Interview techniques, politicians and how we judge them

It’s almost impossible to watch or listen to a media interview without coming to a positive or negative impression of the person who is being interviewed.

This is very clear in the following exchange between Andrew Neil and cabinet minister Yvette Cooper – watch the whole thing first and see what you think before reading on:

I deliberately didn’t use the original YouTube version, because its title – ‘Yvette Cooper’s worst interview yet … probably (and that’s saying something)’ – might have influenced your own personal reaction.

The video a splendid example of something I’ve mentioned in a number of previous posts, namely that a major reason why the interview is such an unsatisfactory form of political communication is that it’s so easy for politicians not to answer questions and so difficult for interviewers to extract answers from them (without coming across as unreasonably hostile or biased, on which see HERE).

In this case, the interviewer's difficulties in getting an answer out of the interviewee and her determination not to provide one are even more evident than usual, because of the extraordinary amount time that both of them spend speaking at the same time as each other – which is a such a flagrant breach of the most basic rule of conversation of all, namely ‘one speaker speaks at a time’, that it’s bound to be noticed by any competent speaker of the language (i.e. viewers and listeners).

But what still hasn’t dawned on politicians (and the media advisors who train them how to perform in interviews) is that coming across as evasive or as someone who ‘hogs’ the conversation’ invariably creates a negative impression.

So, if your reaction to Ms Cooper veered towards the negative end of the scale, you shouldn’t be at all surprised. You are not alone – as you’ll see from these samples from the 117 comments posted by some of the 8,000 people who have so far seen the interview on YouTube:

“I watched this today as well, and couldn't believe my eyes. Every time I see her being interviewed she always tries to speak over the interviewer and never answers the question directly. She has this 'I don't care how stupid I look' kind of attitude which doesn't do her or her party any favours. Just answer the question you silly woman!”

“All Labour ministers go to the same school where they learn to ignore the question, talking over the interviewer and acting in a supercilious arrogant manner. No wonder the public hate them.”

“This is Bliar's real legacy. The complete triumph of waffle and spin over unpleasant facts.”

“I'm surprised the leftist BBC allowed Andrew Neil to press Cooper like this. But he did a good job and still got no answer. As other people have said on here, she is just a pre-programmed robot reading from a script embedded in her brain.”

TWO TECHNIQUES FOR WINNING AND HOLDING THE FLOOR

The video also provides some excellent illustrations of what the late Gail Jefferson, one of the founders of conversation analysis, referred to as ‘overlap competition’.

The argument, briefly stated, goes like this. So basic is the ‘one speaker at a time’ rule that we get uneasy when we find ourselves in situations where it is being violated, whether by ourselves or by someone else. As a result, one or other of the speakers will always eventually give way, thereby enabling a return to orderly turn-taking where ‘one speaker speaks at a time’.

Jefferson also noted that there are two techniques available to interrupters, one of which is always far more effective than the other when it comes to winning and holding the floor.

To win, all you have to do is to carry on speaking and ignore anyone else’s attempts to ‘get a word in edgeways’. And it’s no use just trying to get the odd word or two in - e.g. ‘but- but- but' - and expect that the other person will give way, because, so long as you proceed no further than that, they won’t.

For the purposes of what follows, let’s call these truncated attempts to get the floor the ‘staccato’ technique.

But if you’re more persistent and launch unhesitatingly into producing a fully-fledged sentence, the power of the one speaker at a time rule will start to weaken the other person's determination and knock them off course – by making him or her feel just as uneasy and inhibited as you felt when you were breaking the rule.

So long as you carry on speaking as fluently as you can (or dare), you’ll eventually force your competitor to back off and leave you in the clear to say whatever you like.

For the purposes of what follows, let’s call this the ‘continuo’ technique).

I’ve edited this interview into five consecutive sequences, in which you can not only see both speakers using both of these techniques, but also how whichever one persists with the ‘continuo’ technique always wins.

Episode 1: Neil's initial use of staccato fails and he only wins when he uses continuo to assert that he's asking her a question:

Episode 2: Neil’s several initial attempts at staccato are defeated by Cooper’s persistent use of continuo:

Episode 3: Neil’s initial attempts with staccato fail but he wins through as soon as he opts for continuo:

Episode 4: Cooper’s persistent use of continuo wins through and frustrates Neil to the point where he explicitly complains that she is preventing him from asking his question.

Episode 5: Having got the floor, Neil makes the most of it by asking a much longer question than usual, which Cooper seems to treat as an invitation to produce an even longer answer. Initially, her use of continuo successfully holds Neil’s staccato efforts at bay. Then, very unusually, both of them start using continuo at the same time, and Cooper only backs off when she gets to the end of her sentence, leaving Neil in the clear to carry on and get his question out.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY

Next time you find yourself in a situation where you’re competing to get a chance to speak, remember that the staccato technique is unlikely to succeed, but that you're almost certain to win if you’re prepared to use the continuo technique.

But remember too that the only thing you'll win is the space to say whatever it is you want to say and that such victories come at a price - namely that people will not only notice what you're doing but will also use such behaviour as a basis for drawing negative conclusions about you and the kind of person you are.

Sooner or later, politicians may actually wake up to this brutal fact of life and realise how little there is to be gained from talking over their interviewers and ignoring the questions put to them.

