Kate makes her first speech as Duchess of Cambridge

At the time of posting, more than 300 people have watched this on YouTube, so here's a chance to predict which excerpts (if any) will be replayed on television news programmes this evening.

Comments (so far) by YouTube viewers include:

"The Duchess's First Speech Was Well Done. The Broken Up Speech Was Actually Done For The Children. Children Need To Be Able To Hear A Few Words At A Time To Understand A Speech. Well Done!!!!"

"Extremely annoying how she reads the script every 2 seconds, that was most likely written by her PR team."

"clear, professional, and sincere speech. job well done for being her first."

"speak up!"

"well done god save the queen."

But what do you think - and which will be the soundbite(s) for tonght?

Clapping Clegg's condemnation of economically rational behaviour?

A line in a speech sometime makes me sit up and think twice about it and/or whether the politician really meant what he said - like this from Nick Clegg's speech to the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference over the weekend:

"Let me tell you, there are few things that make me angrier as the unemployed struggle to find work, as ordinary families struggle to make ends meet, as young people struggle to get on the housing ladder: the sight of the wealthiest scheming to keep their tax bill down to the bare minimum is frankly disgraceful" (about 50 seconds in):

The line in bold got me wondering whether it was fair comment or a rather too easy way to get some much needed applause - to which my answers are "no" and "yes".

If "scheming" means consulting accountants and if the advice they give you is legal, what exactly is it that's "frankly disgraceful" about anyone keeping "their tax bill down to the bare minimum"?

Or is Mr Clegg suggesting that we should all be volunteering to pay more tax than we should?

Of course we can sympathise with people struggling to find work, to make ends meet or to get on the housing ladder. But is this an adequate reason, excuse or justification for condemning the wealthy for their economically rational (and perfectly legal) behaviour?

Is this a new version of 'liberal economics' - or am I missing something?

WORLD EXCLUSIVE: First English translation of Putin's victory speech

At the end of my previous blog post, I complained that the Western media - including newspapers like The Times, which used to boast that it was a 'newspaper of record' - hadn't bothered to publish an English translation of Vladimir Putin's victory speech (HERE).

So I gave up searching Google and turned to Twitter in pursuit of the elusive text, where a Russian speech guru's perceptively dry tweet seemed to explain all: "You see, the real problem with Putin's victory speech is that nobody cares enough to even transcribe it let alone translate it."

Luckily for readers of this blog, the winner of my Putin Christmas speechwriting competition, who also happens to be my brother (@dsa99uk) - perhaps the only person in the UK with degrees in Agricultural Economics and Russian - has come up trumps with the following translation (and David Atkinson's speech for Putin can be seen HERE).

As far as I know it is the first English translation of the speech that's been published so far, and you can watch and read it here:

Vladimir Putin:
Dear friends!

I particularly want to thank all the citizens of Russia who took part today in the election for President of the Russian Federation.

Special thanks, of course, to those who have gathered here today in Moscow, to all those who supported us in every corner of our vast and boundless country.

Thanks to everyone who said "yes" for a Great Russia.

I once asked you: "Will we win?"

We did win!

We won in an open and fair contest! [Crowd cheers]

Thank you friends, thank you!

We won in an open and fair contest.

But it was not only the election for President of Russia.

It was a very important test for us all, for all our people, it was a test of political maturity, of independence, and of self confidence.

We have shown indeed, that no one can enslave us.

No one and nothing can enslave us.

We have shown that our people are truly able to easily distinguish between the desire for progress and renewed political provocation that has only one objective - to destroy Russian sovereignty and usurp power

The Russian people have now shown that in our country such choices and scenarios will not pass.

THEY SHALL NOT PASS. [Putin shouts]

We won today, thanks to the overwhelming support of the overwhelming majority of our voters, we won a clear victory.

We will work honestly and hard.

We will achieve success.

And we call on all to unite around the interests of our people and our homeland.

I promised you that we would win.

We did. We won. Glory to Russia.

(Translated by David Atkinson).

Scripted & unscripted presidential victory speeches: Putin v. Obama

If you've been following the debate about scripted versus unscripted speeches (HERE), Putin's victory speech gives us a chance to review two comparable examples.

Those of us who don't speak Russian, of course, have to make allowances for any loss of impact arising from our having to rely on the simultaneous translation.

According to those who believe that speeches read from a written script sound (and/or look) 'less authentic' than those that don't, Putin is presumably the clear winner over Obama when it comes to delivering an effective presidential victory speech.

