Hair, height & the Labour leadership contest

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Reflecting on the Labour leadership contest, I was reminded of something I posted during the US presidential election about the importance of a good head of hair for contemporary politicians - on which basis, there looks like being a dead heat between the male candidates in the competition (above).

But what about height? Might that be a critical factor in the outcome?

If you weren't following the blog back in October 2008, you won't have a clue what I'm talking about - so here's what I wrote then:

HAIR TODAY, WIN TOMORROW: BALDNESS AND CHARISMA?

(First posted on 8th October, 2008)

Height (on which see also Presidential Heights)
My past attempts to analyse charisma have concentrated on the speech-making and communication skills of politicians. But there are clearly other more subtle and elusive factors that are more difficult to pin down. This was highlighted by 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).

Hair
But there’s some evidence that another, even more trivial, physical attribute has become a key component of charisma since the age of mass television began – namely that successful male politicians need a good head of hair. When radio was still the main form of broadcast media, how much or how little hair you had was not as visible to the public. And, even if you were out and about, it was a time when men routinely wore hats in public, which kept baldness conveniently concealed from any passing press or film cameras.

It was a consultant dermatologist who first got me thinking seriously about baldness. He claimed to have transformed some of his patients’ careers by the simple device of prescribing a wig. Bald men, who had been repeatedly rejected at for jobs as diverse as head chef and leader of an orchestra, enjoyed immediate success as soon as they appeared at an interview with a good head of hair.

Shortly after being told about this, I appeared on a television programme about the problems former Labour leader Neil Kinnock was then having with his public image. I had no qualms about discussing how his theatrical style of oratory tended to come over as too manic when transmitted to the small screens in people’s living rooms. But I also confessed to the producer that there was another possible cause of his difficulties that was far too delicate to mention on air, namely that he was bald.

Bald Tory leaders
Since then, we saw the leadership ambitions of Conservative party leaders William Hague and Ian Duncan Smith come to grief in double quick time. And, even if you never joined in the chorus yourself, it’s a sure fire bet that you heard others making snide remarks about their lack of hair.

In fact, if you want to find the last British prime ministers who were bald, you have to go back more than fifty years to Attlee and Churchill, both of whom were elected to office before the age of mass television. After them, the only ones with even slightly thinning hair were Sir Alec Douglas Home and James Callaghan -- but both of them only became P.M. when their predecessors resigned in mid-term, and both of them went on to lose the first general elections they fought as party leaders.

Bald 'successors'
It’s much the same story on the other side of the Atlantic, where the last really bald president was Eisenhower. After that, the long succession of presidents with plenty of hair was only interrupted by Lyndon Johnston and Gerald Ford. And, like Home and Callaghan, they were far from being completely bald, they too came to power without winning an election for the job and neither of them survived much longer than Home and Callaghan: Johnston declined to run for a second term, and Ford lost to Jimmy Carter.

Two intriguing patterns emerge from this. The first is that, apart from Churchill, Attlee and Eisenhower, the only bald or balding leaders who got to the top in Britain or America since then did so because of the death or resignation of their predecessor, rather than by the popular vote of their parties or the electorate at large. The second is that those who did fight a general election were promptly defeated.

Obama v. McCain
If voters really do prefer candidates with a good head of hair, the main political parties in the UK have made all made safe choices for the next election. But in the USA, the Republicans have arguably taken quite a risk by pitting John McCain’s receding hairline against Barack Obama’s full head of hair. When it comes to sport, there may not be much to chose between them: McCain apparently excelled at wrestling and boxing and Obama still plays basketball. But the other big risk the Republicans have taken is to have selected a candidate who is a good six inches shorter than his rival.

The tallest Labour leadership candidate?

If hair doesn't single out any of the male candidates as frontrunner for the Labour leadership, height puts Balls and Burnham in 3rd and 4th place respectively, leaving the Miliband brothers in equal first place at 5 ft. 11 ins.

So, on the basis of this analysis, all may depend on which Miliband has the more impressive record of athletic achievement - on which further research is clearly needed.

Good news from the BBC's revamped website: Mandelson embedded!

I've just noticed that there's a very welcome innovation on the revamped BBC website that brings it into line with YouTube and other sites from which you can embed video clips in blog posts.

This is going to make life much easier for those of us who like to be able to post examples illustrating whatever it is we're blogging about.

To celebrate, what better way than to embed the first clip on which I noticed that this is now possible, namely an interview in which Lord Mandelson explains (?) why his loyalty to the Labour Party is unaffected by washing so much dirty linen in public via his memoirs and their current serialisation in The Times:



So it was the cash!

Followers of Twitter may have noticed that I put out some tweets the other day asking what had motivated Mandelson to wash so much dirty linen in public at such a difficult time for a party that's just lost an election and is still engaged in electing a new leader:

• To put the record straight?
• To assert his own importance in the history of New Labour?
• Or to collect as much cash as possible while the going's good?

All the replies I received suggested people thought it was the third of thes - and two moments of disarming honesty in the above confirm that a desire to cash in was indeed at the heart of his motivation:

1. "If I'd done that (i.e. written a 'normal ordinary political memoir') not only would people probably not have bought it or read it, but you'd be here asking why weren't you more honest..." (1.10 minutes in)

2. ".. how topical should you be? Should you wait for two years or more by which time everyone's lost interest in what you have to say ... so in my view better to get it out while it's fresh..." (2.14 minutes in).

