At today's annual village fun day and church fete, there was a brief sighting of our local MP, David Heathcote-Amory - he of the expenses claim for horse manure and other 'gardening' expenses fame.
One interesting fact is that it was the first time he's ever put in an appearance in the fifteen years that I've been involved in the event, and one can't help wondering whether he was hoping it might help him to climb out of the manure.
Another interesting fact was that he didn't buy any tea or cakes and wasn't seen spending any money at other stalls either. I know this because my wife was in charge of taking the money for tea and cakes and was all set to ask him if he'd like a receipt.
Unfortunately, the matter never arose and we were left wondering whether he'd have managed to spend a bit more if he'd been confident of being able to claim it back from the taxpayer.
We also wonder how many other local events this weekend have suffered similar financial losses in the wake of the MPs' expenses revelations.
Since when were Archbishops experts on democracy?
Given some of his bizarre statements in the not too distant past (e.g. on Sharia Law), it doesn't really surprise me that the Archbishop of Canterbury now seems to think it part of his remit to pontificate about the potential damage that might be done to our democracy by the MPs' expenses revelations.
Given the mysterious (and completely undemocratic) way in which bishops and other senior clergy are appointed, Dr Williams has quite a nerve if he thinks that anyone should take his views on democracy seriously - at least until he shows some sign of putting his own house in order first.
Given the mysterious (and completely undemocratic) way in which bishops and other senior clergy are appointed, Dr Williams has quite a nerve if he thinks that anyone should take his views on democracy seriously - at least until he shows some sign of putting his own house in order first.
Disputing the meaning of applause
In an interview broadcast yesterday about a meeting with his constituents in Bracknell, Andrew MacKay made much of the fact that three quarters of the clapping was in favour of him and only a quarter was against him (see HERE).
Given that my research into political speeches started by using applause as a gross measure of approval, I always find it fascinating when its presence or absence becomes an issue in a media interview.
The MacKay sequence reminded me of a gem from my collection in which Peter Snow tackled Francis Pym for not applauding vigorously enough during a Tory Party Conference speech by the then Chancellor, Sir Geoffrey Howe – in an effort to use it as evidence of a split on economic policy in the cabinet:
Given that my research into political speeches started by using applause as a gross measure of approval, I always find it fascinating when its presence or absence becomes an issue in a media interview.
The MacKay sequence reminded me of a gem from my collection in which Peter Snow tackled Francis Pym for not applauding vigorously enough during a Tory Party Conference speech by the then Chancellor, Sir Geoffrey Howe – in an effort to use it as evidence of a split on economic policy in the cabinet:
House of Lords expenses: Lord Rees-Mogg on gravy trains
'We must derail the grandfather of gravy trains' read a headline in the Mail on Sunday last weekend above a piece on the European Parliament by Lord Rees-Mogg – who certainly knows a thing or two about gravy trains.
Last year, he managed to clock up a grand total of £41,643 in tax-free ‘allowances’ for his 121 days attendance at the House of Lords. This included £8,923 in ‘office costs’, which raises the interesting question of how many articles he wrote for the Mail and Times in an office subsidised by taxpayers, not to mention how much they paid him for his efforts and whether or not he should now repay at least some of his takings.
Meanwhile, his ‘attendance travel costs’ for the year came to £3,036, for which his chosen ‘mode of transport’ was ‘car’, so we may be paying his congestion charge bills as well (see HERE for further details).
House of Lords expenses
Readers of earlier posts on the House of Lords will know that I’d been hoping that the story about alleged dodgy dealings by some peers might revive the debate about the absurdly undemocratic way in which members of our second chamber are selected.
As it hasn’t done so, maybe the furore about parliamentary ‘expenses’ will redirect attention along the corridor to the House of Cronies again, as the way ‘expenses’ are dished out there seems to be no less virtuous than it is in the House of Commons
The only plus side of the apparently lenient six-month suspension just handed out to Lords Truscott and Taylor is that it will at least save the taxpayer about £50,000 (as their combined allowances claim for last year came to over £100,000).
But there are still plenty of other noble noses in the trough, with questions already being asked about where the likes of Lord’s Lawson, Razzall and Rennard really do have their first and second homes. Meanwhile, I’ve just checked on the claims made by various other Lords I’ve heard of and was amazed to discover that their tax-free ‘allowances’ ranged from £25,000 to £60,000+ a year.
As I don’t have access to the manpower that the Daily Telegraph has been able to devote to exposing MP’s expenses, I now invite readers to do some research into Lords’ expenses for themselves – and, if they feel so inclined, to report back with any interesting findings.
It’s easy enough to check on who’s been claiming what because the full list for the year ending March 2008 is published and can be inspected HERE.
As it hasn’t done so, maybe the furore about parliamentary ‘expenses’ will redirect attention along the corridor to the House of Cronies again, as the way ‘expenses’ are dished out there seems to be no less virtuous than it is in the House of Commons
The only plus side of the apparently lenient six-month suspension just handed out to Lords Truscott and Taylor is that it will at least save the taxpayer about £50,000 (as their combined allowances claim for last year came to over £100,000).
But there are still plenty of other noble noses in the trough, with questions already being asked about where the likes of Lord’s Lawson, Razzall and Rennard really do have their first and second homes. Meanwhile, I’ve just checked on the claims made by various other Lords I’ve heard of and was amazed to discover that their tax-free ‘allowances’ ranged from £25,000 to £60,000+ a year.
As I don’t have access to the manpower that the Daily Telegraph has been able to devote to exposing MP’s expenses, I now invite readers to do some research into Lords’ expenses for themselves – and, if they feel so inclined, to report back with any interesting findings.
It’s easy enough to check on who’s been claiming what because the full list for the year ending March 2008 is published and can be inspected HERE.
What a fine Speaker!
Mr Speaker Martin’s stumbling performance as he read his statement out to the House of Commons yesterday prompted me to dig through some clips of a previous Speaker in action.
In this gem, Betty Boothroyd interrupts the then prime minister, John Major, to put a heckler firmly in his place. Admittedly, she wasn’t reading a pre-prepared script, but the clarity and decisiveness of her intervention are nice reminders of what a very fine Speaker she was:
In this gem, Betty Boothroyd interrupts the then prime minister, John Major, to put a heckler firmly in his place. Admittedly, she wasn’t reading a pre-prepared script, but the clarity and decisiveness of her intervention are nice reminders of what a very fine Speaker she was:
What a poor speaker!
Watching the Speaker's statement to the House of Commons earlier this afternoon, I was struck by how ironic it is that someone with the title of 'Speaker' isn't very good at public speaking.
I thought about posting some tips on how he might do better. But, as anyone can do this for themselves by looking HERE (and as it looks as though he's not going to be around for much longer) I decided it would be a waste of time.
Sky Sports swindle
As the only sport I ever watch on television is test match cricket, I had no choice a few years ago but to start paying Sky's very high monthly charge for Sky Sports 1.
This weekend, for the umpteenth time, my attempts to see the current test match were thwarted by the fact that it is only being broadcast on Sky Sports 2 - and, for the privilege of watching it, they're trying to get me to pay even more than I'm already paying.
If Sky is allowed to outbid the BBC and Channel 4 for the television rights to test match cricket, they could at least have the decency to put it out on Sky Sports 1.
As they do not, I've decided to cancel my subscription and make do with BBC radio's ball-by-ball coverage and/or the BBC internet test match service.
The good news is that I've saved myself £15.17 per month, and I'd strongly recommend other dissatisfied customers to do likewise.
P.S. Three years later: If Sky Sports subscriptions haven't gone up during this time (which they almost certainly will have done), this excellent decision has now saved me at least £546.12.
And, in the meantime, I've discovered various sites on the internet where you can watch Sky Sports cricket coverage for £0.00.
This weekend, for the umpteenth time, my attempts to see the current test match were thwarted by the fact that it is only being broadcast on Sky Sports 2 - and, for the privilege of watching it, they're trying to get me to pay even more than I'm already paying.
If Sky is allowed to outbid the BBC and Channel 4 for the television rights to test match cricket, they could at least have the decency to put it out on Sky Sports 1.
As they do not, I've decided to cancel my subscription and make do with BBC radio's ball-by-ball coverage and/or the BBC internet test match service.
The good news is that I've saved myself £15.17 per month, and I'd strongly recommend other dissatisfied customers to do likewise.
P.S. Three years later: If Sky Sports subscriptions haven't gone up during this time (which they almost certainly will have done), this excellent decision has now saved me at least £546.12.
And, in the meantime, I've discovered various sites on the internet where you can watch Sky Sports cricket coverage for £0.00.
Is the MPs' expenses scandal a hidden legacy of Thatcherism?
In last Thursday's Question Time on BBC1, Margaret Beckett claimed that the existing system of parliamentary expenses was brought in under the Thatcher government in 1983, after a recommendations on a salary increase for MPs by an independent body had been deferred and staggered for 8 years – at which point the additional allowances were brought in ‘in stead of the pay increase’ (see below).
If this is true, it suggests that MPs were explicitly encouraged to subscribe to the culture of greed that Thatcherism is so often accused of having fermented during the 1980s, and it will be interested to wee whether this is confirmed in any forthcoming investigations of the system.
If this is true, it suggests that MPs were explicitly encouraged to subscribe to the culture of greed that Thatcherism is so often accused of having fermented during the 1980s, and it will be interested to wee whether this is confirmed in any forthcoming investigations of the system.
Rhetoric wins applause for questioners on BBC Question Time
It wasn't just some of David Dimbleby's questions that got applauded on last night's Question Time (see previous post). Some of the questions also won bursts of applause, which was hardly surprising in the case of those who used the rhetorical techniques that are most likely to trigger a positive audience response.
In this first example, the question includes a contrast between ‘their own money’ and ‘our country’ that triggers a burst of applause before Dimbleby or anyone else has time to say anything:
The speaker in this next one deploys three rhetorical techniques in quick succession: a rhetorical question, a three-part list and a contrast.
And, as so often happens when someone combines more than one technique at a time, the applause here exceeds the standard 8 pus or minus 1 second 'normal' burst of applause (by about 2 seconds), thereby underlining the response as a more enthusiastic one than usual:
It was quite explicit. It has to be wholly necessary to do the job as an MP.
[Q] What could be more plainer than that?
[1] They don’t need scatter cushions,
[2] bottles of gin,
[3] plocks.
[A] It’s not the system that’s wrong.
[B] It’s the people - the MPs themselves. [APPLAUSE]
For more about rhetorical techniques and how to use them to get your own messages across, see any of my books (listed in the left-hand margin).
In this first example, the question includes a contrast between ‘their own money’ and ‘our country’ that triggers a burst of applause before Dimbleby or anyone else has time to say anything:
The speaker in this next one deploys three rhetorical techniques in quick succession: a rhetorical question, a three-part list and a contrast.
