Why doesn't anyone warn politicians about becoming autocue automatons?

When we were being taught about road safety at primary school, we had to learn a slogan that’s still firmly entrenched in my mind:

“Look right, look left and right again and quick march across the road you go.”

What brought it back into my head this morning was the sight of Alistair Darling speaking to the Labour Party conference, where he seemed to be following a revised version of the slogan:

“Look right for 1o seconds, look left for ten seconds, look right for 10 seconds and turn your head when you get to the end of the sentence.”

In other words, like David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Margaret Thatcher, he has a problem with reading from teleprompter screens.

The commonest one, which you can variations of by clicking on any of the above names, involves spending too much time looking in one direction rather than the other.

Sometimes, it creates the impression that you’re so tied to your script that you daren’t look at the other screen until you get to the next full stop (even though you’re supposed to be pretending you don’t have a script).

Sometimes it creates such regular movements of the head from side to side that the regularity becomes noticeable.

And sometimes it excludes half the audience for very extended periods of time (e.g. Cameron and Brown).

Given the high stakes involved in some of these speeches, I never cease to be amazed that no one alerts the speakers to such an obvious problem, let alone spends a few minutes coaching them to make a better job of it.

Gordon Brown goes walkabout (again)

A few days ago, I questioned the ‘management guru walkabout’ style of delivery adopted by Nick Clegg in his speech to the LibDem Conference.

A year ago, in the first post on this blog, I advised Gordon Brown against it in my tips for his speech to the 2008 Labour Party conference.

But yesterday, he was it it again, combining regular pacing from side to side with randomized double handed gestures. Is it just me that finds it distracting?

See what you think HERE.

Anniversary of a year of blogging

I started this blog a year ago today, after being asked by The Times to offer a few tips for Gordon Brown's speech to the 2008 Labour Party Conference. As I could think of more things to say than amount of space allowed, blogging seemed simple way to add a few extra tips - and held out the promise of 'publishing' anything else I'd written that hadn't found a proper publisher.

A year ago, I hardly knew what a blog was, and one of the benefits for me has been to discover the extraordinary wealth of interesting material that's available on the blogosphere.

Motives
When I started, I had three other vaguely formulated motives in mind. One was that I thought it might drive some traffic to my main business website, which it has done. Another was that I thought it might help to sell a few books, which it has also done.

The third one was to see if I could write things on a regular basis that were topical and/or interesting to a general audience.

For example, I've long been thinking about writing a book about conversation, and wanted to see if it would be possible to translate some of the brilliant, but rather inaccessible, research literature on the subject into more readable language. Whether or not that's worked is not for me to say, but I’ve listed a few examples below that you can check out for yourself.

Progress
The average number of hits has steadily increased and is now about five times more than it was during the first three months and continues to grow enough to make it worth continuing to make the effort.

Occasionally there have been massive surges, as when the BBC website or top bloggers like Iain Dale have included a link to this one.

I also discovered fairly early on that Google delivers a large amount of traffic whenever the title of a post includes words like 'Obama', 'rhetoric' or 'oratory'– and have had to resist the temptation to use promising key words just for the sake of it.

Thanks
If there’d been little or no interest in what I write, I’d have given up blogging long before reaching this, the 296th post.

So to all of you who’ve taken the trouble to visit, and especially if you've added or emailed encouraging comments, thank you for playing a more important part than you realise in keeping me going for as long as this.

And any suggestions you might have about how it could be improved and/or about which kinds of post you like best are always very welcome.

Examples of posts inspired by conversation analysis:
• What’s wrong with saying “Hi”?
• Planning to say ‘um’ and ‘er’
• Gordon’s gaffe explained
• Why lists of three: mystery, magic or reason?
• How to use video to study body language, verbal and non-verbal communication
• Monty Python, conversation and turn-taking
• Interview techniques, politicians and how we judge them
• Derek Draper breaks a basic rule of conversation
• ‘Sound-formed errors’ and humour’
• Gordon Brown is finding the Jacqui Smith expenses story more ‘delicate’ than he says
• The ‘delicacy’ of Mrs Clinton’s ‘consequences’ for North Korea
• Pre-delicate hitches from the White House
• Pre-delicate hitches from Brown as he avoids answering a question about the Queen

Why are there so many quotations on Twitter?

