ASSISTED DYING DEBATE: Why was suicide ever a crime?

Members of the Lords will debate the main principles and purpose of the Assisted Dying Bill during second reading, on Friday 22 October.

The Assisted Dying Bill seeks to enable adults who are terminally ill to be provided at their request with specified assistance to end their own life.

Debate on assisted dying

Members will discuss the key areas of the bill during the second reading debate from 10am.

Members speaking

Baroness Meacher (Crossbench), chair of Dignity in Dying and the bill's sponsor in the Lords, will open the debate.

Nearly 140 members are expected to take part, including:

Barones Butler-Sloss (Crossbench), former head of the Family Division of the High Court
Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the Church of England
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (Crossbench), Vice President of Hospice UK and Professor of Palliative Medicine
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Conservative), former Lord Advocate of Scotland and Lord Chancellor
Lord Paddick (Liberal Democrat), former Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner
Lord Winston (Labour), doctor, scientist and broadcaster.

Other members taking part represent a wide range of professions and diverse personal experiences.

Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links (Conservative), former leader of the Scottish Conservatives, is expected to make her maiden speec Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Conservative), Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Ministry of Justice, will respond on behalf of the government.

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I was fascinated by yesterday morning's Today programme which had quite a long interview on this debate in the House of Lords - probably because there was a time when I was regarded as quite an expert on the subject (in 1978, the Macmillan Press published a book based on my PhD thesis : SUICIDE AND THE SOCIAL ORGANISATION OF SUDDEN DEATH (London, The Macmillan Press)*.

Brief history of English law on suicide

The 'Burial of Suicide Act' of 1823 had abolished the legal requirement in England of burying suicides at crossroads.

Sir Charles Fletcher-Cooke then an MP was the principal figure behind the emergence, introduction and passage of the Suicide Act 1961 which decriminalised suicide across the United Kingdom. He had been campaigning for it at least decade beforehand apart from some Catholic and conservative Anglican opposition, the bill passed easily.

Before that, suicide was officially a crime which, among other things, gave significant others an incentive to conceal evidence from coroners to avoid a suicide verdict at the inquest. This had less to do with the 'shame' of haviItng a relative, friend or colleague who'd just done something illegal and was a criminal than the fact that such a verdict had negative financial implications for survivors: e.g. life insurance companies refusing to pay a lump-sum or pension on the death of people who had killed themselves.

MPs knew about the awful post-suicide problems their constituents faced which is no doubt why the bill passed so easily.

What changed in 1961?

1. Suicide ceased to be a crime.

2. But criminal liability for encouraging or assisting in another’s suicide was still a crime.

The second of these is what's currently being debated in parliament.

Why did suicide become a crime in the first place?

This had little or nothing to do with religion, ethics or any other concerns in recent debates,

In the much more distant past, English monarchs thought a good idea for suicide to be a felony because the wealth and property of those convicted of a felony automatically went into the crown's pocket.

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* https://www.amazon.co.uk/Discovering-Suicide-Studies-Social-Organization/dp/0333345533/ref=kwrp_li_std_nodl

The Queen's Speech: an exception that proves the ruler

This blog is from 22 years ago when the Queen opened parliament by reading a speech written for her by Gordon Brown's Labour government.

I watched her reading the whole of today's specch prepared by Boris Johnson's Conservative government - not becase I'm particularly interested in their plans for the coming year but because I do like to inspect the standard of speechwriting (which was quite impressive this year) and, just as interesting, whether our 95 year-old Queen still has the ability to deliver a boring, neutral and uninspiring speech.

On this morning's evidence, the answer to this is a resounding YES!

What follows is the blog I wrote 20+ years ago.

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At the State Opening of Parliament on 3rd December, the Queen, as she does every year, will be reading out her government's legislative plans for the months ahead. Most commentators will be listening to the Speech to find out what Gordon Brown is going to be putting on the statute book in 2009.

How not to speak inspiringly

But you can also listen to it as a model of how not to give an inspiring speech.

Public speaking at its best depends both on the language used to package the key messages and the way it is delivered. Using rhetoric, maintaining eye contact with the audience, pausing regularly and in particular places, stressing certain words and changing intonation are all essential ingredients in the cocktail for conveying passion and inspiring an audience. This is why it is so easy to ‘dehumanise’ the speech of Daleks and other talking robots by the simple device of stripping out any hint of intonational variation and have them speak in a flat, regular and monotonous tone of voice.