And, as so often happens when someone combines more than one technique at a time, the applause here exceeds the standard 8 pus or minus 1 second 'normal' burst of applause (by about 2 seconds), thereby underlining the response as a more enthusiastic one than usual:
It was quite explicit. It has to be wholly necessary to do the job as an MP.
[Q] What could be more plainer than that?
[1] They don’t need scatter cushions,
[2] bottles of gin,
[3] plocks.
[A] It’s not the system that’s wrong.
[B] It’s the people - the MPs themselves. [APPLAUSE]
For more about rhetorical techniques and how to use them to get your own messages across, see any of my books (listed in the left-hand margin).
Applause for Dimbleby's questions on BBC Question Time
Two very unusual things happen in these two clips from last night's Question Time on BBC1.
The first is that that David Dimbleby feels liberated enough to phrase his questions in a way that might, in a one-to-one interview with no audience, come across as excessively cheeky and perhaps even biased against Labour (Margaret Becket) and the Liberal Democrats (Ming Campbell).
The second is that the audience comes in and applauds what Dimbleby says before the politicians have had time to start their answers - and are therefore under much more pressure than they would have been if they were being interviewed in a studio with no audience there showing how much they approve of the interviewer's question.
The first is that that David Dimbleby feels liberated enough to phrase his questions in a way that might, in a one-to-one interview with no audience, come across as excessively cheeky and perhaps even biased against Labour (Margaret Becket) and the Liberal Democrats (Ming Campbell).
The second is that the audience comes in and applauds what Dimbleby says before the politicians have had time to start their answers - and are therefore under much more pressure than they would have been if they were being interviewed in a studio with no audience there showing how much they approve of the interviewer's question.
The liveliest Question Time ever?
Not long after yesterday's post suggesting that interviews with politicians would be much livelier if they were conducted in front of an audience and that audience reactions can liberate interviewers from being constrained by their professional obligation to be neutral, on came a stunningly lively edition of BBC's Question Time that rather proves the point.
All the questions were about MPs' expenses, and there were moments when David Dimbleby positively buzzed as he used audience interventions to press some of the panel harder than he would have been able to do had there been no audience.
I'm planning to post some edited highlights later today, so watch this space.
All the questions were about MPs' expenses, and there were moments when David Dimbleby positively buzzed as he used audience interventions to press some of the panel harder than he would have been able to do had there been no audience.
I'm planning to post some edited highlights later today, so watch this space.
Why it's so easy for politicians not to answer interviewers' questions - and what should be done about it
I mentioned in an earlier post that I’d once heard the late Robin Day complaining that the news interview had been ‘hijacked’ by politicians who had discovered that they could get away with ignoring questions and talk about whatever they felt like.
In the clip below, you can hear David Dimbleby making much the same point:
If interviewers as experienced as Day and Dimbleby can be so easily thwarted, there must be some quite deep-seated reason why it’s so easy for politicians to get away with it. And I think Dibmleby is on to it when he says that he doesn’t have a gun to point at them if they don’t answer a question.
The thing about pointing a gun at someone is that it is about as hostile and aggressive an action as you can think of. And the trouble is that the only conversational techniques available to us for trying to get someone to answer questions also come across as hostile and agressive.
In the clip below, you can hear David Dimbleby making much the same point:
If interviewers as experienced as Day and Dimbleby can be so easily thwarted, there must be some quite deep-seated reason why it’s so easy for politicians to get away with it. And I think Dibmleby is on to it when he says that he doesn’t have a gun to point at them if they don’t answer a question.
The thing about pointing a gun at someone is that it is about as hostile and aggressive an action as you can think of. And the trouble is that the only conversational techniques available to us for trying to get someone to answer questions also come across as hostile and agressive.
HOSTILITY & NEUTRALITY
Consider, for example, the kind of thing that happens when a witness in court fails to answer a question during cross-examination.
Barristers can ruthlessly intervene and demand an answer:
Counsel: “Did you make any attempt to persuade the crowd to go back before you baton-charged them?”
Witness: “I don’t see how you could persuade them to go back.”
Counsel: “Never mind that – just answer the question first and then give your reason. Did you make any effort to persuade the crowd to go back before you baton-charged them?”
Witness: “No.”
Or they may refer the matter to the judge for a ruling, as in this sequence where the alleged victim in an American rape trial is being cross-examined:
Counsel: “Didn’t you tell the police that the defendant had been drinking?”
Witness: “I told them there was a cooler in the car and I never opened it.”
Counsel: “May the balance of the answer be stricken, your honour, and the answer is ‘no’”
Judge: “Yes - the answer is ‘No’.”
If the lawyers sound hostile or aggressive towards the witnesses, this is of course perfectly acceptable in an adversarial legal system in which barristers are paid to take sides.
But the insurmountable obstacle that our news interviewers are up against is that they are paid to be neutral, which means that appearing to take sides can get them into serious trouble - so that they are, in effect, barred from using the kinds of hostile conversational techniques used in other settings to force people to answer a question without also coming across as aggressive and, by implication, politically biased (unless, of course, they’re willing to court controversy and take the risk of losing their job).
A SOLUTION?
So here’s my formula for sparing us from having to watch the repetitive evasiveness of politicians in interviews: they would be conducted in front of an audience equipped with handsets that would enable them to press a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ button, according to whether or not they felt a question had been adequately answered. These would be instantly added up and displayed on a scoreboard behind the interviewer and interviewee.
Whenever more than 50% of the audience felt that the politician had not answered the question, the interviewer would have the right and duty to press further on the same question – and to continue doing so until more than half the audience had rated the answer as adequate.
Such an approach would have three advantages over the present situation:
1. It would liberate interviewers from the risk of being accused of hostility or political bias, because they would merely be acting as representatives on behalf of a dissatisfied audience.
2. By making it more difficult for politicians to be so evasive, it would give viewers and listeners a clearer idea about where the interviewees really stand on a particular issue.
3. It would be much more entertaining television than the tedium currently inflicted on us (and might even have the added bonus of getting people more interested in politics than they are at present).
Consider, for example, the kind of thing that happens when a witness in court fails to answer a question during cross-examination.
Barristers can ruthlessly intervene and demand an answer:
Counsel: “Did you make any attempt to persuade the crowd to go back before you baton-charged them?”
Witness: “I don’t see how you could persuade them to go back.”
Counsel: “Never mind that – just answer the question first and then give your reason. Did you make any effort to persuade the crowd to go back before you baton-charged them?”
Witness: “No.”
Or they may refer the matter to the judge for a ruling, as in this sequence where the alleged victim in an American rape trial is being cross-examined:
Counsel: “Didn’t you tell the police that the defendant had been drinking?”
Witness: “I told them there was a cooler in the car and I never opened it.”
Counsel: “May the balance of the answer be stricken, your honour, and the answer is ‘no’”
Judge: “Yes - the answer is ‘No’.”
If the lawyers sound hostile or aggressive towards the witnesses, this is of course perfectly acceptable in an adversarial legal system in which barristers are paid to take sides.
But the insurmountable obstacle that our news interviewers are up against is that they are paid to be neutral, which means that appearing to take sides can get them into serious trouble - so that they are, in effect, barred from using the kinds of hostile conversational techniques used in other settings to force people to answer a question without also coming across as aggressive and, by implication, politically biased (unless, of course, they’re willing to court controversy and take the risk of losing their job).
A SOLUTION?
So here’s my formula for sparing us from having to watch the repetitive evasiveness of politicians in interviews: they would be conducted in front of an audience equipped with handsets that would enable them to press a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ button, according to whether or not they felt a question had been adequately answered. These would be instantly added up and displayed on a scoreboard behind the interviewer and interviewee.
Whenever more than 50% of the audience felt that the politician had not answered the question, the interviewer would have the right and duty to press further on the same question – and to continue doing so until more than half the audience had rated the answer as adequate.
Such an approach would have three advantages over the present situation:
1. It would liberate interviewers from the risk of being accused of hostility or political bias, because they would merely be acting as representatives on behalf of a dissatisfied audience.
2. By making it more difficult for politicians to be so evasive, it would give viewers and listeners a clearer idea about where the interviewees really stand on a particular issue.
3. It would be much more entertaining television than the tedium currently inflicted on us (and might even have the added bonus of getting people more interested in politics than they are at present).
MPs expenses claims merely reflect British attitudes towards home ownership
Much of the past week’s shock-horror-hullabaloo revelations about MPs' expenses has had to do with claims for mortgage interest payments, stamp duty, capital gains tax and other costs associated with owning houses, none of which would have arisen had these MPs chosen to rent, rather than buy, flats and houses in London and/or their constituencies.
It’s obviously perfectly reasonable to subsidise people whose job requires that they run two homes. But why is this interpreted by MPs and the civil servants who administer the expenses as meaning the purchase of second homes?
Presumably the answer is that, like so many other people in the UK, the MPs and civil servants are obsessed with owning homes rather than renting them. As such, they could be said to be thoroughly representative of the voters who elected them to parliament in the first place.
But – and this seems to be the biggest ‘but’ to have come out of the Telegraph revelations – it is surely totally unacceptable to use taxpayers’ money to underwrite property speculation and then allow the beneficiaries to pocket the profits.
There are at least three obvious ways of putting a stop to this:
1. Give MPs a flat-rate London allowance based on rental costs within a certain distance from Westminster.
2. Set up a Parliamentary property service that would buy properties for MPs to live in rent-free (and hold on to any profits made when the properties were sold).
3. Build a hall of residence in or near Westminster where MPs could live rent-free – made up of different sized flats catering for different family needs and providing a suitably professional standard of comfort (e.g. based on 4 star hotels or the quality of accommodation found in some of our top business schools).
It’s obviously perfectly reasonable to subsidise people whose job requires that they run two homes. But why is this interpreted by MPs and the civil servants who administer the expenses as meaning the purchase of second homes?
Presumably the answer is that, like so many other people in the UK, the MPs and civil servants are obsessed with owning homes rather than renting them. As such, they could be said to be thoroughly representative of the voters who elected them to parliament in the first place.
But – and this seems to be the biggest ‘but’ to have come out of the Telegraph revelations – it is surely totally unacceptable to use taxpayers’ money to underwrite property speculation and then allow the beneficiaries to pocket the profits.
There are at least three obvious ways of putting a stop to this:
1. Give MPs a flat-rate London allowance based on rental costs within a certain distance from Westminster.
2. Set up a Parliamentary property service that would buy properties for MPs to live in rent-free (and hold on to any profits made when the properties were sold).
3. Build a hall of residence in or near Westminster where MPs could live rent-free – made up of different sized flats catering for different family needs and providing a suitably professional standard of comfort (e.g. based on 4 star hotels or the quality of accommodation found in some of our top business schools).
Well, well, Wells!