And as a footnote, on this evidence from Ms Cooper (AKA Mrs Ed Balls), one does have to wonder who wears the trousers in the Balls household?

RELATED POSTS

· Why it's so easy for politicians not to answer interviewers' questions - and what should be done about it

· Gordon Brown’s interview technique: the tip of a tedious iceberg

· A prime minister who openly refused to answer an interviewer’s questions

· A Tory leader's three evasive answers to the same question

· A Labour leader with no interest in spin!

· Derek Draper breaks a basic rule of conversation

· Applause for Dimbleby’s questions on Question Time

Banksy officially on show in Bristol

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he’s dead right.

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

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

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

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

"Labour's not for turning" - Peter Hain

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

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

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

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

Presidential heights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monty Python's Election Night Special

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lord Mandelspin strikes again

The bloggers' verdict on this morning's interview of Peter Mandelson by Andrew Marr seems to be that the former ran rings around the latter (e.g. HERE).

But it's hardly surprising given that the only proper job Mandelson had before he went into politics was as a back room boy on LWT's Weekend World for Brian Walden, one of the finest interviewers ever seen on British television.

As for whether or not it's a good idea to allow spin doctors to migrate from behind the scenes to centre stage is arguably much more debatable than Gordon Brown seems to think. Or perhaps the P.M. is the only person in the country who has forgotten the troubles associated with his new deputy's various departures from Blair governments.

My problem, whenever I see Lord Mandelson on the screen, is that it always reminds me of Rory Bremner's brilliant impersonations of him, and I'd be very surprised if I'm the only viewer who can't get this image out of my head.

Brown does a better job than Obama at the 65th anniversary of D-Day

In case anyone thinks that I only ever post negative comments about Gordon Brown (not so, as you can see HERE and HERE), I do agree with today’s positive assessment of his D-Day performance by Clark Judge, a former Reagan speechwriter: 

'Today, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was by far the most eloquent and most appropriate, at least to this American’s ear.  More purely than the others, he captured the transcendent significance of the moment — the legacy of sacrifice for an enduring cause that ennobled and continues to ennoble the world.  At stake was something larger than one country, one moment, one fight, something beyond time and place, something on which all of time would turn, and he captured that.

'The others were good, though each with an ever so slightly bemusing touch of the parochial.  Was a ceremony marking heroic exertions made in alliance with Britain really the right occasion for a US president to invoke Lexington and Concord?  And didn’t the soldiers of all the countries engaged that day, not just Canadians (the only focus of the Canadian PM’s account of the post-war world), return home to build, not just a better country, but a better world?  And didn’t the men who hit the beaches in 1944 fight for something beyond national vengeance and personal survival, though from the repeated references in the French president’s remarks you might have thought otherwise'  (see Podium Pundits for fuller version).

President Obama came nowhere near matching Ronald Reagan’s masterpiece on the 40^th anniversary of D-Day (HERE), and, as Clark Judge notes, the references to battles in the American war of independence did seem a bit barmy in the presence of a distinguished British contingent that included a direct descendent (Prince Charles) of the king against whom they were rebelling.

How Caroline Flint gave the game away about expecting a post in the cabinet

It’s hardly surprising that people believe that Caroline Flint was expecting a seat in the cabinet when she expressed loyalty to Gordon Brown the day before she resigned.  

Have a look at the interview below, where, after a minute or two, you can hear her saying: “.. and serving, if he wants me to, in Gordon Brown’s c-uhh-government.”  

Given the context of the discussion, it's difficult to think of any word beginning with a ‘c’ or a ‘k’ other than ‘cabinet’ that she so quickly aborted and corrected to "government".

The trouble with slips like this is that, as the late Harvey Sacks, one of the founders of conversation analysis, used to say “Once it’s out, it’s anyone’s.” 

The interview is interesting in other ways too, as it includes quite a lot of breaches of one of the most basic conversational rules of all, namely 'one speaker speaks at a time' (for more on which, see HERE). 

You can also see an interesting first hand report on the interview HERE from Iain Dale, one of the interviewees.

Gordon Brown’s honesty about the death of New Labour

The Prime Minister’s press conference yesterday has aroused much media comment about the gap between his declaration of paternally derived honesty and the apparent lack of it in his denial that he’d ever intended to sack the Chancellor of the Exchequer.  

But one thing that did come across as much more honest than perhaps even he realises, was his further confirmation that he has abandoned the language of New Labour. 

Five years ago, when Brown and his cronies were briefing away about getting rid of Tony Blair, I wrote a piece (HERE) suggesting they were mistaken, and included the line ‘Blair and Brown were co-architects of New Labour, even though Brown now seems obsessed with deleting the phrase from his vocabulary.'

Nor was it just the phrase ‘New Labour’ that Brown stopped using all those years ago. Another is the phrase ‘public investment’. 

Shortly after Tony Blair’s second election victory, I met one of his closest aides at a conference.  As a student of language and communication, I had been intrigued by the way in which he and everyone else in the party had, since the birth of ‘New Labour’, only talked about ‘public investment’, ‘investment’ in health, education, social services, etc.,  but never mentioned the once more usual term ‘public expenditure’.

So I asked him if this preference for the word ‘investment’ was a deliberate ploy because it sounded more respectable and less worrying than words like ‘spending’ and ‘expenditure’ – to which he replied “Of course it is”. 

But under Gordan Brown this key term in the original language of ‘New Labour’ has disappeared as completely as the phrase ‘New Labour’ itself. 