In another interview in The Guardian, Mandelson is just as open about the importance of his 'warts and all' approach for finding a publisher and selling a few books:

But has he not betrayed confidences for personal gain ? "It's a memoir. I did not want a nondescript work that glossed over everything. I cannot tell a story about myself without telling a story about Tony and Gordon. We were so intertwined. You either don't tell that story at all or you tell it truthfully, warts and all; you cannot be half-pregnant in a situation like this.

"The days of anodyne memoirs where everything is hushed up and swept under the carpet for 30 years are long gone. You would not find a publisher and you would not find anyone to buy it, and if anyone was unlucky enough to buy it they would be asleep."

Slight exaggeration?

".. I've been a member of the party all my life .." (1.30 minutes in).

Lord Mandelson was born on 21 October 1953 - but I'll gladly leave it to other anoraks to check out whether the Labour Party has any record of his parents signing him up as a member on that particular date.

Fidel Castro's oratory

A few days ago, when posting comments on the Queen's recent 'politically neutral' speech to the United Nations, I mentioned the fact that UN members have heard some pretty controversial speeches from other heads of state.

Today's news that Fidel Castro has given his first TV interview since his 'retirement' reminded me that he was one of them.

It also reminded me of a rather obvious point I'd made in a heading above a picture of the young Castro in my book Our Masters' Voices (1984, p. 4):

'Skillful public speaking can be readily recognized even in those whose politics we may disagree with, and whose languages we do not understand.'

What fascinated me then - and still does - is the fact that we don't have to be able to understand Spanish or German to be able to see and hear that speakers like Castro and Hitler were highly effective orators.

In this first clip, we don't actually get to hear anything of what he says, but the ancient newsreel does provide a vivid reminder of the kind of mass rallies the Cuban leader used to address after coming to power - not to mention his PR skills in allowing himself to be filmed playing baseball.



In this next one, we do get to see and hear him in action, this time at the United Nations - where his style of delivery is very different from that exhibited by the Queen last week.

If, like me, you don't understand a word of what he's saying, a useful exercise is to watch, listen and take note of what it is about the way he's speaking that leaves you in no doubt that this is a passionately delivered speech that certainly isn't 'politically neutral':

Bad manners from Blatter as he bags limelight to present the World Cup

At the 1966 World Cup Final, the head of state of the host country presented the trophy to the winning captain (above).

But FIFA boss Sepp Blatter appears to be so keen on taking centre stage for himself that he virtually shoulder-charged South Africa's President Zuma out of the way to thrust the World Cup into the hands of the Spanish team last night - with the local head of state only being allowed to touch the side of the cup as it was handed over (below).

Blatter had apparently been putting pressure on 92 year-old Nelson Mandela to present the cup, in spite of his age, his frailty and the fact that he's grieving the loss of a close family member. So, if Mr Mandela had agreed to do it, would Blatter also have shoulder-charged him out of the way?

And what would we have thought if one of his FIFA predecessors had treated the Queen in the same way back in 1966?

In both cases, I'd have thought much the same as I thought about the way he treated President Zuma last night, namely that it was the height of bad manners.

See what you think:

P.S. The embedded video from YouTube that was originally posted here suddenly became unavailable. Could it be, I wonder, that FIFA was so embarrassed by Blatter's behavior that they removed it? Luckily, I'd transferred it to a blog-friendly format that means it can still be seen here.

The rise of Chomsky and the fall of grammar

In a recent post by Iain Dale, entitled Its Grammatikal, Innit?, he tells us that an earlier tweet about poor grammar (Why is it that so many people in their twenties have v little understanding of English grammar or basic sentence construction? Aaaaaaagh.) had provoked a huge response.

When I saw his tweet, I shared his frustration about declining standards of English grammar. But I was rather disappointed to see him using this to launch a generalised attack on 'progressive' educationalists on his blog - because I don't think it comes from 'progressiveness' so much as from the way news from the frontiers of different disciplines (e.g., in this case, linguistics), get watered down over a period of time before it reaches the syllabus of 'applied' courses like those provided for trainee teachers.

Dilution and dissemination
In a limited way, I know this from my own experience, because I saw some of my own early research into the sociology of suicide being 'watered down' to the point of being included in some of the 'A' level syllabuses - and never quite knew whether to be annoyed by the 'oversimplifications' or pleased to see my work reaching a wider audience.

I also know from my own experience that Iain Dale's point about the way learning a foreign language (as he did) helps you to understand the workings of grammar in your own native tongue. My late wife was head of modern languages in a comprehensive school during the 1980s, and was continually at war with the English Department about the fact that their reluctance to teach grammar meant that she and her colleagues had to spend huge amounts of time introducing pupils to verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. before being able to teach them French and German.

Education is not a 'pure' academic discipline

The trouble is that education is not a 'pure' discipline built on it own body of knowledge and research. So the absence of much in the way of 'pure' educational theory drives lecturers in education departments (and former teacher training colleges) into the market for material from other disciplines, like psychology, sociology and linguistics, that can be borrowed, diluted and adapted for the benefit of aspiring teachers.

