TRAILER: Claptrap - the movie

This month, it's a quarter of a century since Granada Television broadcast Claptrap, a World in Action documentary that showed how a woman with no previous experience of public speaking was coached to win a standing ovation at a political party conference.

Between now and the 25th anniversary on 23rd September, I'll be doing some nostalgic blogging on the background to the book Our Masters' Voices, on which the programme was based, the making of the programme itself and what happened after that.

As a trailer to the main film that will be kicking off the Claptrap season, you can watch a short clip from Ann Brennan's speech HERE.

Is this blog 'LibDem' or 'non-aligned'?

Yesterday's news about being voted the 56th Liberal Democrat blog has really go me wondering whether I've been more partisan than I'd realised - given that I do try, most of the time, to be reasonably objective.

I'm also quite happy that it's listed as 'non-aligned' in the Total Politics magazine's types of political blogs.

Having checked through the 2% of previous posts that actually do mention the LibDems, I don't think any of them are particularly partisan. I hope readers will agree, but it's obviously up to you to judge for yourselves (those in italics include video illustrations):

On Vince Cable

• ConVincing Cable
• How to improve impact by sequence, repetition and rhetorical technique
• ‘From Stalin to Mr Bean’: putting two parts of a contrast in the most effective order

On Paddy Ashdown

• When the young Paddy Ashdown surprised himself by the power of his own rhetoric

In general

• Why haven’t the LibDems learnt from Obama’s use of the internet?
• A day when LibDems cheered at being told they read a broadsheet newspaper

Blog award from Total Politics

It's quite something for a blog to receive an award voted for by readers of Total Politics magazine and Iain Dale's Diary, and I'd like to thank everyone who helped to get me to 56th in the top 75 Lib Dem blogs.

However, I do admit to being very surprised and more than a little embarrassed to see it appearing anywhere at all in the Lib-Dem list, because it's (correctly) not included in the Total Politics list of Lib Dem blogs, but is (also correctly) included in their list of 'non-aligned' blogs.

I can only assume that the votes must have come from people old enough to remember the days when I was involved as a speech advisor/writer/coach to former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown - and who think (incorrectly) that I carried on in a similar capacity with all the leaders since then.

For the record, none of his successors as leader of the party has thought that they needed any help from me. But, as this blog does indeed do its best to be 'non-aligned' (most of the time), I couldn't possibly comment on whether or not I think Messrs Kennedy, Campbell and Clegg have been correct in their judgement on this particular matter.