A few months ago, I made the point that Gordon Brown tends to pack far too much information into his speeches and still has to take notice of a crucial tip from Winston Churchill about simplicity.
In his final press conference before the Summer recess, he was at it again. At one stage, as you can see below, he managed to mention nine numbers in less than a minute.
The trouble is that a lot of people glaze over when numbers come at them so thick and fast – a problem that’s even worse if, as in this case, they’re delivered in a flat monotonous tone of voice.
And the importance of speakers conveying enthusiasm for their subjects cannot be overestimated – for the very obvious reason that, if a speaker sounds bored by his or her subject matter, why should the audience feel any less bored, let alone be inspired by it?
Add to this Mr Brown’s earnest facial expression and it's hardly surprising that he’s so often referred to ‘dour’.
Will The Times be investigating Lord Rees-Mogg’s House of Lords expenses?
Today’s Times on Line has a story about Lord Bhatia’s House of Lords expenses claims.
This raises the interesting question of whether they are going to be as thorough in their investigations as the Telegraph was with it’s stories about MP’s expenses.
If so, they might like to start with one of their own columnists, William Rees-Mogg.
A previous post on this blog reported that, in the last year for which details were available at the time, Lord Rees-Mogg drew £41,463 in tax-free allowances. £8,923 of this was for ‘office costs’, part of which is quite likely to have helped to subsidise journalistic activities for The Times and other newspapers.
Why is the MoD involved in planning Harry Patch's funeral?
Harry Patch, who died yesterday, was a familiar face to those of us who read the Wells Journal every week and had become nationally famous as the last surviving Tommy from WW1.
Funeral services in Wells Cathedral are not available for everyone who dies in this area, but I’m sure there will be widespread local consensus that, if anyone deserves a send-off in the Cathedral, Harry Patch certainly does.
The only thing that seems a bit odd about the plan is the following announcement on the BBC website, that has been echoed in a lot of other media reportage:
‘The Ministry of Defence said there would be a funeral cortege through Wells followed by a service at Wells Cathedral.’
This raises the question of whether the MoD has a say in where the funerals of all ex-servicemen are to be held, not to mention whether there is some kind of hotline or special influence between MoD and the Dioceses of Bath and Wells?
At the risk of sounding ungracious, disrespectful or even a little suspicious, I can't help wondering if the MoD’s apparent involvement in planning Mr Patch’s funeral has something to with the PR attractions of holding such a high profile event for a famous war veteran at a time when we're hearing almost daily news of British deaths in Afghanistan.
Funeral services in Wells Cathedral are not available for everyone who dies in this area, but I’m sure there will be widespread local consensus that, if anyone deserves a send-off in the Cathedral, Harry Patch certainly does.
The only thing that seems a bit odd about the plan is the following announcement on the BBC website, that has been echoed in a lot of other media reportage:
‘The Ministry of Defence said there would be a funeral cortege through Wells followed by a service at Wells Cathedral.’
This raises the question of whether the MoD has a say in where the funerals of all ex-servicemen are to be held, not to mention whether there is some kind of hotline or special influence between MoD and the Dioceses of Bath and Wells?
At the risk of sounding ungracious, disrespectful or even a little suspicious, I can't help wondering if the MoD’s apparent involvement in planning Mr Patch’s funeral has something to with the PR attractions of holding such a high profile event for a famous war veteran at a time when we're hearing almost daily news of British deaths in Afghanistan.
Clarke has more to say about Brown than a few weeks ago
In the wake of Labour's loss of the Norwich North by-election, it looks as though former Home Secretary Charles Clarke is less reluctant to tell us what he thinks of Gordon Brown than he was five weeks ago.
Here's what he said then:
Q: "Will you tell us what you think about Gordon Brown?"
A: "No."
But today's BBC website has rather more detail on what Mr Clarke thinks of Mr Brown now:
Ex-home secretary Charles Clarke blamed the result on Mr Brown's "incompetent" treatment of outgoing MP Dr Ian Gibson … Mr Clarke - the MP for neighbouring Norwich South and a long-time critic of the prime minister - said there had been no "guiding principles" to the prime minister's handling of the expenses scandal.