On learning from yesterday's Telegraph revelations about parliamentary expenses that our Tory MP, David Heathcote-Amory had claimed £380 for horse manure, I wasn't sure whether to be pleased or annoyed.
Should I be pleased because the news can't do the chances of our Liberal Democrat candidate for the Wells constituency, Tessa Munt, any harm at all?
Or should I be annoyed because I reckon I could have found some local manure at a lower price - which would have would have been a better deal for him, a better deal for the taxpayer and a better deal for me, as it would have let me in on a slice of the action for myself.
Should I be pleased because the news can't do the chances of our Liberal Democrat candidate for the Wells constituency, Tessa Munt, any harm at all?
Or should I be annoyed because I reckon I could have found some local manure at a lower price - which would have would have been a better deal for him, a better deal for the taxpayer and a better deal for me, as it would have let me in on a slice of the action for myself.
A prime minister who openly refused to answer an interviewer’s questions
If you saw the recently posted clips of Clement Attlee and Edward Heath, you might enjoy another gem from my collection of memorable TV interviews from the past.
This time, it’s sunny Jim Callaghan in full combat mode, repeatedly refusing to answer questions about Roy Jenkins.
Although he may have succeeded in putting Robin Day in his place, whether or not it did the then prime minister's reputation any good is quite another matter.
However, compared with the way Gordon Brown behaves in interviews (see yesterday’s post), there’s something vaguely refreshing to see a politician being as open as this about his unwillingness to answer the questions put to him:
This time, it’s sunny Jim Callaghan in full combat mode, repeatedly refusing to answer questions about Roy Jenkins.
Although he may have succeeded in putting Robin Day in his place, whether or not it did the then prime minister's reputation any good is quite another matter.
However, compared with the way Gordon Brown behaves in interviews (see yesterday’s post), there’s something vaguely refreshing to see a politician being as open as this about his unwillingness to answer the questions put to him:
UK Speechwriters' Guild
Just launched today is a new website of the UK Speechwriters’ Guild, which can be visited HERE.
The Guild has been formed to:
• share knowledge on how to operate as a speechwriter in the UK
• establish guidelines for commercial rates for UK speechwriters’ work
• raise standards of public speaking, by providing training courses for speechwriters, giving awards, circulating information about jobs and organising events
• persuade UK business leaders, professional speakers and politicians of the great value which specialist speechwriters can bring to their commercial and public life
• publish a quarterly trade newsletter, with hints, tips and examples of fine speechwriting
To learn more about what it has to offer and how to join, have a look at the website.
Gordon Brown's interview technique: the tip of a tedious iceberg
Yesterday, Iain Dale posted a plug for a new book about handling media interviews and included the following observation (by Dale) about Gordon Brown (or 'Boredom Frown', as my granddaughters prefer to call him):
“Gordon Brown has catchphrases he uses over and over again. Whatever the question he’s asked he’ll come out with the same five catchphrases. Someone should tell him people are getting bored. They know what the answers are going to be. He doesn’t seem to have the ability to think on his feet in the way that Blair did. He doesn’t come across well in interviews like Blair.’
I think Brown’s problem is even more serious than this. More than 20 years ago, I heard the late great Robin Day complaining that the TV interview had been hijacked by politicians. In the good old days, he said, interviewers could have a really good argument with the likes of Harold Macmillan, who would perk up at the prospect of engaging in serious debate - whereas now (i.e. more than 20 years ago), they just treat questions as prompts to say anything they like about whatever they like.
If you missed one of my postings on this theme last September, here’s part of what it said:
In an age when coverage of speeches makes up an increasingly small proportion of broadcast political news, Brown’s supporters might offer the defence that dourness on the podium doesn’t matter as much as it did in the past. But even if there is some truth in this, the trouble is that their hero has a second, and arguably even bigger, handicap in the way he conducts himself in what has become the main cockpit of political debate on television and radio, namely the interview.
For at least two decades, viewers and listeners have had put up with the sight and sound of politicians treating interviewers’ questions as prompts to say anything they like, regardless of what they were asked, or as yet another opportunity to dodge an issue. As an exponent of how to carry this depressing art to its limits, Gordon Brown has no serious competitors among contemporary British politicians. When he was still shadow chancellor, one commentator noted that if you asked him what he had for breakfast, his most likely response would be ‘what the country needs is a prudent budget’ – and that would merely be the preamble to a lecture about his latest thoughts on the matter. I recently asked one of the BBC’s most experienced and best-known presenters what it was like to interview him. His answer was rather more outspoken than I’d expected:
"Brown answers his own questions, never the interviewer's, and is utterly shameless. He will say what he wants to say and that's it. And he'll say it fifty times in one interview without any embarrassment at all. I've never met anyone quite like him in that respect. I once spent 40 minutes on one narrow point and still failed to get him to make the smallest concession. He's extraordinary and is never anything but evasive and verbose."
If politicians like Brown think it clever or smart to get one over the interviewer with such tactics, they betray a staggering lack of sensitivity to two rather obvious and basic facts about the way people interpret verbal communication. The first is that viewers and listeners can tell instantly when interviewees are being evasive. And the second is that they don’t much like it. Politicians may say that they’re worried about their low esteem in the eyes of the public and growing voter apathy. But it never seems to occur to them that their relentless refusal to give straight answers to questions might have something to do with it.
The fuller story can be seen HERE.
“Gordon Brown has catchphrases he uses over and over again. Whatever the question he’s asked he’ll come out with the same five catchphrases. Someone should tell him people are getting bored. They know what the answers are going to be. He doesn’t seem to have the ability to think on his feet in the way that Blair did. He doesn’t come across well in interviews like Blair.’
I think Brown’s problem is even more serious than this. More than 20 years ago, I heard the late great Robin Day complaining that the TV interview had been hijacked by politicians. In the good old days, he said, interviewers could have a really good argument with the likes of Harold Macmillan, who would perk up at the prospect of engaging in serious debate - whereas now (i.e. more than 20 years ago), they just treat questions as prompts to say anything they like about whatever they like.
If you missed one of my postings on this theme last September, here’s part of what it said:
In an age when coverage of speeches makes up an increasingly small proportion of broadcast political news, Brown’s supporters might offer the defence that dourness on the podium doesn’t matter as much as it did in the past. But even if there is some truth in this, the trouble is that their hero has a second, and arguably even bigger, handicap in the way he conducts himself in what has become the main cockpit of political debate on television and radio, namely the interview.
For at least two decades, viewers and listeners have had put up with the sight and sound of politicians treating interviewers’ questions as prompts to say anything they like, regardless of what they were asked, or as yet another opportunity to dodge an issue. As an exponent of how to carry this depressing art to its limits, Gordon Brown has no serious competitors among contemporary British politicians. When he was still shadow chancellor, one commentator noted that if you asked him what he had for breakfast, his most likely response would be ‘what the country needs is a prudent budget’ – and that would merely be the preamble to a lecture about his latest thoughts on the matter. I recently asked one of the BBC’s most experienced and best-known presenters what it was like to interview him. His answer was rather more outspoken than I’d expected:
"Brown answers his own questions, never the interviewer's, and is utterly shameless. He will say what he wants to say and that's it. And he'll say it fifty times in one interview without any embarrassment at all. I've never met anyone quite like him in that respect. I once spent 40 minutes on one narrow point and still failed to get him to make the smallest concession. He's extraordinary and is never anything but evasive and verbose."
If politicians like Brown think it clever or smart to get one over the interviewer with such tactics, they betray a staggering lack of sensitivity to two rather obvious and basic facts about the way people interpret verbal communication. The first is that viewers and listeners can tell instantly when interviewees are being evasive. And the second is that they don’t much like it. Politicians may say that they’re worried about their low esteem in the eyes of the public and growing voter apathy. But it never seems to occur to them that their relentless refusal to give straight answers to questions might have something to do with it.
The fuller story can be seen HERE.
Eye contact, public speaking and the case of President Zuma’s dark glasses
Having just watched Jacob Zuma being sworn in as South Africa’ new president (HERE), I was reminded of the importance of eye contact in holding the attention of an audience.
It wasn’t so much that he hardly looked up from the text, which was excusable given that the importance of getting the words right when reading out an oath, as the fact that he was wearing dark glasses at all.
Readers of my books will know that I regard some of the widely circulating claims about body language and non-verbal communication as being at best over-stated, and at worst false (e.g. see Lend Me Your Ears, Chapter 11). But eye-contact is definitely not one of these.
In fact, here’s what I wrote about the subject twenty-five years ago that bears on the case of President Zuma'a dark glasses:
‘.. humans are the only primate species in which the irises are framed by visible areas of whiteness, and it is generally considered that the evolutionary significance of this has to do with the communicative importance of our eyes: the whites of the eyes make it relatively easy for people to track even slight movements over quite large distances. An illustration of the importance of eye visibility for holding the attention of an audience is provided by an anecdote in the autobiography of the Oxford philosopher, A.J. Ayer (Part of My Life, 1977). He reports that, after sustaining a black eye as a result of bumping into a lamp post during a wartime blackout, he took to wearing dark glasses. He goes on to say that he subsequently found when lecturing in them that it was quite impossible to hold the attention of an audience. Given his reputation as an effective speaker, this suggests that the invisibility of a person's eyes can seriously interfere with his ability to communicate with an audience. It may therefore be no coincidence that there have been very few great orators who have worn spectacles, even with plain glass in them, when making speeches.’ (Our Masters’ Voices, 1984, pp.89-90).
There’s much more on why eye-contact is so important for effective public speaking in Lend Me Your Ears (pp.36-43), but an additional point about President Zuma’s choice of dark glasses is that it tends to make him look more like a South American dictator than a democratically elected president, an implicit association that he would presumably be quite keen to avoid.
All of which is to say that, if I were advising him, I’d definitely tell him to get some new glasses.
I'd also suggest that his aides should pay a bit more attention to camera angles and back-drops, because there's someone just behind him wearing a black bowler hat, the brim of which at times pokes out from the sides of the president's head - a seemingly trivial point perhaps, but I bet I'm not the only viewer who found it distracting.
Chicago!
A few days ago, I logged on to Expedia to book a flight from Detroit to Chicago, from where I was due to fly back to Heathrow. It didn’t take long and all seemed to go very smoothly - until, at Detroit airport, I discovered that I should have taken a bit longer and taken a bit more care.
So here are a couple of helpful tips for anyone who might ever have to book an internal US flight to Chicago and/or have the misfortune to fly out of Terminal 5 at O'Hare airport.
1. Unknown to me until yesterday, there are two big airports in Chicago, and I'd mistakenly booked a flight from Detroit to Chicago Midway to catch a Virgin flight to Heathrow. But Virgin flights go to and from Chicago O’Hare. Luckily, it’s only a 45 minute shuttle bus ride between the two of them and, even more luckily, I’d allowed so much time that I didn’t have to get into a serious travel flap. So, if you are booking a flight to or from Chicago, make sure you check which airport you need.
