Banksy officially on show in Bristol

Last week, we went to see an exhibition that included some Banksy limited edition prints and a slab cut from the wall of a garage at the ViewArt gallery in Bristol - where you could also  see artists Snik and Ben Slow painting two pieces on the outer wall and floor of the gallery (HERE).

Today, Bristol Museum has announced a surprise exhibition by Banksy, who said of it (or should that be is 'alleged to have said'?): 

"This is the first show I've ever done where taxpayers' money is being used to hang my pictures up rather than scrape them off."

Is the media no longer interested in what goes on in Parliament?

From the huge amount of media coverage about MPs over the past month, it's easy to make the mistake of thinking that there is a similarly huge amount of media and public interest in what actually goes on the House of Commons every day.

In a number of earlier posts (e.g. HERE, HERE and HERE), I have pointed out that the broadcast media in Britain decided long ago that speeches make 'bad television', and prefer to show us reporters telling us what a politician was saying and/or to inflict endless tedious interviews on viewers and listeners (look and listen no further than the BBC’s daily output on their flagship Newsnight and Today programmes).

Some time ago, I mentioned this to a well-known political reporter who can be seen on our television screens almost every day (and, since reading this, Michael Crick, political editor of Newsnight, has informed me: 'quite happy to be quoted by name on that'). His reply drew my attention to the fact that the situation is even worse than I had realised:

‘Your concern about us using real-life speeches less and less is a very valid one. It applies to Parliament too, when we ignore debates in favour of interviews outside. I try and resist producers on this when I can … and of course none of the newspapers run extracts from Parliament any more either, though all the qualities did up until about 15 years ago.’

And he’s dead right.

If you have a look at the Hansard website, you can see a verbatim transcript of all the 165,000 words uttered in the House of Commons yesterday. Then look at today's newspapers, and you’ll see that, apart from a tiny proportion of the 5,000 words spoken during Prime Minister’s Questions, hardly any of the others get any mention at all - and when it's not the day after PMQs, you'll see even fewer words than that.

It would obviously be impractical for radio, television and the newspapers to feature lengthy reports on parliamentary speeches and debates.

But why has their move away from covering the day-to-day proceedings of our legislature been so total and complete?

And are we really more interested in allegations about MPs’ expenses and rows within the Labour Party than in the debates that are actually taking place in parliament, not to mention the the impact they might have on our lives?

"Labour's not for turning" - Peter Hain

This intriguing email about Peter Hain’s speech earlier today in the dissolution of parliament debate has just arrived from a regular reader of the blog, who sometimes posts comments under the pseudonym ‘Scan’: 

‘Hain spent fifteen minutes telling everyone how horrid the Tories are, used to be and will be in the future - there wasn't a lot other than that. Yet at the end of his speech he used a bastardisation of Thatcher's famous phrase and said, "You can dissolve if you want to. This government's not for dissolution." 

‘I'm not sure what it says about his mentality or wheher Freud would have had a field day or not, but it seems curious that, after spending so long saying negative things about the Tories, his flourish at the end comes from the most Tory of all Tories, Thatcher.’

If anyone has a link to the speech, please let me know, as it would be nice to be able to do a more detailed comparison with the original from Mrs Thatcher’s speech at the Conservatie Party Conference in 1980: 

Presidential heights

If you’ve been following the debate about how important body language and non-verbal communication really are, you shouldn't conclude from one of my recent posts that I don’t think such things matter at all. 

During the Obama-McCain campaigns, I even suggested that there might be a connection between political success and a good head of hair (‘Hair today, win tomorrow: baldness and charisma?’), in which I also mentioned a study of US politicians  ‘from presidents down to the lowest levels of local government, that identified the two most powerful predictors of electoral success in American politics as being the candidate’s height (the taller the better) and record of athletic achievement (the sportier the better).’ 