Enter linguistics

In the 1960s, a new discipline concentrating on language in general, rather than any particular language, began to take off. But to convince universities and their paymasters that it was worth establishing a new academic department, you need a few distinguished theorists whose work can be cited to establish the credibility and legitimacy of the discipline in the face of competing demands for scarce funding.

Enter Chomsky

For linguistics, the ideas of a professor called Noam Chomsky were just what they'd been looking for. The fact that he worked at an institution as prestigious as MIT was an added bonus when it came to demonstrating that there was some pretty serious stuff at the heart of the emerging discipline.

And so it was that Chomsky became the central orthodoxy that dominated the new linguistics departments that were springing up around the Western world from the 1960s onwards.

The diluted version of Chomsky

At the heart of his theory was the claim that humans are born with an innate ability to master grammar, and this is what explains the extraordinary mystery of language acquisition.

This was rather bad news both for empirically inclined researchers and for what was to happen to the training of teachers and, ultimately the teaching of English grammar in our schools.

Bad news for researchers

For those of us naive enough to believe that observing how people actually speak, interact and use language might be a good idea, our work could be written off by the Chomskians before we'd even started - because he'd decreed that language could be understood without bothering to dirty your hands with detailed empirical investigations.

Even worse news for grammar in the teaching of teachers and children

By the time the diluted Chomskian orthodoxy had reached university education departments and teacher training colleges, the news was that 'grammar was innate' and wired into the human brain. So, if it was innate in all of us, what possible point could there be in teaching it to youngsters who'd already been born with an understanding of grammar?

Of course, this might not be quite what the master had actually meant or intended.

But it has, I believe, played a critical and disastrous part in relegating grammar to the sidelines of teacher training - and in explaining why so few people in their twenties and thirties have so little understanding of English grammar and sentence construction.

Rhetoric, neutrality and controversy in the Queen's speech to the United Nations

In previous posts, I've highlighted the Queen's mastery in displaying neutrality when making speeches:

• The Queen's Speech: an exception that proves the ruler
• Neutrality in the Queen's Christmas speech

Yesterday another fine example was on show as she addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations - where members have heard some pretty controversial speeches from other heads of state, and for many of whom the very idea of a politically neutral speech must be quite strange.

But as a constitutional monarch of 16 countries and head of a commonwealth of 54 countries, the Queen's challenge was, as usual: how do you say anything of relevance to such a diverse audience without appearing to take sides?

The answer is that you take sides with positive achievements of the organisation and its worthy values - with which all member states can agree or, at least, to which they can all pay lip service.

Then you deliver it in a flat monotone to avoid sounding too passionate about anything in particular - and especially anything verging on the controversial.

The most controversial line?

Although few, apart from supporters of Al Quaeda, could take exception to her singling out 'the struggle against terrorism' as one of the two 'new challenges' facing UN member states, her inclusion climate change as the other one was arguably the most controversial thing that she said - running, as it did, the risk of offending all the climate change deniers around the world.

Best lines?

One line that stood out for me must also have stood out for her speechwriter, as it featured a quotation from a UN Secretary General that's survived for more than fifty years, namely a medical metaphor, to which was added an apt extension:

"Former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold once said that ‘constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon’. Good nurses get better with practice; sadly the supply of patients never ceases."

I was also impressed by the idea of "waging peace".

And her opening line - "I believe I was last here in 1957" - was presumably meant to be humorous.

The Queen's use of other rhetorical techniques

The speech also included quite a few neatly constructed contrasts, such as:

(A) ".. many of these sweeping advances have come about not because of governments, committee resolutions, or central directives - although all these have played a part -

(B) but instead because millions of people around the world have wanted them.

(A) "When I was first here, there were just three United Nations operations overseas.

(B) "Now over 120,000 men and women are deployed in 26 missions across the world."

"In my lifetime, the United Nations has moved from being

(A) a high-minded aspiration to being

(B) a real force for common good."

There were quite a few three-part lists:

(1)"You have helped to reduce conflict,

(2) you have offered humanitarian assistance to millions of people affected by natural disasters and other emergencies,

(3) and you have been deeply committed to tackling the effects of poverty in many parts of the world."

".. it is my hope that, when judged by future generations,

(1) our sincerity,

(2) our willingness to take a lead,

(3) and our determination to do the right thing, will stand the test of time."

"The challenge now is to continue to show this clear and convening leadership while not losing sight of your ongoing work to secure

(1) the security,

(2) prosperity

(3) and dignity of our fellow human beings."

And there was also one example of a combined format, in which the first part was a list of three:

(A)".. many of these sweeping advances have come about not because of

(1) governments,

(2) committee resolutions,

(3) or central directives - although all these have played a part -

(B) but instead because millions of people around the world have wanted them.

You can watch the whole speech above and/or read it below:

Mr President, Secretary-General, Members of the General Assembly,

I believe I was last here in 1957.

Since then, I have travelled widely and met many leaders, ambassadors and statesmen from around the world. I address you today as Queen of sixteen United Nations Member States and as Head of the Commonwealth of 54 countries.

I have also witnessed great change, much of it for the better, particularly in science and technology, and in social attitudes. Remarkably, many of these sweeping advances have come about not because of governments, committee resolutions, or central directives - although all these have played a part - but instead because millions of people around the world have wanted them.

