'Check against delivery'

Charles Crawford has a very interesting post today about David Miliband’s speech in Poland that's prompted me to try something I’ve never done before.

I’ve seen plenty of speeches (and have even penned a few) that started with the instruction ‘Check against delivery’ in the first line, but had never bothered to do so in any detail. Thanks to the wonders of the internet and YouTube, it's now become something that's easier to do than ever before.

What's more, you can go beyond checking against the speaker's delivery and check against what anyone else might saying about a particular speech.

So, whilst checking the press release of Miliband’s speech against his delivery, I was able to see exactly what Charles Crawford meant about the opening passages being "clunky. An attempt by a speech-writer who knows little of Poland to rummage around and find a few historical examples by way of 'filler'. The examples used cast no light of insight on what follows, and might as well have been omitted…"

Mr Miliband too seems to have found them 'a bit clunky', or presumably wouldn't have felt himself prompted to ad-lib so many changes as he went along.

It’s as if, having declared himself "deeply conscious of the history between our two countries", he realised that he hadn’t until that moment been in the least bit conscious of King Canute’s Polish ancestry (and one has to wonder if the Poles in the audience were any more conscious than him about King Canute's genealogy).

Then, with his quip about the speech becoming "pronunciation test", he openly confesses that he’s just reading out stuff that's news to him (supplied by the local ambassador and/or his staff).

You can read the whole speech HERE and check against delivery HERE.

The parts of the speech in red below were what was actually delivered and did not appear in the official press release.

Mr MILIBAND:

"I think for obvious reasons any visiting British Foreign Secretary coming to Poland is deeply conscious of the history between our two countries.

"It goes back a long way. I didn’t know that Canute er- was the half Polish King of Denmark who, in 1015, actually invaded England, bringing with him Polish soldiers and his mother, Princess Swietoslawa, who er- is buried -is buried - Winchester castle.

"When I asked for a historical lesson from our ambassador, I didn’t realise it would be a pronunciation test, but it has become such."

Body language, non-verbal communication and the myth about folded arms and defensiveness

A recent posting on Olivia Mitchell’s Speaking about Presenting blog led to a lively exchange about the absurdly overstated claims that 93% of communication is non-verbal (see also HERE for a cartoon that neatly sums it up).

The chapter on ‘Physical Facts and Fiction’ in my book Lend Me Your Ears was aimed at debunking some of these modern myths, and I’d like to know what others think about the claim that folding your arms means that you’re being defensive.

It’s one that prompted me years ago to start asking people sitting in lectures with their arms folded whether they were feeling defensive.

The immediate and invariable reaction is that they quickly unfold their arms – because they too know exactly what I’m referring to and they too 'know' that it's alleged to be a sign of defensiveness.

The commonest response is that they’re feeling quite comfortable, thank you very much.

Sometimes they point out that there are no armrests on the chairs; occasionally they complain that the room is a bit cold.

But never once has anyone among the hundreds of people I’ve now put he question to ever said that they felt on the defensive.

The body language ‘experts’ would no doubt tell me that I’m a naïve idiot for being taken in by them, that I’m failing to read what their non-verbal behaviour is really telling me, that they’re covering up what their real feelings are in order not to offend me, etc, etc.

My problem is that I see no reason not believing them. Nor, until someone provides a convincing demonstration to the contrary, do I believe that these self-appointed ‘experts’ have any evidence to support their position, or to prove that people like me have got it so wrong.

But, and this is perhaps the most depressing thing of all, I do nontheless advise people not to fold their arms when speaking, whether in a conversation, presentation, job interview or anywhere lese where they’re hoping to make a good impression – not because I believe that folded arms signals defensiveness, but because I know that there’s almost certain to be someone in the audience who’s been misled into believing that it does.

Another expenses dilemma

I confess that, before the days of airport security restrictions on liquids in hand baggage, I would normally pack a hip flask of whisky to take with me on short trips into Europe - only, you understand, because I often find it difficult sleeping in foreign hotel beds without the aid of a night cap.

Now that my hip flask is banned, I have to resort to buying a night cap from the hotel bar.

So far on this two-day stay in Germany,  30 Euros has bought me what would have cost me less than 10 Euros had I been able to bring the said liquid with me.

In former times, I would never have dreamt of charging the client for my night cap. But, now that its costing me at least 20 Euros more than it used to do, I'm beginning to wonder whether I should add it to my invoice?