On the question of height, it's worth looking at a  piece in today’s Times Online entitled ‘How Sarkozy stood up to Obama’

As can be seen from the picture, Sarkozy is clearly sensitive enough about being vertically challenged to stand on a step at the same podium as other speakers at the D-Day commemorations last weekend.

And, if height really is as important in American politics as suggested in the study mentioned above, Mr Sarkozy might have found it more difficult to get elected as president had he been campaigning in the USA rather than France.

Why it suited Brown and Blair to take House of Lords reform no further

Regular followers of this blog will know that I don’t often forsake non-partisan comment on speech and communication to air my own political views. They will also know that one of the exceptions is my thorough disapproval of the unfinished business of reforming the House of Lords. 

In the early days of this Labour government, it looked as though they might actually come up with something more sensible (i.e. more democratic) than the continuingly absurd system of allocating seats in the House of Lords. 

But, in the light of the recent cabinet reshuffle, I’m beginning to see why the two most senior architects of New Labour avoided doing any such thing. 

Had they done so, Gordon Brown would not have been able to sneak the unelected Peter Mandelson back into the cabinet, let alone promote him to deputy prime minister. Nor, given the recent departure of so many of his senior ministers (and/or refusal of others to fill their places), would he have been able to replace them with whichever unelected recruit he took a fancy to, whether it be Sir Alan Sugar or Lord Adonis, who is now in the cabinet as Secretary of State for Transport.

Luckily for Brown, Tony Blair had already made such dubious practices easy for him by giving Adonis a seat in the House of Lords back in 2005 – in spite of our new transport supremo’s distaste for standing in elections. 

Apart from serving as an elected Liberal Democrat councilor on Oxford City Council (1987-91), Andrew Adonis, as he then was, had withdrawn from being the Lib Dem PPC for Westbury in 1995 and then, three years later, withdrew from being a Labour candidate for Islington Council.

In principle, of course, Adonis has always been in favour of elections and has even advocated them for the House of Lords: 

"Lords reform is not just about democratic equality. The present Second Chamber, lacking democratic legitimacy, is incapable of performing the essential functions of a revising assembly…” (for fuller story, see HERE). 

But in practice, why complain about the appointment of cronies if you’d rather rise without trace than go to all the trouble of fighting an election? 

And why complain if you’re a prime minister who’s running out of elected MPs willing to serve in your cabinet? 

If  Brown and Blair had taken the reform of the House of Lords any further when they had the chance, there would have been no such handy escape route. 

Nor, without a system that allows the unelected to be promoted above the elected, would former critics of the ‘democratic legitimacy’ of the House of Lords, like Adonis, have been able to ignore their past position on the matter and float so effortlessly to the top. 

Yet further proof, if proof were needed, that the 'reformed' way of allocating seats in the House of Lords, as devised by this government is not only an embarrassing sham, but is postitively damaging and detrimental to the democratic process.

Monty Python's Election Night Special

Here's some light relief for anyone who was frustrated or irritated by last night's BBC television coverage of the Euro election results. 

And what a fine gadget the swingometer was compared with the ghastly visual aids we have to put up with these days (see previous post).

Euro-election coverage: was the BBC’s graphical overkill a violation of its charter?

The increasing domination of BBC news coverage by ever more expensive, elaborate and distracting graphics is an issue that I’ve touched on several times since starting this blog.

Last night’s Euro election coverage saw this graphical mania plumbing new depths, as we had to watch Jeremy Vine groping his way around a virtual studio, with maps on the floor and walls, as bar charts kept springing up from beneath his feet and one incomprehensible circle after another kept materializing behind him.

Does anyone at the BBC (other than their computer graphics nerds) seriously believe that viewers like watching this kind of stuff, let alone find it useful?

According to the BBC’s Royal Charter, the corporation has an obligation to ‘inform, educate and entertain’.

Have a look at the following, helpfully described on the BBC's website as 'The figures explained', and see if you think it achieves any of these objectives.

Then click Play again, close your eyes and see if you’re any more or less the wiser when you can’t see Mr Vine or his graphics.