As you can see in the following extracts from Mr Brown’s press conference yesterday, he is as relaxed in talking about public ‘expenditure’ as he is in boasting about it as an unquestionable virtue. 

On this, at least, his performance arguably displayed a refreshing degree of honesty .

D-Day 65th Anniversary (2): a reminder for Sarkozy and a challenge for Obama

Prompted by the news that the Queen hadn't been invited to today’s 65^th anniversary commemoration of D-Day, I recently posted a clip from Ronald Reagan’s moving speech at Pointe du Hoc on the 40^th anniversary in 1984. 

Here is an audio version of the whole speech that serves as the soundtrack to a neatly edited collection of pictures and film footage from D Day. 

I don’t know if President Sarkozy’s English is up to understanding one of Ronald Reagan's finest speeches, but it wouldn’t do him any harm just to watch the visual reminders of the Normandy landings. Had he done so a few weeks ago, he might have shown a bit more diplomacy when it came to making the arrangements for today. 

Meanwhile, the challenge for President Obama is how do you follow the great communicator when he was right at the top of his game?

(See also D-Day 65th Anniversary (1).

 

D-Day 65th Anniversary: (1) A British soldier returns to Gold Beach

"You just had to do it and you did it." - Ken Scott, Durham Light Infantry.

Click HERE for fuller story.

The end of free speech?

In the wake of James Purnell's resignation from the cabinet last night, the following worrying statement came from the higher reaches of the Labour Party:

"Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman told GMTV: 'If James Purnell wants to make his decision to leave the government, then that's a matter for him, but he's not entitled to say that the prime minister has to go too'" (my emphases).

Er, why not? 

Obama: Echoes of Berlin in Cairo

Speaking in Berlin in 1963, President Kennedy showed how a few words in the local language is a sure fire way of winning approval (in the form of applause) from a foreign audience (clip 1 below). 

Today, speaking in Cairo, President Obama did the same with a few words in Arabic (clip 2 below), and also showed how a quotation from the local religious holy book can be just as effective (clip 3). 

And he came close to recycling a line from the speech he himself had made in Berlin last year (clips 4 & 5). 

Far from implying criticism of him for doing this, I find it very encouraging to hear him sounding as though he is serious about putting into practice an approach to foreign policy that he was only able to make promises about before he became president. 

But whether or not we should read anything significant into the replacement of  the word 'trust' with the word 'respect'  is a question on which I'd need an opinion from an expert on diplomatic semantics.

Inspiring speech for polling day by Peter Sellers

Last November I posted a link to the classic political speech by Peter Sellers to mark the 50th anniversary of its release on The Best of Sellers album - but have just discovered that the link isn't working any more.

What better day to put things right than by posting it again today to inspire us as we make our way to the polling booths?

Pre-delicate hitches from the White House

The delicate nature of some recent news stories seems to have produced a deluge of ‘pre-delicate hitches’ (for more on which, see HERE).

Hillary Clinton was at it in response to the nuclear news from North Korea last week, as was Gordon Brown on Sunday when challenged about the Queen not being invited to the forthcoming 65th anniversary commemorations of D-Day.

So too, on the same delicate subject, was this White House spokesman who managed to produce an ‘uh’ at a rate of once every 3.5 words:

Journalist: Since Queen Elizabeth is the only living head of state who served in the armed forces during World War II, President Obama believes that she should surely be officially invited, doesn't he?

Spokesman: He does and uh uh we uh u are working with those involved uh uh to see if uh we could make that happen. Obviously –

Journalist: Wonderful!

Body language and non-verbal communication

This cartoon strip is the briefest summing up I've come across of the absurdity of the overstated claims about the supposedly overwhelming importance of body language and non-verbal communication that circulate so widely in the worlds of presentation skills and management training.

So I was pleased to see that the debate has resurfaced again HERE, as it's something I've been banging on about it for years (see, for example, 'Physical Facts and Fiction', Chapter 11, Lend Me Your Ears) and Step 7 in Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy.

One of the most widely repeated myths asserts that the relative importance of different factors in communication is even more extreme than the 80% referred to in the above cartoon, namely:

Words: 7%
Body language: 38%
Tone of voice: 55%.

But the idea that 93% of communication is non-verbal flies in the face of our common sense experience, and I've never heard any of its advocates address any of the following rather obvious questions:

1. How come it's much easier to have a conversation with a blind person than with someone who's completely deaf?
2. How come we can have perfectly good conversations in the dark?
3. How come telephones and radio have been such spectacular successes?
4. How come we have to work so hard to learn foreign languages?

To these, I would add what I consider to be quite an important lesson from my experience of doing research into political speech-making, which was originally based solely on audio tape recordings. Once video tapes became available, however, none of the audio-based findings had to be rejected or seriously revised, though the added visual dimension did help to extend our understanding and, in some cases, to explain apparently 'deviant' cases.

The same applies more generally to research in the field of conversation analysis, where I know of no examples where audio-based findings had to be rejected, or even significantly modified, in the face of video recorded data.

In other words, most of the core observations were originally derived from audio evidence alone, and were robust enough to survive the more detailed scrutiny that becomes possible with access to video-recordings.

That's why I'm so convinced that what is said is far more important than the 7% brigade make out. Otherwise, the forum speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar would presumably have started with the words 'Lend me your EYES' - and I wouldn't have been so stupid as to publish a book entitled Lend Me Your Ears.