Or should I just charge it to the hotel account in the hopes that the client will pick up the bill for whatever I consume while I'm here?

If I do neither, would I be allowed to set the extra 20 Euros against tax, on the grounds that no sleep would render me incapable of delivering a decent day's service to the client?

These are the kinds of momentous and troublesome problems I find myself having to grapple with since reading about some of the things that MPs seem to regard as perfectly legitimate expenses.

The urgent need for EU directives on tea-making and lunch times

The hotel I'm staying at in Mainz has quite an impressive array of tea, including Assam, Darjeeling, Earl Grey and English Breakfast.

But can you get a decent cup of tea? No you can't, because, as in most of the hotels in Europe, no one outside the UK (and presumably the Indian sub-continent) seems to understand one of the most basic factors in the chemistry of tea-making - which is why I think it's high time that we had an EU directive that would require hotels, cafes and other outlets to boil, yes boil, the water before pouring it on the tea leaves or tea bags.

And, while they were at it, they might as well go the whole hog and add in requirements to warm the tea pot first and then let it brew for a few minutes before pouring into a cup.

Apart from reducing the grumbling dissatisfaction of British tourists and business visitors with what's currently passed off as a cup of tea, a beneficial side effect might be that growers in developing countries would be able to increase their sales to Europe. After all, if only more people here knew what tea can really taste like, they'd surely want to drink a lot more of it.

From the point of view of improving communication between businesses within the EU, there's also a case for another European directive on lunch times. In Holland, it's 12.00 noon, in Germany it's 12.30 p.m. (but moving ever nearer towards 12 noon), in Britain and France it's closer to 1.00 p.m. while, in Spain, you're lucky if you get anything to eat until about 3.00 p.m. in the afternoon.

The net result of all this is that there are 4-5 hours in every working day when there's no point in trying to phone people in various different countries because they'll be out on their lunch break. An EU directive that standaredised lunch time within the EU would be an obvious way to solve the problem and might perhaps even help to oil our faltering economies along their way towards recovery from the recession.

Expenses?

I have to go to Frankfurt this evening to run a two-day course on Monday and Tuesday.

The recent revelations about MPs' expenses have got me wondering whether I include enough of my outgoings when invoicing clients, as well as whether I should be setting more of my expenses against tax.

Short journeys like this one, for example, mean buying cups of tea, coffee and snacks that I can never be bothered to include in my invoices, even though I wouldn't have had to spend any of this money had I not been on my way to do a job for a client.

And, having just bought a new case that's big enough to take all my equipment, shirts, etc,. but small enough to count as hand baggage and save me time waiting at luggage carousels, does this count as a 'business expense' that can be legitimately set against tax?

Thanks to our elected representatives, I feel a visit to my accountant coming on...

Imagery worthy of Obama in speech by the Governor of the Bank of England

I’ve thought for some time that Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, has some pretty good speechwriters, and this isn’t the first time I’ve thought it worth posting an example from one of his speeches.

The night before last at the Mansion House, he used and developed a neat simile, that was singled out and used as a headline in the print and broadcast media:

KING:

"To achieve financial stability the powers of the Bank are limited to those of voice and the new resolution powers.

"The Bank finds itself in a position rather like that of a church whose congregation attends weddings and burials but ignores the sermons in between.

"Like the church, we cannot promise that bad things won’t happen to our flock – the prevention of all financial crises is in neither our nor anyone else’s power, as a study of history or human nature would reveal.

"And experience suggests that attempts to encourage a better life through the power of voice alone is not enough.

"Warnings are unlikely to be effective when people are being asked to change behaviour which seems to them highly profitable.

"So it is not entirely clear how the Bank will be able to discharge its new statutory responsibility if we can do no more than issue sermons or organise burials."

You can watch this part of the speech HERE - and was there a slight smirk on his face as he finished the punch line about 'sermons' and 'burials'?

News on BBC radio is sometimes very good indeed

I didn’t get to see any television news last night but did listen to The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4 while having a bath.

I hadn't heard it for a while, and had forgotten what a very good a news programme it is and was impressed by how much more I learnt about what's going on in Iran than I have from all the television pictures of John Simpson wandering about the streets of Tehran, interspersed with poor quality mobile phone footage.

There were no needlessly adversarial interviews as featured daily on the Today programme - and, better still, I somehow managed to understand every word without having to watch a single slideshow from the likes of Nick Robinson, Robert Peston and all the other death from PowerPoint merchants who now dominate BBC Television News programmes.