"What happened to Ian Gibson was not fair and many, many people felt that," Mr Clarke told the BBC. "You need the transparency, you need a comprehensive approach, you need fairness and you need it to be done quickly and these things didn't happen."
Here's what he said then:
Q: "Will you tell us what you think about Gordon Brown?"
A: "No."
But today's BBC website has rather more detail on what Mr Clarke thinks of Mr Brown now:
Ex-home secretary Charles Clarke blamed the result on Mr Brown's "incompetent" treatment of outgoing MP Dr Ian Gibson … Mr Clarke - the MP for neighbouring Norwich South and a long-time critic of the prime minister - said there had been no "guiding principles" to the prime minister's handling of the expenses scandal.
"What happened to Ian Gibson was not fair and many, many people felt that," Mr Clarke told the BBC. "You need the transparency, you need a comprehensive approach, you need fairness and you need it to be done quickly and these things didn't happen."
Book plugging news
It's 10 days since I posted some comments about the impact of BBC 'plug-a-book' shows on sales, following a mention of Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy (see above) on the BBC website.
As expected, it soon slipped back from its all-time high of 1,841st in the Amazon bestsellers chart, but it's still been averaging about 220,000 places higher than it was before the plug on the BBC website.
What this means in terms of actual sales, I'll have to wait for news from the publishers.
But, with the ever-growing domination of booksellers like Waterstones, Amazon and word-of-mouth are becoming even more important to frustrated authors, and the book's current placing prompts a degree of cautious optimism that it might have just about reached lift-off.
As expected, it soon slipped back from its all-time high of 1,841st in the Amazon bestsellers chart, but it's still been averaging about 220,000 places higher than it was before the plug on the BBC website.
What this means in terms of actual sales, I'll have to wait for news from the publishers.
But, with the ever-growing domination of booksellers like Waterstones, Amazon and word-of-mouth are becoming even more important to frustrated authors, and the book's current placing prompts a degree of cautious optimism that it might have just about reached lift-off.
Why doesn't Amazon have a Spanish site?
Wondering how the Spanish translation of Lend Me Your Ears was doing, I thought I'd have a look at Amazon Spain.
To my astonishment, I discovered that it doesn't exist, even though Spanish is the 3rd most widely spoken language in the world.
But, there are Amazon sites in Japanese (10th most widely spoken) and German (11th most widely spoken), not to mention three in English (UK, USA, Canada) and Amazon China.
I'm not as worried about Amazon missing such a major market opportunity as I am about the fact that Spanish speakers don't have access to books translated from English into Spanish.
I know from emails and comments on the blog that there are some regular Spanish speaking visitors.
They might like to know that the Spanish edition of Lend Me Your Ears is published as Claves para hablar en público: Todo lo que necesita saber sobre cómo pronunciar discursos y hacer presentaciones, further details of which are available HERE (from where copies can also be ordered).
To my astonishment, I discovered that it doesn't exist, even though Spanish is the 3rd most widely spoken language in the world.
But, there are Amazon sites in Japanese (10th most widely spoken) and German (11th most widely spoken), not to mention three in English (UK, USA, Canada) and Amazon China.
I'm not as worried about Amazon missing such a major market opportunity as I am about the fact that Spanish speakers don't have access to books translated from English into Spanish.
I know from emails and comments on the blog that there are some regular Spanish speaking visitors.
They might like to know that the Spanish edition of Lend Me Your Ears is published as Claves para hablar en público: Todo lo que necesita saber sobre cómo pronunciar discursos y hacer presentaciones, further details of which are available HERE (from where copies can also be ordered).
Media debilitated by swine flu news pandemic
I just tried (but failed) to catch up with the news by listening to The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4 at 10.00 p.m..
Twenty minutes into the broadcast and they were still banging on about the latest flu statistics, when a vaccine would be ready, government help lines, websites, etc., etc.
All of which could have been collapsed into a three-part list that would have taken less than 10 seconds to read out:
"There's more of it about, it's not very serious and a vaccine's on its way."
(See also What's the difference between a 'flu pandemic' and a 'flu epidemic'?)
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