'Pre-delicate hitches' from Brown as he avoids answering a question about the Queen

I’ve already posted some observations about ‘pre-delicate hitches’ coming out of the mouths of Gordon Brown and Hillary Clinton.

The general point is that such ‘hitches’ (e.g. ums, ers, pauses, restarted words, etc.) tend to happen when a speaker is about to say something that he or she knows is likely to come across as ‘delicate’ to their listeners.

And they came thick and fast on Sunday morning as Mr Brown tried to deal with Andrew Marr’s challenging question about why the Queen hadn’t been invited to attend the D-Day commemorations in Normandy.

Needless to say, he didn’t make any attempt to answer the question, but the number and frequency of 'hitches' suggest that he might actually have been finding his own evasiveness more uncomfortable than he usually does.

MARR: It’s a disgrace, is it not, that the Queen is not going to be representing us at D-Day at those commemoration services in France. How did that come about?

BROWN: I-I think-uh-eh you have to uh-ask-uh th-the palace to get their statements uh-u- on this.

Uh I have simply done what is my duty as a – as a Prime Minister – I’ve-uh accepted the u-personal invitation of Mr- Mr Sarkozy.

I think you know that Mr Harper, the Canadian prime minister, i- is going, and I think in these circumstances, this particular event uh-was-uh this one of the events was –was –was one that the president wanted to be for prime ministers and presidents, but if the Queen wanted to attend these- these- these events, or if any member of the Royal family wanted to attend these events, I would make that possible."

The end of the beginning

Given the continuing mystery about whether the Queen will or won't be at the D Day commemorations later this week, it was good to see that so many of you had look at the speech made at Pointe du Hoc by Ronald Reagan on the 40th anniversary of D day back in 1984.

But I wasn’t really surprised, because it confirmed something I’ve believed for quite some time, namely that there's a greater public demand for watching and listening to speeches than the current media establishment seems to believe (for more on which, see HERE and HERE) – a point that has, of course, been amply demonstrated by rise and rise of Barack Obama.

So here’s another classic. One of the frustrating things for students of speech-making is that very few of Winston Churchill’s great wartime speeches are available on film.

A notable exception was his famous three-part list after the battle of Alamein in 1942 (in a speech at the Mansion House), in which each next item contrasts with the previous one and, not surprisingly, prompted an instant burst of applause.

How NOT to use PowerPoint

When the manuscript of my book Lend Me Your Ears was in its final stages before publication, my publisher's lawyers tried to get me to 'tone down' some of the sections that were critical of the style of slide-dependent presentation that has become the industry standard in so many companies and organisations.

They were apparently worried that it might prompt legal action from Microsoft, but I refused to make any changes for two reasons. First, my understanding of the law on defamation is that you have a defence if you can show that what you were saying is true. Second, sales would surely benefit enormously if the purveyors of PowerPoint decided to litigate.

Unfortunately, sales of the book had no such PR boost. Nor, as far as I know have other critics been sued, and I remain baffled as to why the lawyers were so cautious when stuff like the following is freely available on YouTube and, as far as I know, hasn't attracted any attention from Microsoft's legal department.

P.S. (Five months later): The interesting question is who got YouTube to remove the above version 'due to terms of use violation'? And did they think that there aren't any other copies still posted on YouTube (e.g. HERE) and/or below?

FOR MORE ON POWERPOINT AND RELATED PROBLEMS, SEE ALSO:
The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation
There’s nothing wrong with PowerPoint - until there’s an audience
An imaginative innovation in a PowerPoint presentation?
If Bill Gates doesn't read bullet points from PowerPoint slides ...
PowerPoint Peston
PowerPoint style presentation continues to dominate BBC News – courtesy Robert Peston (again)
Slidomania epidemic contaminates another BBC channel
BBC Television NEWS: produced for or by morons?

Why has Gordon Brown become a regular on the Today programme?

It used to be the case that the prime ministers only went on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme during general elections (when they appeared in one of the slots for party leaders), or when they were visiting some foreign country.

That was certainly the rule in Mrs Thatcher’s day, and I don’t remember hearing much of Blair on the programme (except during elections) either.

So I was very surprised, not long after he’d finally made it into number 10, to hear Gordon Brown being interviewed on Today. And he seems to have made a habit of it and was at it again this morning, less than 24 hours after doing a TV interview with Andrew Marr on Sunday.

What’s even more surprising is that Mr Brown (and/or his aides) seem to think that it’s a smart move to inflict more and more interviews with him on a mass audience.

If his interview performances had a proven track record in winning friends and influencing people, they might have a point.

But, as I’ve noted before (e.g. HERE), Mr Brown is not as smart an interviewee as he seems to think he is – unless, of course, I’m completely wrong in believing that there’s nothing like repetitive evasiveness and undisciplined verbosity when it comes to alienating listeners and viewers.

BLOG INDEX: Sept 2008-May 2009

This is a list of everything posted since the blog started in September 2008.

It's updated at the end of each month, and you can access direct links to each one by clicking HERE or from the monthly lists on the left.