When it comes to sounding unenthusiastic and uninterested in inspiring an audience, the Queen’s Speech is an example with few serious competitors. She has no qualms about being seen to be wearing spectacles, which underline the fact that she is reading carefully from the script she holds so obviously in front of her.

Nor is she in the least bit inhibited about fixing her eyes on the text rather than the audience. Then, as she enunciates the sentences, her tone is so disinterested as to make it abundantly clear that she is merely reciting words written by someone else and about which she has no personal feelings or opinions whatsoever.

This is, of course, how it has to be in a constitutional monarchy, where the head of state has to be publicly seen and heard as neutral about the policies of whatever political party happens to have ended up in power. The Queen knows, just as everyone else knows, that showing enthusiasm, or lack of it, about the law-making plans of her government would lead to a serious crisis that would be more than her job is worth. So, even when announcing plans to ban hunting with hounds, she managed not to convey the slightest hint of disappointment or irritation that a favorite pastime of her immediate family was about to be outlawed.

The Queen’s Speech is therefore an interesting exception to the normal rules of effective public speaking, and her whole approach is a fine example of how to deal with those rare occasions when you have to conceal what you really feel about the things you are talking about.

Shakespeare as speechwriter

In my continuously failing efforts to tidy up my study, I came across a programme for a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Julius Caesar at Stratford upon Avon in 1992 (below).

I'd forgotten that the RSC had asked me to write a thousand-word article for it, in exchange for which they gave me two free seats at an actual performance.

Reading it all these years later, it struck me as better than I expected - and at least good enough to put on my blog.

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SHAKESPEARE AS SPEECHWRITER

… so little has the language of persuasion changed in the last four hundred years that, were Shakespeare to return today, he would have no trouble in marketing his services to contemporary politicians …

When it comes to writing speeches to “stir men’s blood”, Shakespeare exhibits a mastery equal to that found in the classical Roman times about which he was writing. For someone living in an era when education was more or less synonymous with learning the classics, it was hardly surprising that he had a good understanding of rhetoric. Perhaps less obvious is the fact that the rhetorical techniques used by Mark Antony are much the same as those used by today’s politicians in their attempts to win our hearts and minds and votes.

Recent research, based on analyses of video-recorded political speeches has examined sequences where audiences applaud something said by a speaker. This makes it possible to identify forms of language and modes of delivery that literally “move” audiences to applaud what the speaker just said with a physical and audible display of approval.

One of the main findings is that about 75% of the bursts of applause during political speeches occurs after the use of seven rhetorical devices, most of which feature prominently in the Forum speech. For example, rhetorical questions come thick and fast. Even before his first one, Mark Antony opens with one

there might be a case for giving praise where praise was due.

An equally dramatic difference in tone would have resulted had the second contrast had b of the simplest rhetorical devices, a list containing three items: “Friends, Romans, Countrymen”. Famous examples from later centuries include political slogans like “Liberté, egalité, fraternité” and “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer”

A more important device involves the use of various forms of contrast, such as Margaret Thatcher’s “You turn if you want to – the lady’s not for turning” and John F Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” Mark Antony launches into his speech with two consecutive contrasts: “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him” and “The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”

This early use of powerfully formulated lines highlights the importance of both of striking an immediate chord with an audience and of establishing the mood and agenda of what’s to come. His opening is well crafted on each of these fronts and the structures reveal a recognition of the importance of details like the order in which the two parts of a contrast should be delivered. It is usually the second part with which the audience will wish to affiliate or will highlight a theme for further development – and this is exactly what happens here.

Think of the very different expectations that would have been established if Shakespeare had inverted the contrasts. Had the first one been “I come not to praise Caesar but to bury him” it would have implied that the speaker was glad to see the back of him and was about to tell us why, rather than hinting that een inverted too: “The good men do is oft interred with their bones; the evil that men do lives after them” would have suggested that we can forget about anything good Caesar might have done and that what matters now is to clear up the mess caused by his evil deeds.

Shakespeare therefore constructed the sequence in just the right order for the mood and direction the speech was to take. The way it develops then shows that contrasts are not only useful for organising material on a line-by-line basis but can also provide a single unifying theme for the overall structure of a speech. This is illustrated by the recurring contrast between Mark Antony’s view of Caesar and that of Brutus, summed up in the lines “I speak not to disprove that Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know.” It also provides the continuing leitmotif with his repeated references to what Brutus has said about Caesar.

