30th anniversary of 'Yes Minister' - and a top tip for public speakers

Thirty years ago today, the BBC broadcast the first programme in its brilliant Yes Minister (later Yes Prime Minister) comedy series. Not only was it Mrs Thatcher's favourite programme, but one of its authors (Antony Jay) was also one of her speechwriters.

To celebrate the anniversary, here's a clip showing Mr Hacker marking another anniversary - with the wrong speech and an important reminder for all public speakers.

More topically, as today's politicians from Obama to all our current British party leaders keep banging on about change, the environment, conservation, pollution, etc. it's fascinating to see that the Rt. Hon. James Hacker had beaten them all to the post - 30 years ago!

PM apologises!

I could hardly believe my eyes a few minutes ago when I saw the words 'PM apologises' on a BBC website headline - until I saw that they were followed by the words 'to child migrants'.

Am I alone in being irritated by the sight and sound of him apologising so piously for a policy for which he had no responsibility whatsoever (the barmy child migration scheme) when it never occurs to him to apologise for the damage done by policies that definitely were conceived and implemented by him?

As regular readers may already have guessed, I'm referring to the ruthless raid on pension funds that left so many of us with massively reduced life savings, triggered the end of final salary pension schemes and discouraged those younger than us from saving as much as they should be doing - for a more extended rant on which, see Time for Gordon Brown to say sorry to savers.

The 'snakes and ladders' theory of political communication and the power of imagery strike again

I spent part yesterday expounding the Snakes & Ladders theory of political communication (which proposes that broadcast interviews seldom deliver anything but bad news for politicians) to a leading television journalist (for more on which, see HERE & HERE) - only to be confronted by some instant supporting evidence for the theory, as Alistair Darling landed on a snake in an interview on Sky News (video 1 below).

It was so newsworthy that, by the early hours of this morning, the BBC has posted a video clip from Sky News its own website, since when it's been raised at Prime Minister's Question Time in the House of Commons (video 2 below) and has been headline news for much of he day.

An interesting footnote is the question whether the interview would have been so widely picked up had Mr Darling used a less powerful image than than his reference to having the forces of hell unleashed against him by Mr Brown.

VIDEO 1: Yesterday's Sky News interview

VIDEO 2: Today's Sky News report on PMQ