12, 2012News

Giving normal voters the chance to directly engage with their politicians.  Staging a Twitter ‘Ask Boris’ event may seem like a superb way of connecting with the electorate but, as the Mayor found out this week, it can backfire.

After thousands of tweeters took to the net, #askboris quickly became one of the world’s trending topics.  However, quite how much the voters learned about Bozza’s plans for London, no-one is quite sure.

Quickly, the questions became increasingly surreal.  “Does it annoy you that Custard Creams from Tesco are normally all broken?” asked an interested tweeter.  And: “Which would you prefer? To be attacked by a dozen duck sized horses or attacked by one horse sized duck?”

While the Mayor might have expected abuse, he probably didn’t expect to be faced with questions such as: “Time flies like an arrow, whereas fruit flies like a banana – discuss/comment?” , “Did Bono finally find what he was looking for?” and “How many chucks can a woodchuck chuck?”  The Mayor was also asked to choose between Curly Wurly bars and fudge fingers.

Writing in the New Statesman, Adam Bienkov says: ‘Whilst previous sessions had lasted a whole hour, the Mayor made a swift exit at half time citing previously unmentioned “diary commitments”. Meanwhile most of the genuine and difficult questions posed by Londoners remained unanswered. Many users were left feeling that it was them, rather than the mayor, who had been taken for a ride.’

Still, the event had catapulted the Mayor to being one of the most talked about things on the social media site, and so for that reason alone I daresay we’ll see plenty more of this #askboris events in the future.  Prepare your questions…

 

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