For the United Nations, these subtle yet significant changes in people's approach to leadership and power might have foreshadowed failure and demise. Instead, the United Nations has grown and prospered by responding and adapting to these shifts.

But also, many important things have not changed. The aims and values which inspired the United Nations Charter endure: to promote international peace, security and justice; to relieve and remove the blight of hunger, poverty and disease; and to protect the rights and liberties of every citizen.

The achievements of the United Nations are remarkable. When I was first here, there were just three United Nations operations overseas. Now over 120,000 men and women are deployed in 26 missions across the world. You have helped to reduce conflict, you have offered humanitarian assistance to millions of people affected by natural disasters and other emergencies, and you have been deeply committed to tackling the effects of poverty in many parts of the world.

But so much remains to be done. Former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold once said that ‘constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon’. Good nurses get better with practice; sadly the supply of patients never ceases.

This September, leaders will meet to agree how to achieve the Millennium Development Goals when each nation will have its own distinctive contribution to make. New challenges have also emerged which have tested this organisation as much as its member states. One such is the struggle against terrorism. Another challenge is climate change, where careful account must be taken of the risks facing smaller, more vulnerable nations, many of them from the Commonwealth.

Mr. President,

I started by talking about leadership. I have much admiration for those who have the talent to lead, particularly in public service and in diplomatic life - and I congratulate you, your colleagues and your predecessors on your many achievements.

It has perhaps always been the case that the waging of peace is the hardest form of leadership of all. I know of no single formula for success, but over the years I have observed that some attributes of leadership are universal, and are often about finding ways of encouraging people to combine their efforts, their talents, their insights, their enthusiasm and their inspiration, to work together.

Since I addressed you last, the Commonwealth, too, has grown vigorously to become a group of nations representing nearly two billion people. It gives its whole-hearted support to the significant contributions to the peace and stability of the world made by the United Nations and its Agencies. Last November, when I opened the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Trinidad and Tobago, I told the delegates that the Commonwealth had the opportunity to lead. Today I offer you the same message.

For over six decades the United Nations has helped to shape the international response to global dangers. The challenge now is to continue to show this clear and convening leadership while not losing sight of your ongoing work to secure the security, prosperity and dignity of our fellow human beings.

When people in fifty-three years from now look back on us, they will doubtless view many of our practices as old-fashioned. But it is my hope that, when judged by future generations, our sincerity, our willingness to take a lead, and our determination to do the right thing, will stand the test of time.

In my lifetime, the United Nations has moved from being a high-minded aspiration to being a real force for common good. That of itself has been a signal achievement. But we are not gathered here to reminisce. In tomorrow’s world, we must all work together as hard as ever if we are truly to be United Nations.

Crisis management PR: important lessons from an interview on the BP oil rig disaster

I'm indebted to @MartinShovel (via Twitter) for drawing my attention to this - which clearly deserves a wider audience than the 16,000+ who've already watched it on YouTube in the past two weeks:

Welcome to the USA!

After yesterday's post about the questions we foreigners have to answer before being allowed into the USA, I half-expected to be barred from entry when I arrived a few hours ago.

Luckily, the passport control official didn't appear to have read my blog and contented herself with taking photographs of my fingerprints and eyeballs. She also asked whether I had brought any food with me, to which I confidently replied "No" - while guiltily wondering if I should tell her about the bottle of duty-free Scotch in my hand baggage.

"Welcome to the United States of America"

The notice bearing this legend may have been as huge as it was well-meaning - but it didn't prevent them from violating every civilised principle of queuing (waiting in line) that we Brits hold dear.

Every now and then - and for no apparent reason - 20-30 US citizens would be allowed to jump ahead of us foreigners in the queue/line, presided over by officials in red blazers who helpfully explained for the benefit of non-US citizens that "this is how we do things in the USA".

The people I felt most sorry for were a French couple - because, even though we got the word 'queue' from them, anyone who's ever been skiing in France knows that they don't get the principle of queuing either - and very stroppy they became about the way we were being treated.

Anyway, the net result of this was that, although Virgin flight VS001 arrived more or less on time, I had to 'wait in line' (as our American cousins insist on saying) for the best part of an hour and a half before finally coming face-to-face with the US passport control officer, who (thankfully) seemed happy enough to accept the carefully completed questionnaire (yes, you still have to do it on the flight as well as online) that I handed to her with my passport.

Blogposts on last year's visit to the USA

• Virgin mile-high poetry
• Are there more longer words in American English than in British English?
• Weatherization
• Notes from a large continent
• Chicago!

Is the US landing card the most ridiculous questionnaire of all time?

I'm flying to New York later today and, for the first time, have had to apply to the US Department of Homeland Security for clearance in advance under its ESTA scheme (Electronic System for Travel Authorization).

An unexpected bonus was that I've at last got my hands on a copy of the ridiculous questions I've previously had to answer (in a state of total bemusement) during the flight - as I've often wished I could photocopy them to show to my American friends.

This is because fellow passengers who are US citizens don't have to complete such forms and therefore have no idea of the sheer absurdity of the questionnaire that we foreigners are busy filling in to prepare for our encounter with passport control on arrival.