2. New and flashy though it may be, Terminal 5 at O’Hare must be the only airport in the world that has no restaurants, and precious little in the way of bar and shopping facilities, once you’ve passed through the security checks. The facilities are so minimal (a few mobile market stalls on wheels), that there’s no coffee or tea available, not even from a machine. Even more annoying is the fact that there are no notices warning you of this irritating fact before you start taking your shoes off and putting your other potentially hazardous belongings through the X ray machine.
So the moral of this part of the story is that, if you ever do have to pass through this miserable place, feeling a bit peckish or in the mood for some retail therapy, make sure you get it done before you go through security - though even then you'll still have the added stress of trying trying to work out whether you've allowed enough time to eat something, go shopping and get through the security checks before your plane leaves.
So here are a couple of helpful tips for anyone who might ever have to book an internal US flight to Chicago and/or have the misfortune to fly out of Terminal 5 at O'Hare airport.
1. Unknown to me until yesterday, there are two big airports in Chicago, and I'd mistakenly booked a flight from Detroit to Chicago Midway to catch a Virgin flight to Heathrow. But Virgin flights go to and from Chicago O’Hare. Luckily, it’s only a 45 minute shuttle bus ride between the two of them and, even more luckily, I’d allowed so much time that I didn’t have to get into a serious travel flap. So, if you are booking a flight to or from Chicago, make sure you check which airport you need.
2. New and flashy though it may be, Terminal 5 at O’Hare must be the only airport in the world that has no restaurants, and precious little in the way of bar and shopping facilities, once you’ve passed through the security checks. The facilities are so minimal (a few mobile market stalls on wheels), that there’s no coffee or tea available, not even from a machine. Even more annoying is the fact that there are no notices warning you of this irritating fact before you start taking your shoes off and putting your other potentially hazardous belongings through the X ray machine.
So the moral of this part of the story is that, if you ever do have to pass through this miserable place, feeling a bit peckish or in the mood for some retail therapy, make sure you get it done before you go through security - though even then you'll still have the added stress of trying trying to work out whether you've allowed enough time to eat something, go shopping and get through the security checks before your plane leaves.
Weatherization
Reading an American newspaper today has taught me a new word, and it's another long one, to add to my collection.
Home weatherization seems to refer to what we British speakers of English know as home insulation.
A lot of dollars are being dished out to help people to do something about it - an optimistic sign, perhaps, that the new regime is taking global warming a bit more seriously than George W. Bush, whose position on the subject made about as much sense as Thabo Mbeki's ridiculous HIV/AIDS denial policy.
Home weatherization seems to refer to what we British speakers of English know as home insulation.
A lot of dollars are being dished out to help people to do something about it - an optimistic sign, perhaps, that the new regime is taking global warming a bit more seriously than George W. Bush, whose position on the subject made about as much sense as Thabo Mbeki's ridiculous HIV/AIDS denial policy.
Notes from a large continent
After a relaxing weekend in Los Angeles enjoying perfect weather and good company, I’ve just arrived in Ann Arbor, where I’ve got to do some work at the University of Michigan.
Apart from noticing a few more long words (see previous posting) – like ‘ground transportation’ for what we Brits would be more likely to call ‘buses’ – what immediate impressions so far?
One is that everyone I’ve come across so far is very positive about the Obama presidency in a way that harks back to the early days of the Blair premiership in 1997. This is particularly so among academics, who are getting quite excited by the fact that the new president’s economic stimulus package is going to pump a few billion extra dollars into research that they hadn’t been expecting.
Another is that the word ‘pandemic’ seems to be preferred to ‘epidemic’ in much the same way as in the UK, just as the news networks are spending a lot of time finding out that not a lot seems to be happening.
On the streets, the curious thing is that the only people I’ve seen wearing face masks seem to be the Japanese, which I find quite intriguing because there were quite a lot of Japanese wearing face masks on safari in Kenya when we were there in February. When I asked our Kenyan driver what they were worried about, he said that they seem think the air in places like the Masai Mara is seriously polluted, which it isn’t.
I can see that there might be more of a case for protecting yourself against pollution in LA or Detroit, but haven’t a clue whether it’s that or flu that’s worrying them and am, of course, far too polite to ask them.
Apart from noticing a few more long words (see previous posting) – like ‘ground transportation’ for what we Brits would be more likely to call ‘buses’ – what immediate impressions so far?
One is that everyone I’ve come across so far is very positive about the Obama presidency in a way that harks back to the early days of the Blair premiership in 1997. This is particularly so among academics, who are getting quite excited by the fact that the new president’s economic stimulus package is going to pump a few billion extra dollars into research that they hadn’t been expecting.
Another is that the word ‘pandemic’ seems to be preferred to ‘epidemic’ in much the same way as in the UK, just as the news networks are spending a lot of time finding out that not a lot seems to be happening.
On the streets, the curious thing is that the only people I’ve seen wearing face masks seem to be the Japanese, which I find quite intriguing because there were quite a lot of Japanese wearing face masks on safari in Kenya when we were there in February. When I asked our Kenyan driver what they were worried about, he said that they seem think the air in places like the Masai Mara is seriously polluted, which it isn’t.
I can see that there might be more of a case for protecting yourself against pollution in LA or Detroit, but haven’t a clue whether it’s that or flu that’s worrying them and am, of course, far too polite to ask them.
Are there more longer words in American English than in British English?
One thing that's often struck me about American English is that long words quite often seem to be preferred to shorter alternatives that are more likely to be used by British speakers of English.
One example I've heard in the last half hour is 'elevator', when Brits would go in a 'lift'. Another is 'expiration', when we woild settle for the shorter 'expiry'.
Is there any evidence that longer options are more frequently used in American English, and, if so, why should this be?
One example I've heard in the last half hour is 'elevator', when Brits would go in a 'lift'. Another is 'expiration', when we woild settle for the shorter 'expiry'.
Is there any evidence that longer options are more frequently used in American English, and, if so, why should this be?
Virgin mile-high poetry
Today, I’m going to the USA for a week and have deliberately chosen to fly with Virgin, rather than the other airlines that fly to Los Angeles.
It’s nearly 25 years since I first went across the Atlantic on a Virgin flight – at a time when the upstart airline only had one leased Boeing 747-200 that spent all its time going backwards and forwards between Gatwick and Newark.
The prohibitive cost of advertising throughout the whole of the USA also prompted the airline's founder to embark on a series of stunts, like crossing the Atlantic in a speed boat, that attracted huge amounts of (free) publicity on American TV news networks.
Right from the start, Richard Branson knew exactly how much it would cost him to hand the plane back to Boeing if the venture didn’t work out. He also had the benefit of a couple of top tips from Freddie Laker, whose transatlantic Skytrain business had only recently collapsed.
One was that the Boeing 747-200 would be a better bet than the DC10s used by Skytrain, because the Boeings were big enough to bring in extra revenue by carrying cargo as well as passengers.
The other was not to concentrate on the backpacker end of the market, as Skytrain had done, but to cater for business passengers too.
So the upstairs deck in the early Virgin flights to Newark were set aside for the cheekily named ‘Upper Class’, which was soon attracting enough customers for it to be extended into the front section of the main deck as well.
It was helped along by two neat marketing ploys. One was summed up in the slogan ‘fist class quality at business class prices’, and the other was that Upper Class passengers were handed a plain brown envelope during the flight, in which there was a free coach-class ticket for another flight across the Atlantic.
On one occasion, I sat next to an English stockbroker who was working in New York. As his company let him decide on which airline to use for his regular transatlantic trips, there was no contest – he always flew on Virgin because the free ticket meant that both his parents were flying with him (for nothing and not for the first time) in the back of the plane.
In those early days, Virgin made a real effort to run Upper Class like a club, with a games area and a bottomless bar where you could go and chat to the itinerant rock 'n roll groups for whom Virgin had already become the airline of choice.
As you’d expect in a club, there was also a visitors’ book, in which customers' comments heaped at least as much praise on Virgin as the scorn they poured on British Airways and other competitors.
Nearly a quarter of a century later, one of the entries is still stuck firmly in my mind, and confirms yet again how effective simple poetic techniques like rhythm, rhyme and/or assonance can be, whether you’re writing a speech, a presentation or a comment in Virgin Atlantic's visitors’ book.
It was at a time when Britain’s (then) second biggest airline, the long-since defunct British Caledonian, was running TV commercials that showed air hostesses in kilts dancing along the aisle to entertain passengers – which must have inspired one wag to compose the following ditty for the Upper Class visitors’ book:
'B-Cal girls are all very fine
But give me a virgin every time.'
(Until 8th May, Virgin permitting, I’ll be in the USA, from where I hope to be able to carry on putting posts on the blog – but don’t be surprised if there’s a slight reduction in output during the next week).
Joanna Lumley's rhetoric outshines Clegg and Cameron
In a previous posting, I suggested that actors, with the notable exception of Ronald Reagan, aren’t always very effective speech-makers.
But yesterday, we saw actress and Gurkha justice campaigner Joanna Lumley showing two party leaders the virtues of brevity and enthusiasm when it comes to delivering a highly sound bite (rounded off with a nice simple three-part list):
LUMLEY: When it came through – we saw it on the screen in the corner I can’t tell you the sense of elation, the sense of pride: pride in our country, pride in the democratic system, pride in our parliament…
By comparison, the reactions of Messrs Clegg and Cameron came across as rather long-winded and their impact was arguably weakened by their eagerness to use the victory to get other political points across:
CLEGG: It's a victory for the rights of Gurkhas who have been waiting for so long for justice. It's a victory for Parliament over a government that just wasn't prepared to listen. But actually the biggest victory of all... it's a victory of decency. It's the kind of thing that I think people want this country to do - that we pay back our obligations, our debt of gratitude towards generations of Gurkhas who have laid their lives on the line for our safety. I'm immensely pleased that David Cameron and I have been able to work on this together, that Labour backbenchers have also been brave enough to vote with their consciences. It was a cross-party effort. It was a great, great day for everybody who believes in fairness and decency in this country.
CAMERON: Today is an historic day where Parliament took the right decision, that the basic presumption that people who fight for our country should have a right to come and live in our country has been set out very clearly. And the government now have got to come back with immediate proposals, so that those Gurkhas that have been waiting so long now for an answer can have that answer. It can be done. We've set out a way for it to be done that doesn't ruin our immigration system and it should be done. And I think everyone should say congratulations to Joanna Lumley for the incredible campaign that she's fought, with all these brave Gurkhas, some of them very old and very infirm, coming to Parliament again and again. The government attempted a shoddy deal today to try and buy off some of their backbenchers. And I'm proud of the fact that it didn't work and I'm proud of all those Labour MPs who joined us in the lobby - and actually got the right result for Britain and the Gurkhas.
