Has talking the economy down become a dangerous self-fulfilling prophesy?

In previous blog entries, I’ve noted how depressingly keen the UK media is on talking the economy down (23 October 2008, 23 November 2008).

It now seems to have reached a point where any hint of talking it up will get you into trouble, even when the ‘offending’ words were prompted by a leading question from an interiewer.

Baroness Vadera was asked on the ITV Lunchtime News when she believed that the UK could expect to see “green shoots” and replied: “I am seeing a few green shoots, but it’s a little bit too early to say exactly how they’d grow.”

CUE - headlines:

MINISTER'S 'GREEN SHOOTS' GAFFE

GREEN SHOOTS: SHRITI VADERA'S ECONOMIC OPTIMISM SPARKS OUTRAGE

BARONESS VADERA UNDER FIRE FOR 'SEEING GREEN SHOOTS OF RECOVERY'

CUE - retraction/confession:

BARONESS VADERA REGRETS 'GREEN SHOOTS' OPTIMISM IN ECONOMY

Hardly surprising when opposition parties had been so quick to join the media in making such a meal of it:

"The Conservatives said Lady Vadera's comments showed ministers were 'insensitive and out of touch' with the reality facing millions of families. Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman, said that they showed she was 'living in a parallel universe'".

But are we really doomed to stand by and submit to one gloomy self-fulfilling prophesy after another from everyone on the public stage (with the possible exception of Baroness Vadera)?

And does all this prove that American sociologist W.I. Thomas got it right in 1928 when he said:

'If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.'

Kate Winslet ignores Paul Hogan’s advice to award winners

One of the few good speeches at a showbiz awards ceremony was Paul Hogan’s warm-up act at the Oscars in 1986 (for his key advice to winners on the three Gs, see video clip below, or here for the full version).

But Kate Winslet was only 11 years old at the time and probably never even saw it. So, at the Golden Globe awards the other day, she joined Gwyneth Paltrow and Halle Berry in the hall of fame for award winners’ embarrassing speeches (see below after Paul Hogan's much neglected advice).

But then why should anyone expect actors to be any good at speech-making?

After all, their skill is to deliver other people’s lines in a way that portrays characters other than themselves, which is a very different business from writing your own lines and coming across as yourself.

Politically active thespians like Glenda Jackson, M.P., and Vanessa Redgrave may be admired for their successful acting careers, but neither of them is particularly impressive when it comes to making political speeches.

In fact, the only example of an actor who did become a great public speaker that I can think of is Ronald Reagan, but he’d already been rolling his own speeches on the lecture circuit for General Electric long before he became Governor of California – with a contract from the company that ‘required him to tour GE plants ten weeks out of the year, often demanding of him fourteen speeches per day’ (Wikipedia).

Slidomania epidemic contaminates another BBC channel

It’s not just BBC televison news programmes that are being infected by PowerPoint-style presentations from newsreaders and reporters (see blog entries on 23 October & 26 October, 2008).

Tonight’s BBC Parliament Channel featured an interview with Gerald Scarfe, arguably the finest cartoonist of his generation, about his new book – a chance, you might think, to show us a few nice pictorial examples of his talent – but why do that when it also gives you a chance to film him in front of some completely pointless and extremely distracting graphics?

Fascinating though it would have been to see the sketches of Sarah Palin he mentions, the slidomaniacs in charge of the programme seem to think that a conversation with Scarfe is so boring (which it isn’t) that we must be supplied with some brightly coloured swirling graphics to keep us awake.