Now that I've had to do it online, I'm finally able to share it with those of you who pay the taxes that enable your government to pursue such penetrating investigations on your behalf.

You might also like to know that the hard-copy version, which was never handed out until flights were well on their way across the Atlantic, included the helpful instruction that, if any of the answers was 'Yes', we should report immediately to our local US embassy.

Do any of the following apply to you? (Answer Yes or No)

A) Do you have a communicable disease; physical or mental disorder; or are you a drug abuser or addict? YES/NO

B) Have you ever been arrested or convicted for an offense or crime involving moral turpitude or a violation related to a controlled substance; or have been arrested or convicted for two or more offenses for which the aggregate sentence to confinement was five years or more; or have been a controlled substance trafficker; or are you seeking entry to engage in criminal or immoral activities? YES/NO

C) Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were you involved, in any way, in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies? YES/NO

D) Are you seeking to work in the U.S.; or have you ever been excluded and deported; or been previously removed from the United States or procured or attempted to procure a visa or entry into the U.S. by fraud or misrepresentation? YES/NO

E) Have you ever detained, retained or withheld custody of a child from a U.S. citizen granted custody of the child? YES/NO

F) Have you ever been denied a U.S. visa or entry into the U.S. or had a U.S. visa canceled?YES/NO If YES, when and where?

G) Have you ever asserted immunity from prosecution? YES/NO

P.S. To these, I would like to add two more questions of my own:

H) Do you think anyone in their right mind would expect persons involved in moral turpitude and the like to answer 'Yes' to any of these questions? YES/NO

I) Do you think that the printing, distribution, collection and processing of these questionnaires is a valuable use of US taxpayers' money? YES/NO

Where can you get a backwards-pointing baseball cap?

For reasons explained the other day, I obviously didn't watch any of the longest tennis match ever played at Wimbledon.

But I couldn't help noticing on the news that John Isner was wearing a backwards-pointing baseball cap.

It reminded me of a friend who, on on a ski holiday in the USA, became so irritated by the sight of skiers wearing baseball caps back-to-front that he went into a sports equipment shop and asked if he could buy a backwards-pointing cap.

He claims that his request was taken seriously by the shop assistant, who explained that they didn't have any and helpfully suggested another shop in the same street that might have some in stock.

But it is, I suppose, just possible that the shop assistant was joking too.

Harrriet Harman's reply to today's Budget: not bad, but still room for improvement

Having missed George Osborne's first budget speech since he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, I was rather suprised to discover that excerpts from Harriet Harman's reply as Leader of the Opposition had already been posted on YouTube before anything had appeared there from the Chancellor himself.

Earlier in the afternoon, I'd also noticed that there'd been a few comments on Twitter to the effect that she'd made rather a good job of it - with some suggesting she did well enough to make them wonder why she wasn't standing in the Labour leadership election.

And quite a lively performance it was too, though my initial reaction after a single viewing was that the pluses were outweighed by the minuses. Other anoraks may like to check the comments against the actual video.

Pluses:

1. Excellent example of how effective 'yah-boo' politics can be in getting positive reactions from your supporters (for more on which, see HERE).
2. Well crafted script with plenty of examples of using techniques like contrasts, rhetorical questions and imagery (e.g. the 'fig leaf' sequence) to attack the LibDems.

Minuses:

1. Adapting Vince Cable's most famous line of attack on Gordon Brown came across as contrived and arguably unwise (unless, of course she wanted to remind people of the 'Stalin to Mr Bean' jibe in the second video below).
2. Her eyes were more or less continuously glued to the text, with only the occasional split second glance away from it.
3. Very little variation in pace and tone.
4. Repetitive gesture with left hand became monotonous and distracting after a while.
5. The pitch of her voice made me wonder whether, if she were to run for the full-time job of leader, she could benefit from some voice coaching along the lines of that undertaken by Mrs Thatche after she became leader of the Conservative Party (for more on which, see HERE).

The line Ms. Harman borrowed from Vince Cable's attack on Gordon Brown:

And, for a video of Gordon Brown adapting a line from Bill Clinton and the hazards of so doing, see HERE.

World Cup referee treats 100% of a player's communication as 'non-verbal'

Regular readers will know that, like Olivia Mitchell and Martin Shovel, I'm underwhelmed by 'experts' who exaggerate the importance of body language and non-verbal behavior in communication (for more on which, see links below).

If ever proof were needed of how risky it can be to take Mehrabian myth (that 93% of communication is non-verbal) seriously - and take it a slight step further by treating 100% of it as non-verbal, look no further than the sequence from yesterday's World Cup match between Brazil and the Ivory Coast, when the referee sent a player off for not hitting an opponent in the face.

Repeated action replays, backed up by the BBC's panel of pundits, confirmed that the referee was not even looking at the two players involved when the 'incident' occurred (and nor, apparently, were his assistants). So he, or whoever it was who communicated verbally with him about what had supposedly happened, jumped to the wrong conclusion that anyone lying on the ground clutching his face must have been hit in the face - and waved his red card at the innocent Kaka.

Or perhaps the referee actually sent Kaka off for something the player communicated verbally in response to being falsely accused.

As it appears that any appeal to FIFA by Brazil is unlikely to get very far, we may never find out what the officials thought was going on.