But yesterday, we saw actress and Gurkha justice campaigner Joanna Lumley showing two party leaders the virtues of brevity and enthusiasm when it comes to delivering a highly sound bite (rounded off with a nice simple three-part list):
LUMLEY: When it came through – we saw it on the screen in the corner I can’t tell you the sense of elation, the sense of pride: pride in our country, pride in the democratic system, pride in our parliament…
By comparison, the reactions of Messrs Clegg and Cameron came across as rather long-winded and their impact was arguably weakened by their eagerness to use the victory to get other political points across:
CLEGG: It's a victory for the rights of Gurkhas who have been waiting for so long for justice. It's a victory for Parliament over a government that just wasn't prepared to listen. But actually the biggest victory of all... it's a victory of decency. It's the kind of thing that I think people want this country to do - that we pay back our obligations, our debt of gratitude towards generations of Gurkhas who have laid their lives on the line for our safety. I'm immensely pleased that David Cameron and I have been able to work on this together, that Labour backbenchers have also been brave enough to vote with their consciences. It was a cross-party effort. It was a great, great day for everybody who believes in fairness and decency in this country.
CAMERON: Today is an historic day where Parliament took the right decision, that the basic presumption that people who fight for our country should have a right to come and live in our country has been set out very clearly. And the government now have got to come back with immediate proposals, so that those Gurkhas that have been waiting so long now for an answer can have that answer. It can be done. We've set out a way for it to be done that doesn't ruin our immigration system and it should be done. And I think everyone should say congratulations to Joanna Lumley for the incredible campaign that she's fought, with all these brave Gurkhas, some of them very old and very infirm, coming to Parliament again and again. The government attempted a shoddy deal today to try and buy off some of their backbenchers. And I'm proud of the fact that it didn't work and I'm proud of all those Labour MPs who joined us in the lobby - and actually got the right result for Britain and the Gurkhas.
The Turnip Prize
If you’ve ever been baffled by the Turner Prize, you’re likely to find the annual Turnip Prize, keenly competed for by amateur artists in the Somerset village of Wedmore, much more accessible and entertaining.
Recent years have seen entries such as Tea P (Used tea bags in the shape of a P), Flyin saucer (dead fly in a saucer) and Bunch of Marigolds (a posy of yellow rubber gloves).
Putting in 'too much effort' or framing a work of art are grounds for disqualification.
For more information, see HERE and HERE for a selection of past exhibits.
What’s the difference between a flu 'pandemic' and a flu 'epidemic'?
I got a pretty good grade in English ‘A’ level, have spent half my life studying how language actually works and have even managed to publish five books on the subject.
So it’s quite un-nerving to realise that I’m not at all sure what a ‘pandemic’ is, even though it was the only word used in the reports of ‘swine’ (why not ‘pig’) flu in last night’s BBC television news (and every other news report I've heard or read in the last few days).
In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m the only person in the country who doesn’t know what it means, because journalists and broadcasters have taken to using the word ‘pandemic’ as if it’s perfectly obvious to everyone what a 'pandemic' is.
I definitely do know what an ‘epidemic’ is, because I had the misfortune to suffer from Asian flu during the Christmas holidays in 1957-8 – which I then had to pay for in hard labour, as one of the few ‘fags’ of my year fit enough to serve as a slave for the few prefects who were still well enough to need their shoes cleaning.
But I never heard anyone in the media or anywhere else use the word ‘pandemic’ at the time, and had never heard of it until a few years ago.
This has made me wonder if it’s yet another case of one word being replaced by another for no apparent reason – in the same way as journalists now insist on telling us that something is happening ‘ahead of’ rather than ‘before’ something else.
Dictionaries I’ve consulted haven’t been a lot of help, and the best I’ve been able to come up with so far is that a ‘pandemic’ seems to be an epidemic that spreads across more than one country.
Does this mean that the Asian flu ‘epidemic’ in the Winter of 1957-8, which certainly wasn’t confined to the UK, was in fact a ‘pandemic’?
If so, why didn’t anyone say so in 1957-8?
More to the point, can anyone explain to me why today’s media prefer the word 'pandemic' to ‘epidemic.’?
Or is it just that ‘pandemic’ sounds much more serious than 'epidemic' and makes the story sound more sensational?
So it’s quite un-nerving to realise that I’m not at all sure what a ‘pandemic’ is, even though it was the only word used in the reports of ‘swine’ (why not ‘pig’) flu in last night’s BBC television news (and every other news report I've heard or read in the last few days).
In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m the only person in the country who doesn’t know what it means, because journalists and broadcasters have taken to using the word ‘pandemic’ as if it’s perfectly obvious to everyone what a 'pandemic' is.
I definitely do know what an ‘epidemic’ is, because I had the misfortune to suffer from Asian flu during the Christmas holidays in 1957-8 – which I then had to pay for in hard labour, as one of the few ‘fags’ of my year fit enough to serve as a slave for the few prefects who were still well enough to need their shoes cleaning.
But I never heard anyone in the media or anywhere else use the word ‘pandemic’ at the time, and had never heard of it until a few years ago.
This has made me wonder if it’s yet another case of one word being replaced by another for no apparent reason – in the same way as journalists now insist on telling us that something is happening ‘ahead of’ rather than ‘before’ something else.
Dictionaries I’ve consulted haven’t been a lot of help, and the best I’ve been able to come up with so far is that a ‘pandemic’ seems to be an epidemic that spreads across more than one country.
Does this mean that the Asian flu ‘epidemic’ in the Winter of 1957-8, which certainly wasn’t confined to the UK, was in fact a ‘pandemic’?
If so, why didn’t anyone say so in 1957-8?
More to the point, can anyone explain to me why today’s media prefer the word 'pandemic' to ‘epidemic.’?
Or is it just that ‘pandemic’ sounds much more serious than 'epidemic' and makes the story sound more sensational?
Oxford professor models jeans
Here’s a short clip from a TED lecture by Oxford mathematician Professor Peter Donnelly, who does important work in genetics.
Rhetorically speaking, it’s a nice example of how effective a simple sequence of PUZZLE-SOLUTION-PUZZLE-SOLUTION can be (on which, of course, you can learn more in my books).
Rhetorically speaking, it’s a nice example of how effective a simple sequence of PUZZLE-SOLUTION-PUZZLE-SOLUTION can be (on which, of course, you can learn more in my books).
A great source of videos for anyone interested in speaking and presentation
While preparing for a visit to the University of Michigan, I was directed by one of my hosts to a fantastic source of free videos of lectures by a range of distinguished experts who speak about quite complicated subjects, mostly in a very accessible way.
If you don’t know it already, I’d strongly recommend a visit to TED – where you might like to start by watching Professor Peter Donnelly, an Oxford mathematician, who makes probability theory sound far more fascinating than anyone who ever tried to teach me maths or statistics.
The website introduces TED as follows:
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.
The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).
This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 200 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted.
A Tory leader's three evasive answers to the same question
Another gem from my video archive confirms that not answering an interviewer's questions isn't a monopoly of Labour leaders like Clement Attlee, as was vividly demonstrated 35 years ago, when a young David Frost asked the same question three times in an attempt to find out whether or not the then Tory leader, Edward Heath, liked the then Labour leader, Harold Wilson:
If you've arrived here belatedly (via Iain Dale's Daley Dozen on 5 Jan 2010), you might also be interested in my latest post on 'A Snakes & Ladders Theory of Political Communication' - which doesn't really go along with Iain's optimism about the effectiveness of interviews with politicians.
Jobsworthy News: Council official to walk along a path that doesn’t exist
For sheer entertainment, our local newspaper takes some beating. Where else but in the Wells Journal would you find such surprising news in the run-up to Christmas as was revealed under the headline ‘BUSY TIME FOR POSTAL WORKERS’?
Last week came the extraordinary revelation that a County Council employee is going to walk along a path that doesn’t exist in search of ‘important trees’ – the full story of which seems worth sharing with a wider audience:
TREES DELAYING THE STRAWBERRY LINE
The possibility that there might be important trees along the proposed Strawberry Line path between Wells and Cheddar is the latest reason for delays on revealing details of the route.
Planners at Somerset County Council have now decided that they have to decide whether a tree survey will have to be carried out on the route as part of a planning application.
A council surveyor will have to walk the length of the path, which does not yet exist, and decide if trees might be damaged by cyclists, walkers and horse riders.
The surveyor will also have to contact all the landowners along the nine-mile route of the proposed path to get permission to cross their land.
It is unclear how long it will take to carry out the initial survey, while a full tree survey would take months to complete.
A spokesman for the Strawberry Line Association, which is campaigning for the completion of the path said: “They must have a special procrastination department advising the planners.”
Previous designs for the path, along the route of the old railway line, have caused controversy because they cut through private back gardens and an industrial estate. Fundraising to pay for the path cannot start until planning permission is granted.
Last week came the extraordinary revelation that a County Council employee is going to walk along a path that doesn’t exist in search of ‘important trees’ – the full story of which seems worth sharing with a wider audience:
TREES DELAYING THE STRAWBERRY LINE
The possibility that there might be important trees along the proposed Strawberry Line path between Wells and Cheddar is the latest reason for delays on revealing details of the route.
Planners at Somerset County Council have now decided that they have to decide whether a tree survey will have to be carried out on the route as part of a planning application.
A council surveyor will have to walk the length of the path, which does not yet exist, and decide if trees might be damaged by cyclists, walkers and horse riders.
The surveyor will also have to contact all the landowners along the nine-mile route of the proposed path to get permission to cross their land.
It is unclear how long it will take to carry out the initial survey, while a full tree survey would take months to complete.
A spokesman for the Strawberry Line Association, which is campaigning for the completion of the path said: “They must have a special procrastination department advising the planners.”
Previous designs for the path, along the route of the old railway line, have caused controversy because they cut through private back gardens and an industrial estate. Fundraising to pay for the path cannot start until planning permission is granted.
Was Kenneth in Wallanderland worth a BAFTA?
I was quite surprised to see the BBC’s Wallander win last night's BAFTA award for ‘Best drama series’.
Having spent quite a lot of time in Sweden (and having watched scores of TV detective programmes), I thought it was an over-laboured attempt to depict an exaggeratedly stereotypal view of the country, its people and its cars.
I mention cars because the series featured one of those awful continuity distractions like open-mouthed acting that, once noticed, continues to irritate for however long you keep on watching the show. As far as I could see, every car that anyone drove in Wallanderland was a Volvo. But anyone who’s ever been to Sweden knows perfectly well that real live Swedes do actually drive other makes of car as well.
One thing that put me off was Kenneth Branagh’s dour and scruffy impersonation of the tight-lipped Ron Knee, Private Eye’s mythical football manager – though he wasn’t so much tight-lipped as sans-lips.
