Although I had to rely on translations of the concession and victory speeches by outgoing President Sarkozy and President-elect Hollande, both struck me as having made pretty respectable jobs of them.
And 'respect' was definitely le mot du jour, with loser and winner both calling for it to be conferred on the other.
Nor does it seem likely that either of them had in mind the contrived acronym on which the British political party of the said name is supposed to be based - Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environmentalism, Community and Trade Unionism - which I don't think quite works as an acronym in French...
Putin, Pomp & Circumcision
We Brits sometimes boast that we're rather good at organising formal state occasions. On this evidence, the Russians don't do a bad job at it either.
I was intrigued to see that this particular clip on YouTube (HERE) cuts just as he gets his speech out of his pocket.
And was it just a coincidence that the timing of this historic event coincided with the election of a new President of the French Republic?
I look forward to looking more closely at his speech - but I haven't forgotten (and hope others won't forget) the putrid prose that President Putin has been known to peddle in the past...
Losing words from Clegg, Cameron and Livingstone
Contrary to what some commentators have been trying to make out, there's nothing unusual about government parties suffering heavy losses in mid-term local elections.
Nor is there anything unusual about leaders of defeated parties saying something encouraging to their supporters, especially those who've just lost their seats - and Messrs Clegg and Cameron were quick off the mark (in that order) with fairly brief interviews that did the job yesterday morning:
But while council seats had been falling to Labour up and down the land, the voters of London rejected Labour veteran Ken Livingstone in favour of re-electing Boris Johnson for a second term as their Tory mayor.
As the votes were being counted, Ken must have been hard at work preparing his five and a half minute losing speech. If this was to be his last election, he was jolly well going to make the most of it by letting Londoners know what they'd all be missing, what further disasters Boris had in store for them and just how badly they'd all been let down by the media.
Because yes, folks, maestro of the media though Ken may have been for the last 30 years, it was the media that did for him in the end - or was it?
Nor is there anything unusual about leaders of defeated parties saying something encouraging to their supporters, especially those who've just lost their seats - and Messrs Clegg and Cameron were quick off the mark (in that order) with fairly brief interviews that did the job yesterday morning:
But while council seats had been falling to Labour up and down the land, the voters of London rejected Labour veteran Ken Livingstone in favour of re-electing Boris Johnson for a second term as their Tory mayor.
As the votes were being counted, Ken must have been hard at work preparing his five and a half minute losing speech. If this was to be his last election, he was jolly well going to make the most of it by letting Londoners know what they'd all be missing, what further disasters Boris had in store for them and just how badly they'd all been let down by the media.
Because yes, folks, maestro of the media though Ken may have been for the last 30 years, it was the media that did for him in the end - or was it?
Obama demonstrates how to time your slides with what you're saying
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Many PowerPoint presentations fail because the speaker can't wait to press the button to bring up a new slide - usually because they haven't a clue what to say next until they can see what's there on the screen.
That's why I recommend the motto "later rather than sooner" -because the audience has to wait for whatever newsworthy or surprise element a slide might have in store for them and gets
the impression that the speaker is in full control and knows
exactly what's coming next.
I illustrated and discussed the point a while back, with video
clips of Steve Jobs getting it wrong and getting it right (HERE).
In his recent speech at the White House Correspondents dinner (above), President Obama demonstrated that he too knows that pressing the
button (or getting someone else to press the
button) "later rather than sooner" is an effective way to
time when to reveal each next slide.
That's why I recommend the motto "later rather than sooner" -because the audience has to wait for whatever newsworthy or surprise element a slide might have in store for them and gets
the impression that the speaker is in full control and knows
exactly what's coming next.
I illustrated and discussed the point a while back, with video
clips of Steve Jobs getting it wrong and getting it right (HERE).
In his recent speech at the White House Correspondents dinner (above), President Obama demonstrated that he too knows that pressing the
button (or getting someone else to press the
button) "later rather than sooner" is an effective way to
time when to reveal each next slide.
It was also a marked improvement on his use of visual aids
than was to be seen in the slide-pack used in the 'enhanced'
version of his State of the Union Address earlier this year.
Another startling interview: "I haven't seen or heard what the PM said, but I agree with it"
My thanks today to Jim Kelleher of IpsosMORI for alerting me to an essential gem for my collection of memorable interviews with politicians (via Twitter @UncleBooBoo).
- Politician answers a question: an exception that proves the rule
- A Labour leader with no interest in spin!
- A Tory leader's three evasive answers to the same question
- The day Mrs Thatcher apologised (twice) for what she'd said in an interview
- A prime minister who openly refused to answer Robin Day's questions
- 'Here today, gone tomorrow' politician walks out of interview with Robin Day
- The day Mandelson walked out of an interview rather than answer a question about Gordon Brown
- Mandelson gives two straight answers to tow of Paxman's questions
- Two more straight answers from Mandelson - about failed coups and the PM's rages
- Rare video clip of a politician giving 5 straight answers to 5 consecutive questions
The language 'surfacing' from James Murdoch at today's Leveson Inquiry
At about 1.00 p.m. today, I was asked by a leading Scottish newspaper to write a 400 word piece on James Murdoch's performance at today's Leveson Inquiry - deadline 6.00 p.m.
