City council orders removal of political posters
CARDIFF council has ordered the removal of some political posters for the Greens and Plaid Cymru ahead of May’s local elections.
Plaid Cymru’s Cardiff Central branch said that they had booked advertising space at the junction of Wellfield Road and Albany Road for four weeks.
On Twitter they made the claim “councillors” pressured the company that booked the ads to remove them. However, Labour-run Cardiff council refutes this claim, saying it was in fact the council itself not individual councillors who asked for the removal because the 10ft advertising structure should not be used for political advertising.
The posters, which advertised both Plaid and the Greens, who are in alliance for this election, called on people to vote for the two parties “for the change Cardiff needs”. Secretary of Plaid Cardiff Central Morgan Rogers said: “We had booked the same space a year ago for the Senedd elections and had the posters up for four weeks and thought it was a good idea, and so a year ago we booked the space again.”
Mr Rogers told The National: “The posters went up on Monday and have now been papered over. We emailed the ad-booking firm and they told us they had complaints from local councillors and said it could ‘jeopardise’ their relationship with the council. It wasn’t an approach from the council but from councillors. If they are being rung by councillors telling them to take them down or it could jeopardise their relationship then I can see why they felt they had to do it.”
However, the council refuted this, saying that the advertising drum, which was put up to control illegal posters across the city, has always been off limits to political posters and that posters on there last year “should not have happened”.
A spokesman for Cardiff council said: “This advertising drum and other spaces like it are designed to stop fly-postering. The council has an understanding with the company that manages posters on these hoardings that political advertising should not appear on them.”