(N.B. An earlier attempt to embed a YouTube clip of this particular sequence failed as a result of it having been barred by FIFA for 'copyright reasons'. If this one stops working, please let me know ASAP so I can try to find another one).

Other posts on body language & non-verbal communication:

• How to use video to study body language, verbal & non-verbal communication
• Body language and non-verbal behaviour
• Presidential heights
• Body language, non-verbal communication and the myth about folded arms and defensiveness
• Another body language & non-verbal communication cartoon
• Margaret Thatcher, body language and non-verbal comunication
• Non-verbal communication and height
• Non-verbal communication
• More on body language and non-verbal behavior
• Impersonators as masterful analysts of non-verbal communication
• Mehrabian's moans about the myth
• Linguistic difference and non-verbal behavior: the mysterious case of gestures
• Eye contact, public speaking and the case of President Zuma's dark glasses

Other World Cup posts:

• World Cup Football: Germany v. Greece
• Time to level the playing field by moving the goal posts

World Cup Football: Germany v. Greece

Time to level the playing field by moving the goal posts

No, this isn't another post about overused management metaphors. It's a serious suggestion to make life more interesting for football fans.

Not enough goals?

As I've been away for nearly two weeks, I haven't seen any of the World Cup matches so far. But I have been fascinated by media complaints about the shortage of goals - not because I think it has to do with the peculiar ball being blamed by the pundits as much as with the long-standing failure of the football authorities to update the rules in line with the way the physique of players has changed over the last 150 years.

Time to update Victorian rules of the game

I've long felt that the watchability of various sports could be greatly improved by recognising the fact that many of the rules are the legacy of the Victorian obsession with writing rules down in the middle of the nineteenth century - since when there have been few attempts to update them in line with physical changes in the population over the past century and a half, let alone with a view to making a particular sport more interesting to watch (a notable exception being Rugby League's break away from Rugby Union).

Tennis, for example, unlike squash, has persisted with allowing players two attempts at serving every time they serve, forcing spectators to sit for hours on end until one or other of them 'breaks serve' as a necessary condition of winning the match.

Abolish the second serve, and tennis-players would have to make some interesting strategic decisions at crucial moments in the game - and we'd be spared the tedium of having to wait for however long it takes for one of them to break through and win a game when they're not serving.

Bigger goals for taller goalkeepers

The rules of football date back to the 1850s - since when, data from Western Europe point to an increase in the average height of males (including, presumably, goalkeepers) of one inch (2.54 centimetres) every 25 years.

If the average height of today's goalkeepers is about 6 feet (183 cm.), their average height when the rule about goal posts was laid down would have been 6 inches (15.24 cm.) shorter at 5 foot 6 inches (167.64 cm.).

For the area defended by goalkeepers to provide the same challenge to them as when the rules were originally laid down, today's goal posts should be 6 inches higher and further apart than they are now - the obvious result of which (see below) would be more goals and a far more entertaining game for spectators to watch.

Ethnic cleansing beyond the grave in former Yugoslavia

After ten days on a friend's yacht, I can report that the Croatian coast (above) is just as beautiful as it was on my last visit there about thirty years ago when it was still part of former Yugoslavia.

But much has changed. Gone are the pictures of Tito in every shop. Gone too are the empty shelves at what passed for supermarkets.

But you don't have to look far to be reminded of the horrors presided over by the late Franjo Tudman, the first president of the new Croatia, in breaking away from Serbia and the remnants of former Yugoslavia during the 1990s.

A taxi driver boasted of having spent a windfall legacy on Kalashnikovs to insure himself against any further trouble from the Serbs.

Areas of 'ethnic cleansing' were marked by empty crumbling houses in areas where Serbs had had once been unlucky enough to live.

Most chilling of all was the sight of neat rectangular tomb stones standing out from the rocks on a beach at the edge of an othewise picturesque Croatian cemetery - evidence that, when when it comes to disposing of Serbs, 'ethnic cleansing' went a step or two beyond the grave:

INTERLUDE: Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible

As I'm about to go sailing along the Croatian coast, there won't be any new postings for a while. I'm definitely not taking a laptop - and extortionate mobile roaming costs should make it easy enough to resist the temptation of blogging from my iPhone.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible - i.e. in the middle of June - when I very much hope that regular visitors will come back to the blog.

When I was last on the Adriatic coast, I didn't realise I was in a place called 'Croatia' and every shop and official building you went into had a picture of President Tito on the wall to remind you who was in charge. So some thoughts on how things have changed since the demise of the former Yugoslavia might be worth blogging about when I get back.

MEANWHILE ...
As for normal service being resumed as soon as possible, you have to be of a certain age to remember the gaps in BBC television output during the 1950s - before there were any other television channels, and before management had realised that blank spaces between programmes could be filled up with the endless trailers of the delights in store for us that we have to out up with these days.

So we had to watch INTERLUDES, which meant enduring some very boring films of a repetitively revolving potter's wheel (above), rotating sails on a windmill, waves breaking on a beach, etc.

One notable exception was the 51 mile train journey from London to Brighton in 4 minutes - and serious anoraks can inspect a selection of other action-packed interlude footage HERE.