Another was that, unlike the best detective series, there were no laughs at all. In fact, Wallanderland was so completely devoid of humour that, by the time each one finished, you felt at least as depressed as Mr Branagh’s over-stated depiction of a stereotypical Swede who's quite likely to have committed suicide before the next episode.
Unfortunately, he didn't and I fear that the BBC will now use the BAFTA as an excuse to make more of the same.
A Labour leader with no interest in spin!
Regular visitors will know that I don’t much like the way media coverage of politics shows us fewer and fewer excerpts from speeches and more and more boring interviews with politicians who’ve been trained how to evade giving answers to tricky questions (e.g. see HERE, HERE and HERE).
As I’m planning to write more on this, I started looking through my collection of videos and came across this wonderful example of a Labour leader (Clement Attlee) showing as little interest in answering any questions as he does in taking the opportunity to do a bit of pre-election spinning.
As I’m planning to write more on this, I started looking through my collection of videos and came across this wonderful example of a Labour leader (Clement Attlee) showing as little interest in answering any questions as he does in taking the opportunity to do a bit of pre-election spinning.
David Cameron's attack on the Budget used some well-crafted rhetoric
Having used the neat alliterative phrase ‘decade of debt’ early in his reply to Mr Darling’s Budget speech on Wednesday, David Cameron returned to it in the second part of a contrast as he began to wind up his reply.
He then followed it up with another contrast between the last Labour government and this one, a repetitively constructed three-part list and a question – technically* pretty faultless, and hardly surprising that he was rewarded with a good deal of positive media coverage.
CAMERON:
[A] The last Labour government gave us the Winter of Discontent.
[B] This Labour Government has given us the Decade of Debt.
[A] The last Labour Government left the dead unburied.
[B] This one leaves the debts unpaid.
[1] They sit there, running out of money,
[2] running out of moral authority,
[3] running out of time.
[Q] And you have to ask yourself what on earth is the point of another fourteen months of this Government of the living dead?
(* More on these rhetorical techniques and how to use them can be found in my books Lend Me Your Ears and Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy).
He then followed it up with another contrast between the last Labour government and this one, a repetitively constructed three-part list and a question – technically* pretty faultless, and hardly surprising that he was rewarded with a good deal of positive media coverage.
CAMERON:
[A] The last Labour government gave us the Winter of Discontent.
[B] This Labour Government has given us the Decade of Debt.
[A] The last Labour Government left the dead unburied.
[B] This one leaves the debts unpaid.
[1] They sit there, running out of money,
[2] running out of moral authority,
[3] running out of time.
[Q] And you have to ask yourself what on earth is the point of another fourteen months of this Government of the living dead?
(* More on these rhetorical techniques and how to use them can be found in my books Lend Me Your Ears and Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy).
Gordon Brown seems to agree that Labour is ‘savage’ and ‘inhuman’
Unless nodding your head has come to mean something other than expressing agreement with the person you’re listening to, there was an extraordinary sequence in David Cameron’s reply to the Budget speech on Wednesday in which the Gordon Brown was to be seen to nodding quite cheerfully on being told his government is ‘savage’ and ‘inhuman’:
Poems for St George's Day
A few years ago, we had a St George's Day supper in the village pub, where part of the evening's entertainment involved giving people the first line of a limerick for them to complete.
The results included the following:
A bard from Stratford called Will
Never had enough strength in his quill.
He asked for Viagra,
But never could find her.
Forsooth Will, it's only a pill.
A bard from Stratford called Will
Drank some whiskey that made him quite ill.
Those three Scottish witches
Made him sick to the breeches.
Now he drinks Gin from a good English still.
Upon the road to Priddy Fair,
I met a maid with golden hair.
We argued all night
As to who had the right
To do what with whom and where.
There once was an English rose
With a large and roseate nose.
But it wasn't much fun
When the cold made it run,
And the drips that fell from it froze.
When Henry fought at Agincourt,
He found himself ten archers short.
"I must have the barrows
With plenty of arrows,
Or this battle will all come to nought."
P.S. Since posting these I've had an email with a rather more topical post-Budget theme:
A Scotsman called Gordon McBrown
Made the English grimace and frown
By taxing their wealth
With cunning and stealth.
But they noticed and voted him down.
Inspiring banking imagery for Budget day from Martin Luther King
I’m currently preparing for a trip to the University of Michigan next month, where I’ll be running a course for Genome scientists and giving a lecture in the Political Science Department.
So, quite by chance, I’ve spent most of Budget day rummaging through video clips to take with me and came across one of my all time favorites, namely Martin Luther King’s extraordinary use of what, on the face of it, might seem like a rather unpromising source of imagery during the early part of his ‘I have a dream’ speech.
When working with clients in the banking and finance sector, I sometimes find it quite difficult to convince them that they too could be making effective use of imagery to get their business points across.
Yet here we have someone developing an image drawn from banking to get a powerful political message across extremely effectively.
So, if you weren’t too inspired by Mr Darling’s speech earlier today, here’s something completely different: read, watch and enjoy.
MARTIN LUTHER KING:
In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check.
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.
Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.
We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.
So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
So, quite by chance, I’ve spent most of Budget day rummaging through video clips to take with me and came across one of my all time favorites, namely Martin Luther King’s extraordinary use of what, on the face of it, might seem like a rather unpromising source of imagery during the early part of his ‘I have a dream’ speech.
When working with clients in the banking and finance sector, I sometimes find it quite difficult to convince them that they too could be making effective use of imagery to get their business points across.
Yet here we have someone developing an image drawn from banking to get a powerful political message across extremely effectively.
So, if you weren’t too inspired by Mr Darling’s speech earlier today, here’s something completely different: read, watch and enjoy.
MARTIN LUTHER KING:
In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check.
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.
Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.
We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.
So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
Budget speech boredom and television news tedium
It’s now thirty years since I first started recording political speeches during the 1979 general election – but I still don’t have a single budget speech in my collection.
They tend to be so long, boring and full of statistical detail and exaggerated claims about the wonderful things in store for us that there’s seldom much of interest to a speech anorak like me.
I did once manage to listen to the whole of a Gordon Brown budget speech, but the only reason I didn’t turn it off was that I was redecorating a room and didn’t want to mess up the radio with emulsion paint.
But we now have to suffer something that’s no less tedious than the budget speech itself, namely the way television news programmes report it to us.
If there’s one thing we can be sure of today, it is that scores of television news techies will have spent countless hours cooking up yet more awful slideshows to enable the likes of Messrs. Peston, Pym and Robinson to confuse us even more about what the Chancellor’s proposals really mean.
What news of the House of Lords scandal?
At the end of January, the media was full of stories along the lines of 'Four Lords - Snape, Taylor, Truscott and Moonie - have been accused of entering into negotiations, involving fees of up to £120,000, with a newspaper's reporters', together with various calls for further investigation by the police and parliamentary authorities.
Since then, I haven't heard anything more about it, and a quick search on Google reveals that there's hardly been a mention of it in any of the media since the end of January.
If the MSM has lost interest, I'd have thought it fertile territory for political bloggers to get their teeth into.
And, given my views on the House of Lords (HERE), I'd quite like to know what's going on.
Since then, I haven't heard anything more about it, and a quick search on Google reveals that there's hardly been a mention of it in any of the media since the end of January.
If the MSM has lost interest, I'd have thought it fertile territory for political bloggers to get their teeth into.
And, given my views on the House of Lords (HERE), I'd quite like to know what's going on.
When the young Paddy Ashdown surprised himself by the power of his own rhetoric
Last night I went to an enjoyable and nostalgic event hosted by Total Politics magazine, at which Paddy Ashdown was in conversation with Iain Dale about his autobiography A Fortunate Life (April, 2009).
Hearing him in ‘elder statesman’ mode reminded me of the earliest clip from an Ashdown speech in my collection -which may well have been the first time any of his speeches had ever appeared on television (see below).
It’s from the debate on cruise missiles at the Liberal Party Assembly in 1981, two years before he became an M.P.
If the then prospective parliamentary candidate for Yeovil possessed a suit, he certainly wasn’t wearing it that day, preferring to appear in a sweater and open necked shirt – though the podium unfortunately prevents us from seeing whether or not he was also wearing sandals.
This was Ashdown in post-military mode, barking out his lines to the troops at high speed and with a serious shortage of pauses. I’ve often used it as an example of how an inexperienced speaker can sometimes be surprised by the power of his own rhetoric. The audience (predictably) applauds after the third item in a three-part list, at which point he breaks off, looking vaguely surprised by what's just happened.
POSTSCRIPT: 7 YEARS LATER
Paddy subsequently changed his position on cruise missiles, for which he was rewarded with the nickname ‘Paddy Backdown’.
This continued to haunt him during the Ashdown v. Beith campaign for the leadership of the new party formed by the Liberal-SDP merger in 1988. According to his opponents, this change of heart was evidence of inconsistency and indecisiveness, therefore making him unsuitable for leadership.
The response from some of his supporters, which you won't be able to find in his autobiography, came in the form of a very neat contrast along the lines of:
"It’s a damn sight easier to knock sense into a charismatic person than it is to knock charisma into a sensible person."
Hearing him in ‘elder statesman’ mode reminded me of the earliest clip from an Ashdown speech in my collection -which may well have been the first time any of his speeches had ever appeared on television (see below).
It’s from the debate on cruise missiles at the Liberal Party Assembly in 1981, two years before he became an M.P.
If the then prospective parliamentary candidate for Yeovil possessed a suit, he certainly wasn’t wearing it that day, preferring to appear in a sweater and open necked shirt – though the podium unfortunately prevents us from seeing whether or not he was also wearing sandals.
This was Ashdown in post-military mode, barking out his lines to the troops at high speed and with a serious shortage of pauses. I’ve often used it as an example of how an inexperienced speaker can sometimes be surprised by the power of his own rhetoric. The audience (predictably) applauds after the third item in a three-part list, at which point he breaks off, looking vaguely surprised by what's just happened.
POSTSCRIPT: 7 YEARS LATER
Paddy subsequently changed his position on cruise missiles, for which he was rewarded with the nickname ‘Paddy Backdown’.
This continued to haunt him during the Ashdown v. Beith campaign for the leadership of the new party formed by the Liberal-SDP merger in 1988. According to his opponents, this change of heart was evidence of inconsistency and indecisiveness, therefore making him unsuitable for leadership.
The response from some of his supporters, which you won't be able to find in his autobiography, came in the form of a very neat contrast along the lines of:
"It’s a damn sight easier to knock sense into a charismatic person than it is to knock charisma into a sensible person."
Obama’s rhetoric identifies with Martin Luther King but appeals to a wider audience
The oratory of Martin Luther King was clearly derived from the style of preaching he had grown up with in the Southern Baptist Church. That same tradition was also reflected in the way crowds responded to his speeches like congregations, punctuating them at regular intervals with chants like “Holy, holy, holy”, “Amen”, etc.