MAY 2009
• Ronald Reagan's moving tribute on the 40th anniversary of D Day
• Driving a car can make you look younger than you really are
• Planning to say 'um' and 'uh'
• The ‘delicacy’ of Mrs Clinton’s ‘consequences’ for North Korea
• Clinton on North Korea: "There are consequences to such actions"
• Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Oscar acceptance speech
• Obama’s nomination of Judge Sotomayor received five times more applause than ‘normal’
• Two tips for David Cameron after today’s speech on political change
• Bishops' attendance rates and allowances in the House of Lords
• Climbing out of the manure?
• Since when were Archbishops experts on democracy?
• Disputing the meaning of applause
• House of Lords expenses: Lord Rees-Mogg on gravy trains
• House of Lords expenses
• Goodbye from Mr Speaker
• What a fine Speaker!
• What a poor speaker!
• Sky Sports swindle
• Is the MPs' expenses scandal a hidden legacy of Thatcherism?
• Rhetoric wins applause for questioners on BBC Question Time
• Applause for Dimbleby's questions on BBC Question Time
• The liveliest Question Time ever?
• Why it's so easy for politicians not to answer interviewers' questions - and what should be done about it
• MPs expenses claims merely reflect British attitudes towards home ownership
• Well, well Wells!
• A prime minister who openly refused to answer an interviewer’s questions
• UK Speechwriters' Guild
• Gordon Brown's interview technique: the tip of a tedious iceberg
• Eye contact, public speaking and the case of President Zuma
• Chicago!
• Weatherization
• Notes from a large continent
• Are there more longer words in American English than in British English?
• Virgin mile-high poetry

APRIL 2009
• The Turnip Prize
• What’s the difference between a flu 'pandemic' and a flu 'epidemic'?
• Oxford professor models jeans
• A great source of videos for anyone interested in speaking and presentation
• A Tory leader's three evasive answers to the same question
• Jobsworthy News: Council official to walk along a path that doesn’t exist
• Was Kenneth in Wallanderland worth a BAFTA?
• A Labour leader with no interest in spin!
• David Cameron's attack on the Budget used some well-crafted rhetoric
• Gordon Brown seems to agree that Labour is ‘savage’ and ‘inhuman’?
• Poems for St George's Day
• Inspiring banking imagery for Budget day from Martin Luther King
• Budget speech boredom and television news tedium
• When the young Paddy Ashdown surprised himself by the power of his own rhetoric
• Obama’s rhetoric identifies with Martin Luther King but appeals to a wider audience
• A day when LibDems cheered at being told they all read a broadsheet newspaper
• Time for Gordon Brown to say "sorry" to savers
• Burnham, Kinnock and the danger of speaking in a sports stadium
• Derek Draper – another psycho-therapist who talks too much and listens too little?
• A smear that never was
• Derek Draper breaks a basic rule of conversation
• INTERLUDE
• Gordon Brown’s G20 address ignores an important tip from Winston Churchill
• Is there an open-mouthed school of acting?

MARCH 2009
• Gordon Brown is finding the Jacqui Smith expenses story more ‘delicate’ than he says
• ‘The Lost Art of Oratory’ by a BBC executive who helped to lose it in the first place
• Another Tory speech that marked the beginning of the end for a prime minister
• Rhetorical techniques and imagery in Hannan’s attack on Gordon Brown – edited highlights
• Did the media ignore Hannan because they think speeches are ‘bad television’?
• Does Daniel Hannan’s attack on Brown tell us what makes a speech memorable?
• UK media slowly wakes up to Daniel Hannan’s speech
• Media Coverage of Daniel Hannan’s attack on Gordon Brown
• It’s time Brown stopped recycling other people’s lines
• Daniel Hannan v. Gordon Brown at the European Parliament
• Jargon and gobbledygook comedy sketch
• Check the fixtures and fittings before you speak
• Why haven't the Lib Dems learnt from Obama’s use of the internet?
• If Bill Gates doesn’t read bullet points from PowerPoint slides ...
• An imaginative innovation in a PowerPoint presentation?
• ‘From Stalin to Mr Bean’: putting two parts of a contrast in the right order
• How to improve impact by sequence, repetition and a rhetorical technique
• Brown’s ‘poetry’ heads up news of his speech to Congress
• Unexpected poetry in Gordon Brown's speech to the US Congress
• The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation
• Gordon Brown’s model example of how to express condolences

February 2009
• The day Barack Obama discovered his powers of oratory and rhetoric
• How to make reading a slide sound interesting
• PowerPoint style presentation continues to dominate BBC News – courtesy Robert Peston (again)
• The 'magic' of Oscar acceptance speeches
• Does Mrs Clinton really know someone everywhere she goes?
• Personality cult as an antidote to tribalism?
• Kenya holiday reading

JANUARY 2009
• Mirror, mirror on the wall, whose is the fairest democracy of all ?
• Rhetoric and imagery in President Obama’s inauguration speech
• The good news from the House of Lords
• Memorable lines in President Obama's inaugural speech?
• The great camcorder con-trick
• Obama’s inauguration rhetoric won approval for some uncomfortable messages
• Rhetoric and applause in Obama’s inaugural speech as a measure of what the audience liked best
• A line I don't want to hear in today's speech by President Obama
• The enduring challenge and importance of funeral orations
• Has talking the economy down become a dangerous self-fulfilling prophesy?
• Kate Winslet ignores Paul Hogan’s advice to award winners
• Slidomania epidemic contaminates another BBC channel
• How would Obama's rhetoric and oratory sound from a London back street?
• Clinton, Palin and the legacy of Margaret Thatcher
• Margaret Thatcher and the evolution of charismatic woman: Part III. The education of a female orator
• Margaret Thatcher and the evolution of charismatic woman: Part II. ‘ The Iron Lady’
• Margaret Thatcher and the evolution of charismatic woman: Part I. Cultural and vocal challenges
• “May we bring hope” – 30 years since Margaret Thatcher took office as Prime Minister