As one would expect from an accomplished speechwriter, Shakespeare’s ability to combine different rhetorical devices would have assured much prime-time news coverage for a speaker using one of his scripts:

“I rather choose

“to wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,

“than I will wrong such honourable men”

is an example of a contrast in which the first part involves a list of three. “you are not wood, you are not stones, but men” has a third item that contrasts with the first two in the list.

When it comes to content, research has shown that the surest way to stir an audience is either to attack your opponents or to praise your own side. On the evidence of the Forum speech, this too is something Shakespeare understood, a Mark Antony heaps increasingly praise on Caesar while using ironic praise of Brutus and his colleagues in an implicit and thinly veiled attack on the opposition.

Another point to emerge from research into contemporary speeches is that combining more than one rhetorical device in a single sequence often produces a more enthusiastic response than the use of a single device on its own. When that happens, such lines are very likely to attract the attention of journalists, who may select them as sound-bites for television news programmes.

When Mark Antony becomes self-deprecating about his own skill as an orator, we hear a contradiction that would have sounded amusing to those of Shakespeare’s contemporaries who were as well-versed in rhetoric:

“I am no orator as Brutus is;

“But as you know me all, a plain blunt man…

“For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth.

“Action nor utterance nor the power of speech

“To stir men’s blood.”

With a contrast, alliteration and two lists of three, he uses powerful rhetorical forms to deny his own rhetorical ability!

As a speechwriter, then, Shakespeare was a master of his craft. Indeed, so little has the language of persuasion changed over the past four hundred years that, were he to return today, he would certainly have no trouble in marketing his services to contemporary politicians.

Less certain is which of our current political parties would he help.

Max Atkinson is author of Our Masters' Voices: the language and body language of politics, Methuen, 1984.

US Senator John Barrasso on political communication

Another speaker at the European Speechwriters Audience with Max Atkinson was John Barrasso from Wyoming who is the third most senior Republican in the US Senate. He told me that every 4 years, his father used to take him to him to the presidential inauguration in Washington D.C. The first inaugural speech he heard was in 1961 by president John F. Kennedy whom he mentions in this clip.

An audience with Dr Max Atkinson

Birthday greetings or obituary?

On 3rd March, sixteen days before my birthday on the 19th, Brian Jenner (founder of the UK Speechwriters Guild & the European Speechwriters Network) chaired a Zoom meeting with the title of this blogpost.

With his usual ingenuity, Brian managed to get a remarkable group of people together who said such complimentary things about my work that I wasn't sure whether to be flattered or depressed by what could be heard as an obituary. This was because I remember being told years ago by someone doing research into obituaries in The Times that the routine starting point was what the deceased would be remembered for (i.e. how they'd ended up). The article was then carefully structured to explain how he or she got there.

A lot of people who didn't see the meeting have asked to see a video copy of it. Much of it can be seen at the start of my website at www.speaking.co.uk but you can see the whole thing here:

https://youtu.be/6x7Oi7wrWnI?t=1

If you rewind the clip to a few minutes after it starts, you can watch the whole session, except for a few clips (from Clark Judge, Senator Barrasso, Professor John Heritage and Belgian presentation trainer Carsten Wendt), for which see www.speaking.co.uk

Prof John Heritage's CONTRIBUTION TO AN AUDIENCE WITH Dr Max Atkinson

One of a number of welcome commets at the recent European Speechwriters Zoom meeting

Six secrets of President Kennedy's rhetorical success

JFK's inaugural speech: Six secrets of his success

By Max Atkinson
Rhetoric expert

Published 19 January 2011

John F Kennedy delivers his inaugural speech — The poetic "ask not" quotation is among the speech's most memorable lines

President John F Kennedy would have been delighted to know that his inaugural address is still remembered and admired 50 years later.

Like other great communicators - including Winston Churchill before him and Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama since then - he was someone who took word-craft very seriously indeed.

He had delegated his aide Ted Sorensen to read all the previous presidential inaugurals, with the additional brief of trying to crack the code that had made Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address such a hit.

Fifty years on, the debate about whether he or Sorensen played the greater part in composing the speech matters less than the fact that it was a model example of how to make the most of the main rhetorical techniques and figures of speech that have been at the heart of all great speaking for more than 2,000 years. Most important among these are:

Contrasts: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country"
Three-part lists: "Where the strong are just, and the weak secure and the peace preserved"
Combinations of contrasts and lists (by contrasting a third item with the first two): "Not because the communists are doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right"

If the rhetorical structure of sentences is one set of building blocks in the language of public speaking, another involves simple "poetic" devices such as:

Alliteration: "Let us go forth to lead the land we love"
Imagery: "The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans"

In general, the more use of these a speaker makes, the more applause they will get and the more likely it is that they will be recognised as a brilliant orator.