This was very evident in the last speech he ever made on the night before he was assassinated (see transcript and video below):
MLK: I just want to do God’s will.
CROWD: Yeah-
MLK: And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain.
CROWD: Go ahead-
MLK: And I’ve looked over,
CROWD: Yeah -
MLK: and I’ve seen the promised land.
CROWD: Holy, Holy, Holy.
CROWD: Amen.
MLK: I may not get there with you.
CROWD: Yeah – holy.
MLK: but I want you to know tonight
CROWD: Yeah -
MLK: that we as a people
CROWD: Yeah -
MLK: will get to the promised land.
CROWD: Yeah [APPLAUSE] Holy, holy.
MLK: So I’m happy tonight, I’m not worried about anything, I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord [CHEERS + APPLAUSE].
Moving though his use of biblical imagery and references to ‘God’ and ‘the Lord’ may have been, a question that never occurred to me when I first wrote about Martin Luther King’s oratory twenty five years ago (Our Masters’ Voices pp. 105-111) was how such language must have sounded to American Muslims, Jews, Hindus and non-believers, all of whom who were explicity included in the nation’s ‘patchwork heritage’ referred to in President Obama’s inaugural address.
Nor was his inaugural speech the first time that Obama’s rhetoric had broadened and extended his appeal to a much wider constituency than King’s fellow Southern Baptists and/or committed Christians. The following sequence from his victory speech in Chicago last November (for detailed analysis of rhetoric, see HERE) included clearly recognisable echoes with its mountain-climbing imagery and the claim that “we as a people will get there”:
OBAMA: The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.
CROWD: Yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can …
“We as a people will get there” may have sounded a good deal less dramatic than “We as a people will get to the promised land”, but it has the great benefit of being much more inclusive than was implied by the religious connotations of "the promised land" - while at the same time clearly identifying Mr Obama with well-known words of the person whose dream he was implicitly claiming to have fulfilled by winning the election.
The crowd also responded with a ‘secularised’ version of the kind of chanting that brought such life to Martin Luther King’s speeches, replacing words like 'holy' and 'amen' with repetitive refrain of the non-religious “Yes we can”, but still echoing or harking back to the close speaker-audience interaction of the Southern-Baptist tradition of worship.
As an outside observer of Barack Obama’s oratory and rhetoric, I have been fascinated by the way he managed, by stripping out religion from well-known words of Martin Luther King, to broaden his appeal to a much wider audience, while leaving the identification with his distinguished African-American predecessor clearly on view.
The questions I’d be fascinated to hear answered by him and his team of insiders is whether this was a deliberately contrived strategy and, if so, whose idea was it and when it was first conceived?
This was very evident in the last speech he ever made on the night before he was assassinated (see transcript and video below):
MLK: I just want to do God’s will.
CROWD: Yeah-
MLK: And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain.
CROWD: Go ahead-
MLK: And I’ve looked over,
CROWD: Yeah -
MLK: and I’ve seen the promised land.
CROWD: Holy, Holy, Holy.
CROWD: Amen.
MLK: I may not get there with you.
CROWD: Yeah – holy.
MLK: but I want you to know tonight
CROWD: Yeah -
MLK: that we as a people
CROWD: Yeah -
MLK: will get to the promised land.
CROWD: Yeah [APPLAUSE] Holy, holy.
MLK: So I’m happy tonight, I’m not worried about anything, I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord [CHEERS + APPLAUSE].
Moving though his use of biblical imagery and references to ‘God’ and ‘the Lord’ may have been, a question that never occurred to me when I first wrote about Martin Luther King’s oratory twenty five years ago (Our Masters’ Voices pp. 105-111) was how such language must have sounded to American Muslims, Jews, Hindus and non-believers, all of whom who were explicity included in the nation’s ‘patchwork heritage’ referred to in President Obama’s inaugural address.
Nor was his inaugural speech the first time that Obama’s rhetoric had broadened and extended his appeal to a much wider constituency than King’s fellow Southern Baptists and/or committed Christians. The following sequence from his victory speech in Chicago last November (for detailed analysis of rhetoric, see HERE) included clearly recognisable echoes with its mountain-climbing imagery and the claim that “we as a people will get there”:
OBAMA: The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.
CROWD: Yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can …
“We as a people will get there” may have sounded a good deal less dramatic than “We as a people will get to the promised land”, but it has the great benefit of being much more inclusive than was implied by the religious connotations of "the promised land" - while at the same time clearly identifying Mr Obama with well-known words of the person whose dream he was implicitly claiming to have fulfilled by winning the election.
The crowd also responded with a ‘secularised’ version of the kind of chanting that brought such life to Martin Luther King’s speeches, replacing words like 'holy' and 'amen' with repetitive refrain of the non-religious “Yes we can”, but still echoing or harking back to the close speaker-audience interaction of the Southern-Baptist tradition of worship.
As an outside observer of Barack Obama’s oratory and rhetoric, I have been fascinated by the way he managed, by stripping out religion from well-known words of Martin Luther King, to broaden his appeal to a much wider audience, while leaving the identification with his distinguished African-American predecessor clearly on view.
The questions I’d be fascinated to hear answered by him and his team of insiders is whether this was a deliberately contrived strategy and, if so, whose idea was it and when it was first conceived?
A day when LibDems cheered at being told they all read a broadsheet newspaper
Today’s news from Iain Dale that another blog had reported that Nick Clegg was booed at the Welsh LibDem Conference for saying “we’re all broadsheet readers here” reminded me of a time when the SDP Conference in Buxton applauded ecstatically on being told by Ann Brennan that she’d never seen so many Guardian readers in her life – from which she drew a rather ominous electoral prediction (that was also applauded) - see below (or HERE for the full speech).
Nor is Mr Clegg the first LibDem leader to be booed by the party. It also happened to Paddy Ashdown at a spring conference, where he started a joke with the line "As I was driving to Nottingham..." only to be greeted by boos and hisses. The mistake, we realised in retrospect, was that we hadn't taken into account the large number of train spotters in the party, who would applaud anything that praised railways or criticised motoring.
And what was really annoying was that the joke would have worked just as well if he'd started with "When I was on the train to Nottingham.."
Nor is Mr Clegg the first LibDem leader to be booed by the party. It also happened to Paddy Ashdown at a spring conference, where he started a joke with the line "As I was driving to Nottingham..." only to be greeted by boos and hisses. The mistake, we realised in retrospect, was that we hadn't taken into account the large number of train spotters in the party, who would applaud anything that praised railways or criticised motoring.
And what was really annoying was that the joke would have worked just as well if he'd started with "When I was on the train to Nottingham.."
Time for Gordon Brown to say "sorry" to savers
After today's belated “sorry" for emailgate, Gordon Brown went on to say that he had been “horrified, shocked and very angry indeed” about it – words that exactly sum up how I’ve been feeling about his onslaught on savers ever since he became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1997.
This blog normally concentrates on, and with occasional exceptions like today, will continue to concentrate on making observations about speaking and communication, rather than expressing political opinions. But I’ve been “horrified, shocked and very angry indeed” about Mr Brown’s attack on savers for twelve years for the very simple reason that it occurred at a time when I was devising a strategy for my own savings and retirement.
Having decided some years before 1997 that I wanted to avoid having to sink my life’s savings into an iniquitous annuity that would allow some life insurance company to pay a pitiful rate of interest – and then pocket the lot if I happened to die the next day – I had already started to invest as heavily as I could in PEPs, on the grounds that it seemed preferable to pay the tax first and enjoy tax-free benefits later than to get tax relief on today’s pension contributions in exchange for the dubious benefits of an annuity tomorrow (not to mention to have the freedom to bequeath anything I hadn’t spent to people more dear to me than an insurance company).
Then, and people seem to have forgotten this, one of Brown’s first plans when he became Chancellor was to introduce retrospective legislation that would eliminate the tax advantages that had induced millions of us to invest in PEPs. I remember writing to him (and every other relevant politician I could think of) pointing out how unfair this was, and urging that there should be no change in the terms of reference that had made people like me opt for this particular form of savings in the first place.
Thankfully, Brown dropped that plan, but didn’t drop the even more cunning plan of abolishing one of the main incentives to put savings into pension policies, namely the tax relief on dividends earned within a pension fund that used to make them build up more quickly than would otherwise have been the case.
The first ten years of this infamous raid on pension funds bagged in excess of £100 billion from millions of thrifty savers who had been naïve enough to think it might be a good idea save for their retirement.
Even without the post-credit crunch shrinkage of interest now payable on annuities, Brown’s raid had already guaranteed us a much lower pension than we’d been led to believe we’d get when we first signed up for it. It also fired the starting gun for more and more companies to close down their final salary pension schemes.
Two other things about Mr Brown’s position on savings and pensions also leave me “horrified, shocked and very angry indeed.”
One is that he suddenly and belatedly started to sound surprised and worried that the country is now facing a major pensions crisis.
The other is that, whenever interviewers dare to raise the subject with him, he never admits that he had anything to do with it, and becomes even more evasive than the 'default' extreme evasiveness he typically displays in response to any question anyone ever puts to him.
Saying “sorry” for emailgate may or may not work as an effective piece of damage limitation in the aftermath of the recent misconduct of his inner circle.
But the “sorry” millions of us are still waiting for is for the damage he, and not his henchmen, did to our savings.
Unfortunately for us, it’s far too late to limit the damage he’s already done.
Unfortunately for him, none of us will have forgotten about it when we go into the ballot box.
Burnham, Kinnock and the danger of speaking in a sports stadium
Andy Burnham, Secretary for Culture, Media and Sport, was no doubt as surprised by the hostile response from the crowd of 30,000 Liverpool supporters at Anfield yesterday as Neil Kinnock was by the adulation he received from the 10,000 Labour supporters at the fateful Sheffield Arena election rally in 1992.As it turned out, both of them fell victim to the unpredictable spontaneity of a mass audience – which should perhaps remind our politicians to think twice before making any more speeches in a sports stadium.
Derek Draper – another psycho-therapist who talks too much and listens too little?
I recently posted a note about Derek Draper breaking a basic rule of turn-taking in conversation (‘one speaker at a time’), illustrated by a video of him and Paul Staines being interviewed by Andrew Neill.
Since then, I’ve come across a transcript with more examples of Mr Draper interrupting a co-interviewee, this time former Tory cabinet minister John Redwood – and another case where the interviewer intervenes to put a stop to it (full transcript HERE) – which suggests that the earlier observation may not have been an isolated instance:
Redwood: "Well he was the chief regulator of them, he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer running a tripartite regulatory system… "
Draper: "Of course he wasn’t the regulator, the regulation was at arm’s length."
Redwood: "Derek you have to let me speak occasionally."
…
Redwood: "They allowed the banks to borrow and lend… "
Draper: "You don’t think that perhaps… "
Interviewer: "Hang on, hang on, let him finish."