But that, predictably, is the exact opposite of the impression I got from these two specimens.

I also know that I don't feel in the least bit motivated to do a line-by-line analysis of Putin's speech along the lines of the one I did of Obama's back in 2008 (HERE).

Nor am I at all surprised that no national newspaper (or any other media outlet) has approached me for a technical comment on Putin's speech - and would be more than a little surprised if any of them bothered to do so.

P.S. Why hasn't the media published a text of Putin's speech?

Having spent quite a while on Google looking for things like "text of Putin's victory speech", I was surprised to discover that - unusually for what one would have thought was an important enough speech to merit full translation - none of our major media outlets has bothered to publish a verbatim copy of the text.

Needless to say, I think this is a great pity, as some of us are still old-fashioned enough to want to make our own assessments of politicians by hearing the actual words that come out of their own mouths, rather than having to depend on media-selected quotations or commentaries.

And, in this particular case, the few remarks that were translated did seem to be interesting and important enough to deserve full translation.

Ed Miliband talks during his own speeches set to music in Labour's latest PPB

These days, you can watch party political broadcasts before they've even been broadcast, as with this one from the Labour Party that's scheduled to appear on television tonight.

It has at least two irritating features that I've blogged about before. One is ghastly background musak - for more on which, see Is the sound of music on TV getting more and worse?

The other is that we no longer have to put up with television reporters telling us what politicians are saying during speeches in the background but can now listen to a party leader doing the voiceover to films of his own silent speeches in the foreground - for more on which, see Politicians and broadcasters in the UK: collaboration or capitulation?

Ed Miliband seems pleased enough with this effort to have tweeted a link that invited us to have a preview last night.

It leaves me wondering why - and short of long words....

News broadcast of a speech read out in full for 3 minutes: too much & too inauthentic?

Something very unusual happened today.

Presenter Eddie Mair told us on BBC Radio 4's early evening news programme PM that they were going to play the whole of Charlotte Church's statement after she and her family had settled their case for phone-hacking damages against News International's now defunct News of the World (above).

It lasted about three minutes - far longer than most clips from political speeches replayed on radio and television news broadcasts these days.

Regular readers will know that the British broadcasters' reluctance to play extended excerpts from political speeches and their preference for having their reporters tell us what speakers are saying is something I've been complaining about for quite a while (see, for example, Politicians and broadcaster in the UK" collaboration or capitulation?).

They'll also know that I don't believe that reading a written-speech aloud always means that the speaker is doomed to come across as 'inauthentic' (see To read or not to read? That is the question for speechwriters - or is it?).

Charlotte Church may not be a politician, but this unusually long clip gives us a chance to check on both these issues at the same time.

Was it too long for listeners and did she sound inauthentic?

I first heard the clip on the car radio, so you'll have to close your eyes or look away to experience it in more or less the same way as I did (though without the added bonus of the beautiful Somerset countryside).

Having done so, see what you think.

For what it's worth, I thought she made rather a good job of it - even though I could tell that she was reading from a text).

Nor did my attentiveness to what she was saying lapse for a moment - even though we're all supposed to have such short attention spans that we're incapable of listening to a speech for anything like as long as three minutes.

So I'm still wondering why it is that our broadcasters no longer allow us to listen to excerpts from speeches by politicians that last as long as this...

P.S. Fellow anoraks won't be surprised to know that the sound bite singled out for the headlines was a simple contrast: "They're not sorry, they're just sorry they got caught" (e.g. http://t.co/PjUzYQYQ) - which reminded me of my sons' Sinclair Spectrum computer chess game, which used to say after you'd played an obvious move: "I expected that!"

Are all animals right or left handed?

Now for something completely different - a video sequel to Basil's Book Launch plus a question for zoologists, ethologists or anyone else who might know about such important matters.

However noisy and irritating Basil's impatience may be when demanding (yet again) to be fed, he is utterly consistent in one notable thing: never have we seen him using his right paw to rattle the dish.

So the obvious question is whether or not this is 'normal' and, more generally, are all cats and other animals right or left-handed/pawed?

P.S. Apparently most cats are left-handed

Thanks to Lisa Brathwaite (@LisaBraithwaite) for tweeting news from a vet in California suggesting that Basil is not, as we'd suspected, unusual in preferring his left paw.

She writes: "Our mobile vet told us the other day that most cats are left-handed. We have one who pats us for attention; always left paw" (7th March, 2012).

Further inspection reveals that Basil also uses his his left back paw for scratching himself during a rest from rattling his dish: