In praise of parliamentary rowdiness

Following today's Prime Minister's Question Time, Patrick O'Flynn, chief political commentator at the the Daily Express, made an interesting point on Twitter about the Speaker's attempts to deter MPs from booing, heckling and cheering so vigorously (via @oflynnexpress):

"Bercow overdoing the 'calm down' stuff on PMQs. Many of us think ideas must be aggressively scrutinised and don't hate the rumpus."

I don't hate the rumpus either - but for rather more technical reasons that have to with providing incentives for our representatives to pay attention to what each other is saying during parliamentary proceedings.

Rowdiness and the debate about broadcasting parliament

My research into speaker-audience interaction started fairly soon after broadcasts from the House of Commons first began (radio only) in 1975. In the debates leading up to it, I remember being amused and baffled by arguments from the opponents along the lines that it shouldn't be allowed because the rowdy behaviour of MPs would set a bad example to the young.

My interest in audience responses to different forms of public speaking had already reached the point of realising that the central problem for listeners to speeches was that the primary incentive for paying attention in conversation (i.e. the threat that you might have to start speaking any second now) is massively eroded for audiences: once you know that you won't get a chance to speak for the next 10 or 20 minutes, staying awake can become a serious problem

As I've written elsewhere: 'The reason why applause in political speeches seemed a promising place to start was because it provides instant and unambiguous evidence that listeners are (a) awake and paying close attention and (b) approve strongly enough of what’s just been said to show their approval of it (by clapping hands, cheering, etc.).'

Rowdiness as a powerful incentive to pay attention

In Lend Me Your Ears (pp. 32-33), I touched on the issue of negative audience responses as follows:

'.. the apparently rowdy behaviour of British Members of Parliament during debates in the House of Commons may have some rather more positive benefits than its negative public image would suggest. After all, if the odds of being called upon to speak are as poor as one in several hundred, there's so little chance of getting the next turn that you might as well go to sleep. But the tradition of cheering, booing and heckling not only provides an alternative way of expressing a view, it also give members more of a reason to listen. To be effective, booing and cheering require a degree of precision timing that can only be achieved by paying attention closely enough to be able to identify statements worth responding to.'

Rowdiness and democracy

If, like me, you think it's rather a good idea for our representatives to pay close attention to what others are saying in parliamentary exchanges, getting our MP's to 'calm down', as recommended by Mr Speaker Berkow, would be a rather bad idea.

And, if you don't believe me, go and watch some legislative assemblies in other countries where there is no tradition of audience participation. If you do, you'll be as amazed as I've been on quite a number of occasions by what I saw: when one person is speaking, most of the others spend most of their time going through their brief cases, sorting out papers, reading them and generally showing no sign whatsoever of listening to anything said by anyone else.

In the face of such indifference from other members, the speakers themselves typically deliver their speeches with marginally less passion and conviction than a weather broadcaster reading out the latest shipping forecast.

Further reading:

• Clayman, Steven E. 1992 "Caveat Orator: Audience Disaffiliation in the 1988 Presidential Debates." The Quarterly Journal of Speech 78: 33-60 (Download PDF).

The Big Society and the resurrection of guilt-edged philanthropy?

The mystery of David Cameron's 'big society' is still bubbling along - from an ernest discussion of philanthropy on Newsnight a week or so ago to an erudite editorial in today's Guardian.

In response to the former, I was so unimpressed by the moralising waffle from the 'expert' guests that I tweeted something along the lines of "any first year sociology student could surely do a better job than this" on Twitter.

What I had in mind was that any first year sociology student will have been exposed to Max Weber's classic thesis on the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which didn't get a mention from any of Newnight's 'experts' (at least while I was watching).

Weber in a nutshell

Central to Weber's argument was that Protestantism, especially the Calvinistic variety, was a powerful incentive to work hard, because work would keep you on the straight and narrow and protect you from sin. If this resulted in your accumulating wealth and spending it on yourself, you'd be veering back towards sin, so you'd better plough it back into the business - which would then grow further and offer yet more temptations, so you'd better plough that back into the business as well - and accumulate more wealth, etc., etc.