Bearing in mind that Mr Draper is some kind of psycho-therapist, this and the earlier exchange with Andrew Neill are consistent with something I’ve noticed about the conversational style of quite a few people who’ve made a late career decision to go into counselling of one kind or another, namely that they tend to be (a) very talkative and (b) not very good at listening to what anyone else has to say.
Given that being a good listener is presumably essential if you’re going to be any good at helping people with their problems, I’ve often wondered if psycho-therapy and counselling are occupations that, for some mysterious reason, attract square pegs into round holes.
And my hypothesis is certainly not undermined by the low ratings and negative comments by readers in the Amazon customer reviews of Mr Draper’s recent book on the subject.
Since then, I’ve come across a transcript with more examples of Mr Draper interrupting a co-interviewee, this time former Tory cabinet minister John Redwood – and another case where the interviewer intervenes to put a stop to it (full transcript HERE) – which suggests that the earlier observation may not have been an isolated instance:
Redwood: "Well he was the chief regulator of them, he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer running a tripartite regulatory system… "
Draper: "Of course he wasn’t the regulator, the regulation was at arm’s length."
Redwood: "Derek you have to let me speak occasionally."
…
Redwood: "They allowed the banks to borrow and lend… "
Draper: "You don’t think that perhaps… "
Interviewer: "Hang on, hang on, let him finish."
Bearing in mind that Mr Draper is some kind of psycho-therapist, this and the earlier exchange with Andrew Neill are consistent with something I’ve noticed about the conversational style of quite a few people who’ve made a late career decision to go into counselling of one kind or another, namely that they tend to be (a) very talkative and (b) not very good at listening to what anyone else has to say.
Given that being a good listener is presumably essential if you’re going to be any good at helping people with their problems, I’ve often wondered if psycho-therapy and counselling are occupations that, for some mysterious reason, attract square pegs into round holes.
And my hypothesis is certainly not undermined by the low ratings and negative comments by readers in the Amazon customer reviews of Mr Draper’s recent book on the subject.
A smear that never was
During the election of a new leader for the new party formed after the merger of the SDP and the Liberal Party in 1988, there was talk of a possible smear that could have gone either way.
Those of us on Paddy Ashdown’s campaign team got wind of the fact that supporters of his opponent, Alan Beith, had recruited a handwriting expert to analyse a sample of Paddy’s writing without revealing whose writing it was - in the hope that it might reveal some character flaw that might damage his chances of winning.
But the expert apparently disappointed them by saying that he/she had never before seen ‘leadership’ jumping so forcibly off the page - which meant that they had more reason to hide the news than to leak it to the media.
Needless to say, we thought this was hilarious, but it did raise the question of whether or not it would be to our advantage to let the media know that the Beith camp had been cooking up a dirty trick that had rebounded on them by showing that our candidate’s handwriting oozed ‘leadership’.
I’m pleased to say that our decision not to leak the story to the press was unanimous.
Two decades later, and in the light of recent smear stories, I find myself wondering whether we would have been quite so virtuous had the polls and projections not already been showing that Paddy was almost certain to win - a luxury not enjoyed by Gordon Brown's entourage.
Those of us on Paddy Ashdown’s campaign team got wind of the fact that supporters of his opponent, Alan Beith, had recruited a handwriting expert to analyse a sample of Paddy’s writing without revealing whose writing it was - in the hope that it might reveal some character flaw that might damage his chances of winning.
But the expert apparently disappointed them by saying that he/she had never before seen ‘leadership’ jumping so forcibly off the page - which meant that they had more reason to hide the news than to leak it to the media.
Needless to say, we thought this was hilarious, but it did raise the question of whether or not it would be to our advantage to let the media know that the Beith camp had been cooking up a dirty trick that had rebounded on them by showing that our candidate’s handwriting oozed ‘leadership’.
I’m pleased to say that our decision not to leak the story to the press was unanimous.
Two decades later, and in the light of recent smear stories, I find myself wondering whether we would have been quite so virtuous had the polls and projections not already been showing that Paddy was almost certain to win - a luxury not enjoyed by Gordon Brown's entourage.
Derek Draper breaks a basic rule of conversation
This year is the 35th anniversary of the publication of a foundational paper that established conversation analysis as a new and serious force across several disciplines in the area of language and social interaction. *
The paper is a defining analysis of how turn-taking works in everyday conversation, central to which is the most basic rule of all, namely ‘one speaker at a time’ – a rule so basic that we even have words in our language – ‘interruption’ and ‘interjection’ – for referring to breaches of it (i.e. speaking while someone else is speaking).
The fact that there are such words in our vocabulary means that the ‘one at a time’ rule must get broken quite often in conversations, as indeed it does.
But the point is that if you make a regular habit of speaking while someone else is speaking, you’re taking quite a risk because it involves, in effect, putting your reputation on the line - for the simple reason that others will not only notice what you’re doing but will also use such behaviour as evidence for coming to negative conclusions about your character and personality. That’s why we often hear complaints about someone being ‘pushy’, ‘domineering’, ‘hogging the conversation’, ‘never letting anyone get a word in edgeways’, ‘liking the sound of their own voice’, etc.
Having just got back from a skiing holiday, I was reminded about this while trying to catch up on the ‘Smeargate’ affair, which included watching Andrew Neill interviewing Derek Draper and Paul Staines.
Try watching the edited sequence below (or the whole interview HERE) and ask yourself three questions:
1. How many times does Mr Draper break the 'one at a time' rule?
2. What impression of him as a person is conveyed by Mr Draper’s repeated breaches of the rule?
3. How often have you seen an interviewer appeal to the ‘one at a time’ rule to restore normal turn-taking, as Neill does when he finally intervenes with “will you shut up for a minute and let him answer” ?
And, as an incidental footnote (given the Berkeley shirt worn by Mr Staines and his reason for wearing it) all three authors of this seminal paper really did have PhDs from the University of California, two of them from the Berkeley campus, where Sacks and Schegloff were supervised by the late great Erving Goffman.
* A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation by: Harvey Sacks, Emanuel A Schegloff, Gail Jefferson, Language, Vol. 50, No. 4. (1974), pp. 696-735.
The paper is a defining analysis of how turn-taking works in everyday conversation, central to which is the most basic rule of all, namely ‘one speaker at a time’ – a rule so basic that we even have words in our language – ‘interruption’ and ‘interjection’ – for referring to breaches of it (i.e. speaking while someone else is speaking).
The fact that there are such words in our vocabulary means that the ‘one at a time’ rule must get broken quite often in conversations, as indeed it does.
But the point is that if you make a regular habit of speaking while someone else is speaking, you’re taking quite a risk because it involves, in effect, putting your reputation on the line - for the simple reason that others will not only notice what you’re doing but will also use such behaviour as evidence for coming to negative conclusions about your character and personality. That’s why we often hear complaints about someone being ‘pushy’, ‘domineering’, ‘hogging the conversation’, ‘never letting anyone get a word in edgeways’, ‘liking the sound of their own voice’, etc.
Having just got back from a skiing holiday, I was reminded about this while trying to catch up on the ‘Smeargate’ affair, which included watching Andrew Neill interviewing Derek Draper and Paul Staines.
Try watching the edited sequence below (or the whole interview HERE) and ask yourself three questions:
1. How many times does Mr Draper break the 'one at a time' rule?
2. What impression of him as a person is conveyed by Mr Draper’s repeated breaches of the rule?
3. How often have you seen an interviewer appeal to the ‘one at a time’ rule to restore normal turn-taking, as Neill does when he finally intervenes with “will you shut up for a minute and let him answer” ?
And, as an incidental footnote (given the Berkeley shirt worn by Mr Staines and his reason for wearing it) all three authors of this seminal paper really did have PhDs from the University of California, two of them from the Berkeley campus, where Sacks and Schegloff were supervised by the late great Erving Goffman.
* A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation by: Harvey Sacks, Emanuel A Schegloff, Gail Jefferson, Language, Vol. 50, No. 4. (1974), pp. 696-735.
INTERLUDE until Easter
As I may not be able to post anything for the next few days, normal service will be resumed after Easter, when I hope you'll keep on coming back to the blog.
Meanwhile, and in the noble tradition of early days of BBC Television 'Interludes', you might enjoy the following, which arrived recently by email (and make sure you have the sound on).
Meanwhile, and in the noble tradition of early days of BBC Television 'Interludes', you might enjoy the following, which arrived recently by email (and make sure you have the sound on).
Gordon Brown’s G20 address ignores an important tip from Winston Churchill
Whenever I’m asked about the biggest single problem I’ve come across since migrating from academia into training and coaching, my answer is always the same, namely the sight and sound of speakers trying to get far too much information across – aided and abetted by programs like PowerPoint that implicitly encourage presenters to load up the screen with far too much detail.
It’s something that was very well understood by Winston Churchill, who said:
“If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time with a tremendous whack.”
But it’s never been very well understood by Gordon Brown, as was evidenced yet again in his address at yesterday’s pre-G20 press conference.
Announcing that there are five tests for the G20 summit may not have been quite as daunting to the audience as showing a slide listing seventeen items to be covered, as was once tried by someone I was trying to cure. But it hardly makes you sit up eagerly waiting to hear what’s coming up.
If you can bear to test this out for yourself, try watching the segment below, wait ten minutes and then see how many of his 5 points you can remember (and this clip, by the way, only took up 28% of the full statement, which serious anoraks can watch HERE ).
Other recent postings on Gordon Brown's speeches include:
• Gordon Brown is finding the Jacqui Smith expenses story more ‘delicate’ than he says
• It’s time Brown stopped recycling other people’s lines
• Brown’s ‘poetry’ heads up news of his speech to Congress
• Unexpected poetry in Gordon Brown's speech to the US Congress
• Gordon Brown’s model example of how to express condolences
It’s something that was very well understood by Winston Churchill, who said:
“If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time with a tremendous whack.”
But it’s never been very well understood by Gordon Brown, as was evidenced yet again in his address at yesterday’s pre-G20 press conference.
Announcing that there are five tests for the G20 summit may not have been quite as daunting to the audience as showing a slide listing seventeen items to be covered, as was once tried by someone I was trying to cure. But it hardly makes you sit up eagerly waiting to hear what’s coming up.
If you can bear to test this out for yourself, try watching the segment below, wait ten minutes and then see how many of his 5 points you can remember (and this clip, by the way, only took up 28% of the full statement, which serious anoraks can watch HERE ).
Other recent postings on Gordon Brown's speeches include:
• Gordon Brown is finding the Jacqui Smith expenses story more ‘delicate’ than he says
• It’s time Brown stopped recycling other people’s lines
• Brown’s ‘poetry’ heads up news of his speech to Congress
• Unexpected poetry in Gordon Brown's speech to the US Congress
• Gordon Brown’s model example of how to express condolences
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