Cameron's prime-ministerial debut at PMQ and his choice of a worrying adverb

For collectors of historical political speaking occasions, here's David Cameron's first effort on the receiving end at Prime Minister's Questions for you to inspect.

The worrying adverb

Regular readers will know from previous posts (see selection below) that I've long been critical of the way the Labour government spent thirteen years tinkering with the House of Lords - but systematically avoided doing anything at all to democratise the way its members are selected.

I was therefore very concerned by what Mr Cameron had to say in response to the first question about 'the other place' - for which scroll in 1.26 minutes - where you'll hear the PM referring twice to his support for a "predominantly elected" House of Lords.

Where did 'predominantly' come from and what on earth is it supposed to mean?

Or is he just giving us advance notice that, for all its talk of a major constitutional reform package, the new government is going to be as pussy-footed as the last one was when it comes to removing the undemocratically selected miscellany of former MPs and party cronies from their cosy retirement home in the other place?

P.S. 'Wholly or mainly elected'

Since posting this, I'm grateful to @DuncanStott for informing me via Twitter as follows:

Tories favour "predominantly" elected Lords (80% I think), LDs favour fully elected. Agreement says "wholly or mainly elected".

This may explain Cameron's choice of adverb, but I can't for the life of me see how anyone with a democratic bone in his/her body can justify 'mainly elected', let alone the arbitrary invention of figures like 80%.

Previous posts on the House of Lords:

• The good news from the House of Lords
• Mirror mirror on the wall, whose is the fairest democracy of all?
• House of Lords expenses
• What news of the House of Lords scandal?
• House of Lords expenses: Lord Rees-Mogg and gravy trains
• Bishops' attendance rates and allowances in the House of Lords
• Why it suited Brown and Blair to take House of Lords reform no further
• Will The Times be investigating Lord Rees-Mogg's House of Lords expenses?
• Noble noses in the trough
• Just who does Lord Adonis think he is?

Michael Gove: calling all teachers, governors and parents

If you're a teacher, governor or parent who hasn't yet seen seen Michael Gove's letter about his highly controversial, unproven and rather expensive scheme to turn schools into 'academies', here he is inviting you all on to jump on to his barmy bandwagon:



If you wonder why I think that he and/or the plan is barmy, see my previous post on the subject.

Nor am I alone in having serious doubts about it, as you can see in Gove's claim to be 'freeing' schools is a cloak for more control from the centre by Simon Jenkins of The Guardian.

And, over the last few days, interesting discussions of the issue have been developing HERE and HERE.

A model resignation speech by David Laws

Whoever the next minister to resign from the government may be, he or she could do worse than taking a lesson or two from the short statement made by David Laws earlier this evening:

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg's statement a few minutes later wasn't too bad either:



P.S. Two things that concern me about all this are first that the Daily Telegraph's timing of its 'exposure' of Mr Laws was motivated by their ongoing campaign against increasing capital gains tax and second that Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell might have tipped them off about the story - for more on which, see HERE.

Academies, academies, academies: Michael Gove's 3 Rs?

Education is, of course, something on which everyone is far more expert than the professionals who dedicate their lives to it.

And they don't get much more expert than former journalist Michael Gove, the new Secretary of State for Education.

Parents are keen to run schools?

Somewhere or other (Sweden, perhaps) he came up with the bizarre idea that parents not only can't wait to run their local schools, but would also make a far better job of it than those who are doing it at the moment.

Somehow or other, he managed to sell the idea first to the Conservative party and now to the new coalition government - and has apparently already started writing to primary schools to tell them the good news.

But there are two rather serious flaws in his argument:

1. Most parents only take a passionate interest in the running of schools for the very few years during which their own children are at school - as almost any chairman of school governors (or parent over a certain age) could have told him had he bothered to ask.
2. Only a tiny minority of parents are willing or able to spend the huge amounts of time involved in running a school - as almost any chairman of school governors (or parent any age) could have told him had he bothered to ask.

'Rigour'?

But, as you'll see from this video clip (originally posted on webcameronuk last August), Gove's attitude towards evidence is a bit lacking in the kind of rigour that he claims is lacking in our exam system, especially when it comes to examining 'rigorous' subjects like mathematics and science. And, with an Oxford B.A. in English, Mr Gove knows a thing or two about which subjects are 'rigorous' and which ones are not.

As a former president of the Oxford Union and debating adjudicator, he also knows enough about rhetoric to know that you don't need much in the way of evidence to make an argument sound plausible. All you have to do is pick three examples that support your case, wrap them up as three questions, each of which juxtaposes two contrasting categories, and the conclusion will be obvious for all to see:

Now for some research to prove I'm right

Having 'established' that maths and science exams obviously aren't rigorous enough, Mr Gove goes on to tell us about a rather ambitious project to prove that his assertion holds true on a much wider front.

He doesn't mention what objective (or rigorous?) measurement procedures will be used to assess the quality of exams over the past hundred years - yes, 100 years. But why bother with trivial details like that when you already know in advance that the answers to your two main research questions will be "No"?

Gove's 3 Rs?

For me, the thought of anyone with such a cavalier attitude towards evidence being being allowed to meddle with something as important as education is, to say the least, extremely worrying.