DECEMBER 2008
• Ready made words for Mr Obama from a previous president’s inaugural speech
• Neutrality in the Queen’s Christmas speech
• What did Santa say before “Ho, ho ho!”
• You don’t have to be Barack Obama to use rhetoric and imagery
• High-risk practical joke for an office Christmas party speech
• End of year poll on PowerPoint presentations
• Obama’s rhetoric renews UK media interest in the ‘lost art’ of oratory
• Gordon’s gaffe explained
• The Office Christmas Party Speech: roads to failure and success
• The Queen's Speech, 2008
• Rhetoric, oratory and Barack Obama's 'The Speech', 2004
• "There's nothing wrong with PowerPoint - until there's an audience"
• What’s in a place name?

NOVEMBER 2008
• Content-free sermon by Alan Bennett
• 50 years since Peter Sellers recorded his memorable political speech
• Talking the economy up
• Talking the economy down
• Why lists of three: mystery, magic or reason?
• Tom Peters: High on rhetoric but low on content?
• Bobby Kennedy nearly got it right about Obama
• ‘Reliable sources' on where Obama’s 'Yes we can' came from
• Will there be any ‘rhetorical denial’ from the Obama camp?
• The Queen’s Speech: an exception that proves the ruler
• Rhetoric & imagery in Obama's victory speech
• Not Clinton, not McCain but Obama
• How the BBC handled one complaint about Ross

OCTOBER 2008:
• Another BBC News Slideshow
• Don't put the clocks back
• BBC Television News: produced for or by morons?
• Experience and inexperience in presidential campaigns
• Presidential debates – tedious television but better than commercials
• A secret of eternal youth?
• PowerPoint Peston
• Hair today, win tomorrow: baldness and charisma
• Pesky Peston?
• ConVincing Cable
• 'Mature, grown-up and statesmanlike' at the lectern

SEPTEMBER 2008:
• Cameron takes to the lectern in a crisis
• Objects as visual aids
• Powerpoint comes to church
• Mediated speeches -- whom do we really want to hear?
• Wisdom of forethought?
• Time for Cameron to surf applause?
• Did Gordon Brown take my advice?
• Eternity, eternity and eternity
• More tips for Gordon Brown
• Tips for Gordon Brown's conference speech

Ronald Reagan's moving tribute on the 40th anniversary of D Day

Iain Dale surely speaks for many of us in not being very pleased about the Queen's non-attendance at the Normandy commemorations.

To see how impressively D Day can be commemorated, have a look at Ronald Reagan's address to veterans on the 40th anniversary of the D Day landings. I think it's one of his greatest speeches, and find the anecdote about the late arrival of a Scot playing the bagpipes particularly moving (see below).

Other Allied countries represented at the ceremony by their heads of state and government were: Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands, King Olav V of Norway, King Baudouin I of Belgium, Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg, and Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau of Canada.

Youu can watch the whole speech HERE and/or read it below:



PRESIDENT REAGAN: We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For 4 long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.
We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers -- the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machineguns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After 2 days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your ``lives fought for life . . . and left the vivid air signed with your honor.''

I think I know what you may be thinking right now -- thinking ``we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.'' Well, everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren't. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him.

Lord Lovat was with him -- Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, ``Sorry I'm a few minutes late,'' as if he'd been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he'd just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.

There was the impossible valor of the Poles who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold, and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.

All of these men were part of a rollcall of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore: the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland's 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England's armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard's ``Matchbox Fleet'' and you, the American Rangers.

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought -- or felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

Something else helped the men of D-day: their rockhard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we're about to do. Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: ``I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.''

These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.

When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together.

There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall plan led to the Atlantic alliance -- a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.

In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They're still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost 40 years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as 40 years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose -- to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.

But we try always to be prepared for peace; prepared to deter aggression; prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms; and, yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever.

It's fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II: 20 million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the Earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.

We will pray forever that some day that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.

We are bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We're bound by reality. The strength of America's allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe's democracies. We were with you then; we are with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.

Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: ``I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.''

Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their value [valor], and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.

Thank you very much, and God bless you all

Driving a car can make you seem younger than you really are

Free bus passes for senior citizens are all very well, but not for anyone who isn’t very keen on revealing their age to a wider public (e.g. me).

Our village bus stop is much busier than it was before free bus passes, but it’s also become like a rolling PowerPoint presentation, continually updating the list of who’s passed a certain birthday for all to see.

Familiar faces that have never knowingly been anywhere near a bus in their lives, let alone been seen getting on or off one, suddenly and shamelessly flaunt themselves at the bus shelter, openly advertising the fact that they too are now old enough to qualify for free bus travel.

And that’s precisely why I stubbornly insist on using my car, without regard for my carbon footprint or the ease with which I could avoid parking hassles by coming clean about my eligibility for a bus pass.