But great communicators differ as to which of these techniques they use most.

Presidents Reagan and Obama, for example, stand out as masters of anecdote and story-telling, which didn't feature at all in JFK's inaugural. Mr Obama also favours three-part lists, of which there were 29 in his 10-minute election victory speech in Chicago.

Stark warning

Kennedy, however, used very few in his inaugural address. For him, contrasts were the preferred weapon, coming as they did at a rate of about one every 39 seconds in this particular speech. Some were applauded and some have survived among the best-remembered lines.

He began with three consecutive contrasts:

"We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom"
"Symbolizing an end as well as a beginning"
"Signifying renewal as well as change"

From the 20 or so he used, other widely quoted contrasts, all of which were applauded, include:

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich"
"Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate"
"My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man"

The speech also bristled with imagery, starting with a stark warning about the way the world has changed because "man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life."

People of the developing world were "struggling to break the bonds of mass misery."

JFK vowed to "assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty" and that "this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house."

He sought to "begin anew the quest for peace before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity", hoped that "a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion" and issued a "call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle."

First inaugural designed for the media?

Impressive though the rhetoric and imagery may have been, what really made the speech memorable was that it was the first inaugural address by a US president to follow the first rule of speech-preparation: analyse your audience - or, to be more precise at a time when mass access to television was in its infancy, analyse your audiences.

In the most famous fictional speech of all time, Mark Antony had shown sensitivity to his different audiences in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar by asking his "Friends, Romans, countrymen" to lend him their ears. But Kennedy had many more audiences in mind than those who happened to be in Washington that day.

His countrymen certainly weren't left out, appearing as they did in the opening and towards the end with his most famous contrast of all: "Ask not..." But he knew, perhaps better than any previous US president, that local Americans were no longer the only audience that mattered. The age of a truly global mass media had dawned, which meant that what he said would be seen, heard or reported everywhere in the world.

At the height of the Cold War, Kennedy also had a foreign policy agenda that he wanted to be heard everywhere in the world. So the different segments of the speech were specifically targeted at a series of different audiences:

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill"
"To those new nations whom we welcome to the ranks of the free"
"To those in the huts and villages of half the globe"
"To our sister republics south of the border"
"To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations"
"Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary"

The following day, there was nothing on the front pages of two leading US newspapers, The New York Times and the Washington Post to suggest that the countrymen in his audience had been particularly impressed by the speech - neither of them referred to any of the lines above that have become so famous.

The fact that so much of the speech is still remembered around the world 50 years later is a measure of Kennedy's success in knowing exactly what he wanted to say, how best to say it and, perhaps most important of all, to whom he should say it.

Dr Max Atkinson is the author of Lend Me Your Ears: All You Need to Know about Public Speaking and Presentation and Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy.

WARNING: EVEREST DO NOT FIT THE BEST WINDOWS

The windows firm, based in Cuffley in Hertfordshire, was plunged into crisis in March when the lockdown made it impossible for staff to make sales and installation visits to customers’ homes.Everest has been been sold back to its private equity owner Better Capital via an insolvency procedure known as a “pre-pack” administration.

The windows firm, based in Cuffley in Hertfordshire, was plunged into crisis in March when the lockdown made it impossible for staff to make sales and installation visits to customers’ homes.

Everest has been been sold back to its private equity owner Better Capital via an insolvency procedure known as a “pre-pack” administration. However, the company said 188 redundancies were being made across the business.

Alistair Massey, a partner at FRP, the advisory firm that handled the sale, said Everest was an “iconic British brand” with an enviable market position in its specialist field.

“In the face of incredibly challenging trading conditions in recent months, the business required restructuring to ensure a sustainable future,” he said. “This deal secures a significant number of jobs and personal livelihoods for many affiliated roles.”

Everest works with around 600 self-employed fitters.

The deal will involve the transfer of 413 full-time jobs in manufacturing and sales to new trading company Everest 2020 which has taken over the order book. Better Capital is investing £3.2m in the new vehicle.

Everest has made losses for several years, with the last set of accounts filed at Companies House showing a £9.3m loss on sales of £105m for 2018. The company has 18 distribution centres as well as two factories: in Sittingbourne, Kent, and Treherbert, Wales.

