A gentleman who is for turning: snakes or ladders weekend for Ed Balls?

Thanks to a speech to the Fabian Society (above) and endless interviews by Ed Balls (e.g. below), this weekend has been alive with the sound of turning in the mainstream media, blogs and on Twitter.

Under a headline 'This is new all right. it just isn't enough', John Rentoul of the Independent on Sunday tells us 'Ed Balls caught up with where the Labour Party should have been 16 month ago. It was an important moment...' (more HERE).

The New Statesman is rather less optimistic, with an article by Owen Jones telling us 'Ed Balls' surrender is a political disaster' (more HERE).

And, perhaps not surprisingly, the unions aren't too pleased by what looks like rather sudden U turn from Mr Balls - see Unions criticise Ed Balls's pay freeze comments on the BBC website HERE.

Snake, ladder or both?

For me, I find myself wondering how the speech and interviews by Mr Balls fit in (or not) with the snakes and ladders theory of political communication, which proposes that interviews work like snakes for politicians (by attracting negative news coverage) and speeches work like ladders (by attracting positive news coverage) - for more on which HERE.

But here we have an example of a politician staying consistently 'on message' - and a highly controversial one at that - both in a speech and related interviews.

There's no doubt that a message has got across (though to how many over a weekend?) and, given how little of the speech was actually to be seen or heard on broadcast news programmes, this probably had more to do with the interviews than his Fabian Society lecture.

However, whether it's had (or will have) a positive or negative otcome for Mr Balls and the Labour Party, only time will tell.

Polish lawyer shoots himself while waiting for Miliband's speech

While I was waiting to hear Ed Milband's speech earlier today, I was seriously distracted by a macabre piece of news footage, in which a Polish lawyer shoots himself during a five minute break that he'd just requested.

And if that wasn't bizarre enough, he missed and, at the time of writing, is still alive (more on which HERE).

So anyone expecting to read about Miliband's 'relaunch' speech will, I'm afraid, have to wait...

Update, 11 January:

Injury 'not life-threatening' - interview from hospital bed HERE.

The 'fluent but insincere and shallow' Kelvin Mackenzie at the Leveson Inquiry

This particular sequence from former editor of The Sun Kelvin MacKenzie's evidence to the Leveson Inquiry is [was - see below] featured on the websites of both the BBC and Sky News today.

Are we supposed, I wonder, to be impressed by his brilliant 'analysis' of the difference between the verbs 'to lob' and 'to chuck'? And is anyone convinced that it aptly illustrates his point that "we thought about something and then put it in"?

I suppose it would be too much to expect him to tell us which 'online dictionery' he consulted to get his definition of the verb 'to lob', but it's an easy enough game for anyone to play.

So, having just looked up the word 'glib' in the Oxford online dictionary, I can report that the definition looks like a fairly accurate description of Mr MacKenzie (and his words):

glib

adjective

(of words or a speaker) fluent but insincere and shallow.

P.S. Since this was first posted earlier today, the clip has been removed from the Sky News website. But you can still watch it on the BBC website HERE and HERE.

In the absence of any explanation of why it was withdrawn, one can't help wondering whether this is a case of one Murdoch-owned media outlet (Sky News) retrospectively altering its news coverage to protect the former editor of another (The Sun) - in which case, it should perhaps be reported to the Leveson Inquiry forthwith.