Planning to say 'um' and 'uh'

For non-native speakers of English, learning how to use our definite article must be an absolute doddle compared with the problems I’ve always had in handling ‘le’, ‘la’ and ‘les in French and the even more complicated ‘der’, ‘die’, ‘das’, ‘die’, etc. in German (for which I achieved my worst failure ever with a pitiful 7% at 'O' level).

English nouns don’t have genders so ‘the’ works fine for all of them – except, of course, when we’re speaking. Nouns beginning with a consonant are indeed preceded by ‘the’, but, if the noun starts with a vowel, ‘the’ is pronounced ‘thee’ – so we say ‘the pub’ but ‘thee egg’.

Interestingly, the definite article often comes before ‘uhs’ and ‘ums’ when we're speaking. Even more interesting is the fact that, when it does, speakers invariably use the ‘thee’ form: ‘thee-uh’. The fact that the ‘the’ is fitted to an upcoming vowel sound presumably means that we know that an ‘uh’ or an ‘um’ is on its way before we select ‘thee’ rather than ‘the’.

On the evidence of Mrs Clinton's recent ‘consequences’ statement, she does it quite a lot as you can see from the following video clips:

1. "It has chosen to violate thee u-specific language of thee uh UN Security Council Resolution 1718."

2. ".. discussions are going on to uh add to thee uh consequences"

3. "I want to underscore thee uh commitments that the United States has"



The interesting question for people who know more than I do about languages other than English is whether they too involve planned 'ums' and 'uhs' - and, if so, what form does it take?

For example, do German speakers project an upcoming masculine, feminine or neutral noun with 'der uh', 'die uh' or 'das uh'? And what happens in languages that don't have definite articles at all?

The ‘delicacy’ of Mrs Clinton’s ‘consequences’ for North Korea

First of all, thanks to those of you who took the trouble to make comments about Mrs Clinton’s ‘Consequences’ statement (posted yesterday) – not only because I found them interesting and agree with much of what you said, but also because it was a relief to discover that I wasn’t alone in thinking that there was something rather odd about it.

Some of you may have seen something I posted about the concept of ‘pre-delicate hitches’ a while back, where the general argument is that such hitches (e.g. ums, ers, pauses, etc.) occur when a speaker is about to say something that he or she knows is likely to come across as ‘delicate’ to their listeners.

On watching this sequence again, I realised that it was the first two paragraphs (reproduced and re-transcribed below) that were what had really caught my attention in the first place. In the course of 120 words, there are more than 40 such hitches (i.e. one every three words), not to mention the abstract vagueness of some of the language (‘violate the specific language’, ‘abrogated the obligations it entered into’, ‘consequences’, ‘behaviour’, ‘framework’, etc.).

The 'uhs' and frequency and duration of pauses bring down the speed of her delivery to about 92 words per minute (i.e. words other than 'uh' or 'um'), which is extremely slow compared with the ‘ideal’ speed for public speakers of somewhere between 120-140 words per minute (which is also much slower than normal conversational speeds of around 180 words per minute).

Interestingly, the number of 'hitches' diminishes once she moves on to the second part of the statement, which was delivered at the much more satisfactory rate of 130 words per minute.

Two factors may have influenced this. One was that the hitches came at their thickest and fastest when the key audience most likely to find what she was saying particularly ‘delicate’ was the North Koreans themselves.

The other was that, to be fair to Mrs Clinton, this was not a pre-prepared speech but came in answer to a question at a press conference taking place in Egypt, very soon after the news from North Korea had come through. So it’s possible that there hadn’t been enough time for her to get a full briefing from State Department specialists, which meant that she had no choice but to make it up as she went along (i.e. ‘busk’ it).

(N.B. This revised transcript uses a convention that’s also useful for marking up scripts of speeches before delivery that's described in Lend Me Your Ears, pp. 299-301, where a single slash indicates a slight pause of a fifth to half a second and a double slash indicates a longer pause of half a second to a second).

MRS CLINTON:
North Korea has made // uhh //a choice. // It has chosen to // violate the // u-specific language / of the / uh // UN Security Council Resolution 1718. // It has ignored the international community. // It has abrogated the obligations it entered into / through the Six-Party Talks. // And it uh continues to act in a provocative and belligerent manner / uh toward its neighbors.// There are consequences to such actions.//

In the United Nations uh as we speak / discussions are going on to // uh // add to the / uh / consequences that North Korea / will face // u-coming out of the latest uh // u-behavior / u-with the // uh / intent to // u-try to rein in / uh the North Koreans // uh and get them back into a framework where they are once again // uh fulfilling their obligations and moving toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.



For her more fluent continuation and the rest of the statement, see video and transcript on yesterdays posting.

P.S. And, thanks to a link from Charles Crawford, see HERE for a fascinating article on the Clintons' problems since Obama took over.

Clinton on North Korea: "There are consequences to such actions"

When I first saw this this statement on the news, it fascinated me enough to want to hear it again. So I looked it up on YouTube, dug out the verbatim transcript from the US State Department's website and am still working on it.

What baffled me the first time round was that 'sounded' as though she was saying something very important, but I was left wondering what it all meant. This is why I'm going to have a look at it in more detail to see if I can put a more precise finger on what made it seem so vague and uncertain the first time I heard it (and the first time is, of course, the last and only time that most normal members of the viewing public get to see of it).