Tight though this was compared with the usual deadlines I work to, I agreed. Then, at about 4.30 p.m. just as I'd finished the first draft, another phone call from them: the revelations about Alex Salmond's involvement with the Murdoch family had wiped everything off tomorrows front pages so they wouldn't be able to use my contribution after all.
Not unusual in my experience with the media but, with a blog where I can post unfinished stuff, not much of a disaster either:
As one who spends most of his working life
helping business people to communicate more effectively, I should have known
better than to tune in to James Murdoch’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry
today. But I can never resist the chance to collect examples of how and how
not to do it.
Having heard Mr Murdoch in action before, I
knew that he had a tendency to use management-speak to get his points across. What I now know is that he’s one of the
most extreme cases I’ve ever come across.
He spoke about “negotiating some of the
detail going forward”, an “undertaking in lieu”, of someone who had “gotten
what they’d professed to want”, about “a case about whether or not there was an
insufficiency with respect to…”; he “recalled concurring
with that view” and “believed (he) would have appreciated assurances that the
process would be handled objectively in the future.”
He had much to say
about “our rationale for the transaction and our
analysis of the plurality concerns” and even threatened to “take plurality off
the table.”
“Nothing (he) said to Mr Osborne would have
been inconsistent with our public advocacy on the subject."
And he was lucky enough to have “a
management board where senior executives … had ample opportunity to be able to
discuss these issues and surface them.”
As his flat mid-Atlantic drawl droned on,
it was like listening to paint dry. As for what it all meant to your average
native speaker of English, much of it was anyone’s guess. And that, presumably,
is the point. Why else would so many business people become so addicted to the
language of jargon and management-speak.
After all, the more long words of Latin
origin you use, the more obscure your message is likely to be. Better still,
saying that you “concur with that view” rather than “agreeing with it” implies
a degree of neutrality and detachment. As an added bonus, if your audience is
trying to work out what your words actually meant while, at the same time,
trying to listen to whatever you say next, they’re less likely to be able to
understand that either.
Anyone in search of data for a treatise on
the obscurantism of contemporary business language need look no further than
James Murdoch – who also provides us with a variation on a famous quotation from George
Bernard Shaw: he who can communicate communicates; he who can’t owns the
media of communication...
P.S. Data for further research
Video and full transcripts of proceedings from the Leveson Inquiry become available shortly after each session at 'Hearings' on the Leveson website HERE. They hadn't been posted at the time of writing the above, but they have now. So, if you've the stamina for more management-speak, you can gorge yourself on gems from James Murdoch like the following:
"Well, I think this is a formal letter about the process, which is something that we would have -- I mean, again, most of these emails in here, as we continue to go through them, are really about the process and our concern that the appropriate things were being considered, that they were being considered in the appropriate way and that our legal arguments were heard around the place. I mean, this is a large-scale transaction that was in the hands, with respect to the decision-making process, of the department of culture, media and sport. We're going to get into, in a minute, the undertakings in lieu that were extracted, the concession, the remedy, if you will, and it was entirely reasonable to try to communicate with the relevant policy-makers about the merits of what we were proposing."
P.S. Data for further research
Video and full transcripts of proceedings from the Leveson Inquiry become available shortly after each session at 'Hearings' on the Leveson website HERE. They hadn't been posted at the time of writing the above, but they have now. So, if you've the stamina for more management-speak, you can gorge yourself on gems from James Murdoch like the following:
"Well, I think this is a formal letter about the process, which is something that we would have -- I mean, again, most of these emails in here, as we continue to go through them, are really about the process and our concern that the appropriate things were being considered, that they were being considered in the appropriate way and that our legal arguments were heard around the place. I mean, this is a large-scale transaction that was in the hands, with respect to the decision-making process, of the department of culture, media and sport. We're going to get into, in a minute, the undertakings in lieu that were extracted, the concession, the remedy, if you will, and it was entirely reasonable to try to communicate with the relevant policy-makers about the merits of what we were proposing."
"…
you point out rightly it's a very difficult question and it is a balance and I
wouldn't presume to have the answer. However, perhaps I would just -- I would
just say that the things that may be weighed up with respect to when you're
considering up would be both a question of clarity around defence, really
around criminal defence, and it may be a question of a stronger enshrining of
speech rights on the one hand, coupled with a stronger set of consequences and
either a self-regulating body or a statutory body that includes the press but
also individuals that are not part of the working press today, so that just as
one of the great learnings for us as a business has been not to allow an
operating company to investigate itself without absolute transparency to the
corporate centre, which I think is one of the learnings from the failure in
2006 and
2007 for News Corporation to get to the bottom of this, I also think it's
difficult to allow an industry in and of itself to control itself on a
voluntary basis, given the concerns that we obviously all have, and I think
balancing a strengthening on both sides may be one way to think about it."
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