Emotional blackmail won't work

This Saturday there is an election to elect a new councillor for Division 14 of the Gold Coast City Council, to replace the previous incumbent, who apparently passed away back in November (I was away interstate at the time and didn't hear about it). Linda Carmody from Bicycle Gold Coast is standing as a candidate, and decided to approach me to hand out those annoying 'how to vote' cards at a polling booth somewhere. Of course, the first I heard of it was last night, and I declined because I already have plans for this weekend.

It seems my answer didn't go down all that well, as the reply I received was (in these words) "This was a chance to really do something for cycling," (incidentally, I have some very different ideas on what that will require, but that's for another post, and not really relevant to this); "Thank you for being so frank with me that I don't have your support." Of course, the obvious reply would have been "thanks for letting me know in advance that you required my help this weekend, so that I had plenty of time to think of an excuse", but I didn't bother to push the issue as I had more important things to do than start an argument.

This isn't really a rant against Linda as such, even though we have different ideas on what will benefit cycling, she's probably better than the majority of other candidates, many of whom have decidedly anti-cycling agendas (regardless of what they say at Ride to Work Day). It just annoys me when people resort to this sort of "persuasion" rather than simply asking me slightly earlier in the piece so that I didn't go and make plans for the weekend.