This is a genuine question that's perplexed me since joining Twitter a few months ago - and it's one to which I really would like to hear some answers .

Admittedly, I do tend to follow (and am followed by) others with an interest in public speaking and communication, and that no doubt has something to do with the daily dose of quotations that pops up on TweetDeck (see below for 10 latest examples).

I also think that quotations can play a useful part in speeches and presentations. I've written a bit about them and have included quite a lot of them in some of my books.

But if I'm looking for one, there are plenty of dictionaries of quotations on my bookshelves and plenty of dedicated quotation websites online.

So, if I could see any point in it, I could tweet quotations at people all day long.

My question, therefore, is a simple one that's addressed to all of you who send quotations winging in my (and who knows how many other people's) direction:

Why do you do it?

Is it intended as aid to my sluggish imagination, to make me think, to amuse me, to inspire me to pull my socks up - or what?

10 latest quotations to reach me from Twitter:

• The greatest mistake you can make in this life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
• Recognition not given where deserved is a form of theft.
• There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.
• Authentic praise inspires. Disingenuous praise patronizes.
• The minute you stop learning is the moment you stop leading.
• Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
• Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
• A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.
• You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
• Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day

P.S. The problem's getting so serious that, whilst writing this, three more have appeared:

• An unused life is an early death.
• The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.
• The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.

???

Methinks Labour doth protest/spin too much

One of the lead stories the BBC website today caught my eye as a an extraordinarily orchestrated effort to avoid all the talk of getting rid of Gordon Brown that preceded last year's party conference.

It summarises what cabinet ministers (and one former cabinet minister) have been saying to various newspapers on the eve of the last Labour Party Conference before the general election - and depicts a level of unity that, to say the least, smacks of being rather too good to be true.

Here’s how the story starts, followed by a selection of fan/spin messages from Mr Brown’s colleagues (full post can be seen HERE):

Ministers back PM pre-conference
Cabinet ministers are falling in behind Gordon Brown as he prepares to issue a rallying cry at Labour's last party conference before the general election.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls said the prime minister's "authentic" approach would find favour with voters.

The Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said Mr Brown was "the right leader".

International Development Secretary Douglas Alexanderr said Mr Brown had "nothing to fear" from a TV debate between the party leaders.

Mr Miliband said Mr Brown had "bags" of resilience to take into the next election.
He told the Daily Telegraph: "I think we've got the right leader in Gordon. He's the man who stopped us going from recession to depression in Britain and around the world."

Mr Balls - regarded by most as the prime minister's closest ally - insisted there was "all to play for" in the next election as he geared up for the conference which begins on Sunday in Brighton.
He said the party needed "more fighters, not quitters".

Mr Balls told the Guardian the prime minister should not worry about lacking "razzmatazz". "Gordon is who he is. Gordon is at his strongest when he is being authentic," he said.

Mr Alexander suggested any televised debate could be part of a series between Labour heavyweights and their opposite numbers ahead of the next general election.

'Game on'
"I don't think Gordon has anything to fear from a TV debate," Mr Alexander, who is also Labour's election co-ordinator, told the Daily Mirror. "I hope this campaign provides the opportunity for serious debates at every level of the party.

He said the conference would demonstrate that "it's not game over, it's game on".

According to the BBC report, the only leading Labour politician who’s ‘off-message’ is John Prescott:

'Meanwhile, ex-deputy PM John Prescott has accused Labour MPs of defeatism. He told the Independent there was "something lacking" at the top of the party and no direction in campaigning, adding: "We are drifting"… in his interview, Mr Prescott suggested there was a lack of talent and experience among the party's team of advisers. He said: "Those who have responsibility for campaigning - it is not reaching out to the depths of the party. "We've got a whole bank of MPs, but everybody seems despondent. There's too much defeatist thinking. There's no central direction to campaigning."

Reading posts like this makes you wonder how the BBC website goes about compiling such material. Does a reporter, spend an hour or two reading today's newspapers and then cobble together a 'detached' summary on his/her own initiative?

Or does some Labour Party spin doctor prompt them into doing it?

Whatever the answer, it gives the party with a great deal more coverage than appeared on the same website one day last week during the Liberal Democrat conference (i.e. none) - which also makes you wonder just how 'impartial' the BBC really is.