That, according to Weber, was what had spurred enterprise and capitalism to grow so strongly in protestant countries. But, as old age approached, the best way for the wealthy to avoid sin - and to save their offspring from the temptation of spending it all on themselves (i.e. sinning) - was to give large chunks of their capital away to worthy causes, as exemplified by famous English philanthropists like Lord Leverhulme and Joseph Rowntree.

Is British philanthropy a thing of the past?

One of the complaints being made by some of the pundits in the media (e.g. in the Newsnight programme mentioned above) has been that Britain's current generation of super-rich, unlike some of their counterparts in the USA, are much less philanthropic than their predecessors.

I have no idea how accurate a claim this is (as I could name at least one English billionaire who gives rather a lot of his money away - but does so without having his name attached to any of the benefits he pays for).

A legacy of the 1960s?

However, I am inclined to believe that there may well be fewer British philanthropists than there used to be, because I also happen to believe that the decline of the Protestant Ethic - i.e. a major motivation for philanthropy, according to Weber - may have been a hidden and lasting legacy from the 1960s.

I'm not suggesting that the sixties saw a sudden reduction in British puritanism in any particularly religious sense, but rather that people started to feel less guilty about enjoying leisure activities when they could/should have been working.

Work, leisure and guilt

My evidence is admittedly rather flimsy and personal, as it comes from noticing how some of my academic colleagues during the 1970s-80s, only a few years younger than me, seemed to have no qualms at all about taking whole afternoons off work to play golf or cricket - whereas I, along with others of a similar age, felt thoroughly guilty about taking as much an hour off to play squash, even though we had no particular commitment to Calvinism or any other form of protestantism.

In other words, when it came to feeling guilt about not working, there seemed to be a big difference between those of us born before 1950 and those born after 1950, perhaps because the younger cohort had spent more of their youth growing up during the swinging sixties than we had.

If there's any truth at all in this, more of today's British super-rich are also likely to have been born since 1950, in which case they're probably much less afflicted by feelings of guilt about spending their money on themselves than the wealthy once were. And, if the guilt factor has declined, it may also have weakened a key motive for graduating from entrepreneur to philanthropist.

The Big Society?

As for what such arguments have to do with David Cameron's 'big society', I don't know - unless the idea is to resurrect communal guilt in the hopes that it will motivate more of us to abandon some of our leisure pursuits in favour worthier causes...

UK Speechwriters’ Guild awards: Geoff Burch, Business Communicator of the Year 2011

The UK Speechwriters’ Guild has awarded the Business Communicator of the Year Award 2011 to the speaker and author Geoff Burch.

Geoff Burch writes business books, gives speeches at corporate and sales conferences, and has appeared on the BBC TV series All Over The Shop.

Chairman of the judges, Brian Jenner, said: “Geoff Burch is an unusual thing, a British motivational speaker. Only he tailors his message to a British audience by claiming to be a ‘miserable bastard’.”

“What we particularly like about his style is his accessibility: his ability to put ideas worthy of a place in the Harvard Business Review in a format understandable to a telesales recruit on their first day”.

“Geoff Burch can craft striking phrases. His messages are simple and he clearly thinks very hard about how to communicate things. And he delivers his speeches with the panache of a stand-up comedian.”

“Mr Burch eschews Power Point presentations and business jargon, which delights the judges. They wish to hold him up as an example of how to inspire audiences in times of crisis.”

The UK Speechwriters’ Guild was set up in 2009 to promote the interests and profile of speechwriters and raise standards of public speaking in the UK.

Last year’s winner was Sir Martin Broughton, Chairman of British Airways, who went on to prove how his speechmaking skills gave him the power to influence Government policy and make headlines across the world. Sir Martin accepted his prize at the conference of the UK Speechwriters’ Guild in Bournemouth in September 2010.

More information about the UK Speechwriters’ Guild can be found HERE.