In the meantime, it would be interesting to see what others made of it. Then, once I've had a bit more time to look at it a bit more closely, I'll post whatever I come up with in due course



MRS CLINTON: North Korea has made a choice.

It has chosen to violate the specific language of the UN Security Council Resolution 1718.

It has ignored the international community.

It has abrogated the obligations it entered into through the Six-Party Talks.

And it continues to act in a provocative and belligerent manner toward its neighbors.

There are consequences to such actions.

In the United Nations, as we speak, discussions are going on to add to the consequences that North Korea will face coming out of the latest behavior, with the intent to try to rein in the North Koreans and get them back into a framework where they are once again fulfilling their obligations and moving toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

But they have chosen the path they’re on, and I’m very pleased that we have a unified international community, including China and Russia, in setting forth a very specific condemnation of North Korea and then working with us for a firm resolution going forward.

I want to underscore the commitments that the United States has and intends always to honor for the defense of South Korea and Japan.

That is part of our alliance obligation, which we take very seriously.

So we hope that there will be an opportunity for North Korea to come back into a framework of discussion within the Six-Party process, and that we can begin once again to see results from working with the North Koreans toward denuclearization that will benefit, we believe, the people` of North Korea, the region, and the world.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Oscar acceptance speech

Being nominated for a seat in the US Supreme Court is presumably the American lawyer's equivalent of an actor winning an Oscar. That at any rate was the impression given by Judge Sonia Sotomayor as she started to list all the family members on her thank you list (see below for an edited clip or HERE for further details of her family tree).

Like Kate Winslet at the Golden Globe awards, though in a more measured tone, she ignored Paul Hogan’s advice on speeches by winners: “.. it’s a good tip to remember the three Gs: be gracious, be grateful, get off.”

.

Obama’s nomination of Judge Sotomayor received five times more applause than ‘normal’

Soon after I started studying applause in political speeches, it emerged that there is a ‘normal’ burst of applause that lasts for about eight (plus or minus one) seconds (see Our Masters' Voices, 1984).

Less than this and it sounds half-hearted; more than this and it sounds more enthusiastic than usual – with the result that the media are more likely to select lines that get longer bursts for headlines in newspapers or sound bites on news programmes.

Nor is this norm only to be found in political speeches, but is also to be heard in award ceremonies, at conferences when speakers are introduced or when the identity of guests on television talk shows is revealed.

A few years ago, I went to a concert by Donovan, a pop star contemporary of the Beatles. In the first half, all his performances of familiar hits from the 1960s attracted 15-20 seconds of applause (i.e. considerably more than usual), whereas none of the applause for his numbers from his latest album in the second half fell outside the standard 7-9 second range – polite enough, but nowhere near as enthusiastic as the responses to songs that the audience had known for years.

If you want to check out what the difference sounds like for yourself, compare the following two clips from President Obama's introduction to his nominee for the vacancy on the Supreme Court. In the first one, Judge Sotomayor gets a 'standard' eight-second burst of applause after saying that she loves her family; in the second one, the applause for the President's introduction to her goes on for five times longer than that.

As such, it suggests that the audience was very well pleased with the announcement. But to find out it was a more enthusiastic response than usual, we’d have to compare it with some clips of presidents introducing previous nominations for the post of Supreme Court judge.

Two tips for David Cameron after today’s speech on political change

I suppose it’s of the nature of the Open University that they’re a bit short on decent lecture theatres for speeches like the one David Cameron gave there earlier today. But I did think they could have done a bit better than to position his lectern in front of a distracting and rather unattractive bookshelf – distracting, because anoraks like me start trying to see which books are waiting there to be picked up and read.

The need to check on furniture and fittings before you make a speech is something I’ve commented on before after Prince William had to hover at the bottom of some stairs trying to hold his script in one hand and a microphone in the other.

The OU did a bit better than that, but if I'd been Mr Cameron or one of his aides, I’d have done my best to arrange for a rather more suitable backdrop than a few bookshelves.

One other thing he should be doing something about is that he’s still spending far too much time looking towards one side of the audience before looking in the other direction. On this occasion, it wasn’t quite as marked as it was in the video that can be seen HERE, but his gaze was quite often fixed in one direction for 11-19 seconds (i.e. too long) before being redirected towards the other half of the audience.

Given that his delivery is much better than the average currently prevailing among British politicians, it’s a pity he doesn’t do something about such a simple error that’s so easy to correct.

Bishops' attendance rates and allowances in the House of Lords

If you haven't already noticed, I take a pretty dim view of the way members of the House of Lords are selected (click on labels for 'House of Lords' postings below for more detail), not to mention the way undemocratically selected bishops and arch-bishops have the cheek to lecture the public on democracy.

A quick survey of published details about the the 23 bishops who attended the House of Lords in the year ending March 2008 shows that they put in an average of 22.4 days each.

The keenest five were the bishops of Southwark (83), Chester (46), Manchester (45) Southwell (44) and Liverpool (38).

The lowest attendances were clocked up by the bishops of Chichester (3), Truro (5), Canterbury, Arch-bishop (7) Carlisle (9) and Durham (9).

Top of the claims for daily expenses was the Bishop of Truro, with £1,124 for each of his five days in the Lords, while joint equal lowest spenders were the Arch-bishops of Canterbury (£0) and York (£0) .

As for what any of this means, I have no more idea than I have about what democratic principle entitles any of them to sit in the so-called 'upper' house of our parliament.