It's reminded me of some lines I wrote for the first speech I ever worked on with Paddy Ashdown - for the launch of the SDP-Liberal Alliance general election campaign in 1987, when he took the platform as their education spokesman.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, the most depressing thing is that the same words apply so aptly to Mr Gove:

"When it comes to education, the Tories have come up with their own 3 R's: rigid, ruthless and reactionary. [APPLAUSE]

"Putting a Conservative minister in charge of education is like putting Herod the King in charge of the Save the Children Fund." [APPLAUSE]

Almost as depressing is the failure of the LibDem coalition negotiators to veto the elevation of Mr Gove to such a crucial job, not to mention the inclusion of his 'fast-track' Academies Bill in the Queen's speech.

See also Simon Jenkins in The Guardian: Gove's claim to be 'freeing' schools is a cloak for more control from the centre.

An interesting discussion of the schools issue is also developing HERE.

Why Black Rod knocks 3 times & why pointless rituals are not always as pointless as they seem

Watching the State opening of parliament today, I noticed that Black Rod (or, in this case, his substitute) knocks three times on the door of the House of Commons, after it's been slammed in his face, to summon them to the House of Lords to listen to the Queen's speech:

In a previous post - Why lists of three: mystery, magic or reason? - I discussed why so many lists come in three parts. But that related to speaking, whether in conversation or in speeches, not to door-knocking behaviour.

So this video clip got me wondering whether there was any particular reason for knocking three times, which was quickly resolved by resorting to Google - and the discovery that it's 'once for the executive, once for the legislature and once for the speaker' (for more on which, see HERE).

It reminded me of something I'd written long ago about how reforms designed to make behaviour less formal and/or ritualistic need to take into account why such forms of behaviour originally came to be there in the first place.* Otherwise, reformers can easily end up throwing out a baby - that they didn't realise was there - with the bath water.

The case of the informal smiling Pope

My favorite example was the case of Pope John Paul I, who died after only 33 days in office. Amazingly, after so short a time, he was described in some obituaries as one of the greatest popes of the twentieth century.

Before him, popes had apparently never been seen smiling in public, which was one of the reasons why he was hailed for having brought a new level of informality to the papacy. Others were that he'd refused to have a coronation and preferred walkabouts in St Peter's Square to being carried aloft on the traditional gestatorial chair.

The sight of a pedestrian Pope, smiling and mingling with his fellow men and women, presented a much less formal and more favourable image to millions of television viewers around the world. But for those who'd taken the time, trouble and expense of going to St Peter's Square, it was a complete disaster - apart from the tiny minority who happened to be standing a few rows away.

In fact, the Vatican had so many complaints from frustrated pilgrims that, before he died, John Paul I had already done a U turn and returned to the gestatorial chair.

At the time, I remember saying that, if only the Vatican PR department had understood the chair's importance in enabling the pope to be seen by a crowd, they could have simultaneously minimised papal formality and maximisied papal visibility by the simple device of installing a chair on the roof of a bog-standard Fiat - which is why, a few months later, I was delighted to see my sugestion come true with the invention of the popemobile for his successor, John Paul II.

Black Rod's 3 knocks on the door

So I was also delighted to learn today that there's a historical reason why Black Rod knocks three times on the door of the House of Commons and that it hasn't been forgotten - not, you understand, because I thought it was another example of the rule of three or had some other theory up my sleeve, but because it confirms, yet again, that there is often a logic behind apparently pointless rituals that isn't obviously or instantly apparent to contemporary observers.

(* 'Understanding Formality', British Journal of Sociology, XXXII, 1982, pp. 86-117).

Is Nick Robinson pompous and patronising - and, if so, why?

After watching the State Opening of Parliament earlier today, I was sufficiently struck by some of the contributions by their political editor to post a question on Twitter:

'Just watched BBC Queen's speech coverage & wonder if I'm alone in finding Nick Robinson a pompous patronising twerp?'

I was surprised (and reassured) when quite a few people quickly responded to confirm that I was by no means the only one on whom he'd had that effect.

This got me wondering just what it was about his contributions to the discussion that could have given rise to such an impression. Here's part of the sequence that prompted my question about Robinson.

If he also strikes you as 'pompous' and/or 'patronising', the analytic challenge is to identify what it was about the way he spoke that can be interpreted in such a way, at least by some of us:

Hillary Clinton warns North Korea of 'consequences' (again)

It's nearly a year since North Korea announced it had exploded a nuclear weapon as powerful as the one that destroyed Hiroshima - which prompted US secretary of State Hillary Clinton to warn them: "There are consequences to such actions"

After the sinking of a South Korean ship by the North Koreans, she's on about 'consequences' again (see video clip below).

'Pre-delicate' hitches

Last year, I made the point that her warning about 'consequences' was punctuated by a large number of 'pre-delicate' hitches', for more on which see HERE and HERE.

What's interesting about Mrs Clinton's latest dire threat to the North Koreans - 'provocative actions have consequences' - is that there are so many 'hitches' (i.e. ums, ers and pauses) after she issues the warning.

'Post-delicicate' hitches?

This raises the question of whether conversation analysts should be turning their attention to analysing a new and possibly related pheomenon, namely 'post-delicate hitches'.

Or do they simply indicate that the US Secretary of State knows perfectly well that the Americans' 'best actions moving forward' will be exactly the same as they were last year - i.e. nothing much?