(The Guardian, June, 2020)

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ALL VERY WELL TO MAKE SO MANY EXCUSES, BUT WHY DIDN'T THE 'NEW EVEREST' BOTHER TO TELL THEIR PAST CUSTOMERS THAT THINGS HAD CHANGED SO DRAMATICALLY AND ALL EVEREST'S WONDERFUL GUARANTEES ARE NOW COMPLETELY WORTHLESS?

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The first I heard about this was when yesterday's mail came with a free leaflet from Everest advertising their current sale and wonderful offers of double-glazed windows, etc., etc.

As we've been having problems with our expensive Everest sash windows for years (and especially recently, see left), phoning them was at the top of my list of stuff to do.

When I did so, I was told more or less the same story as that in The Guardian. When I asked if the original Everest guarantees (all of which I still have in a file) would still be honoured, the reply was "As we're a new company, I'm afraid not."

When I asked if that was legal, she said she wasn't a lawyer and therefore didn't know.

I'm looking into it and would be glad for any comments readers may have.

We who went to Guy Fawkes's old school

Guy Fawkes was caught trying to blow up Westminster Palace on November 5

He was born on April 13th 1570 in Stonegate in York, and was educated at St. Peter's School in York, preferring to be called Guido Fawkes

My brother and I, as too did some of Guido's colleagues in in the plot, went to the same school.

When we were there, this local (and rather ancient) history was used as convenient excuse for not allowing us anywhere near a bonfire or fireworks - after all, it was "bad form" to burn an old boy of the school.

Many years and many headmasters later, the policy changed dramatically. Nowadays old boys get annual invitations to attend the school's bonfire celebrations!

But did I know him?

On 5th November a few years ago, when my wife was listening to primary school pupils reading, she said to one little boy: "My husband went to the same school as Guy Fawkes."

Obviously impressed, he replied: "Did he know him?"

Bad news about poppies

As usual, TV newscasters have started wearing poppies because we’re getting closer to 11 November. But however many times I’ve told the British Legion that they’d collect far more money by using cans with slits big enough to make it easier for us to donate notes, rather than coins, they have never taken any notice.

But this year it may not matter so much, thanks to Covid 19. If everyone observes social distancing rules, the British Legion is presumably going to have its worst year ever - which is bad news for those who rely on help from the charity.

Obama for Biden: rhetorical brilliance continued

Since before Barack Obama became president, I've blogged many times about his rhetorical brilliance and we now have evidence that he's no less brilliant when speaking at an odd location, i.e. a drive-in rally in support of Biden's campaign.

For what follows, a big thank you to CNBC, Reuters and Ipsos:

With a Reuters/Ipsos poll showing Biden with just a 4-percentage-point edge in Pennsylvania, Obama warned Democrats against complacency.

“We’ve got to turn out like never before,” he said. “We cannot leave any doubt in this election.”

Americans are voting early at a record pace this year, with more than 42 million ballots cast both via mail and in person ahead of Nov. 3 Election Day on concerns about the coronavirus and to make sure their votes are counted.

The early vote so far represents about 30% of the total ballots cast in 2016, according to the University of Florida’s U.S. Elections Project.

In remarks at an evening rally in Gastonia, North Carolina, Trump briefly mentioned Obama, noting that he had supported Clinton in her losing effort. “It was nobody who campaigned harder for Crooked Hillary than Obama, right?”

North Carolina is another battleground state where opinion polls show a tight race. Harris was also in the state on Wednesday to mobilize voters in Asheville and Charlotte.

Obama won North Carolina in 2008, but lost it in his 2012 campaign. Trump won it in 2016.

Trump argued that coronavirus-related restrictions were harming the state’s economy and complained that Democrats and the news media were overly pre-occupied with the pandemic.

“All you hear is covid, covid,” the president said. “That’s all they put on because they want to scare the hell out of everyone.”

TOP ALLY

Even though Wednesday marked Obama’s 2020 campaign debut, his support has been essential for Biden. He has appeared at joint fundraisers with Biden and Harris, and his network of well-connected former aides has been instrumental in helping the campaign outpace Trump in bringing in donations.

Slideshow ( 5 images )

Biden’s team said Obama would campaign in Miami on Saturday for the Democratic ticket.

The last days of campaigning are taking place during a surge in cases of COVID-19 and hospitalizations in battleground states, including North Carolina and Pennsylvania but also Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan.

Pennsylvania has averaged 1,500 new cases a day over the past week, a level it has not seen since April, according to a Reuters analysis. North Carolina is averaging 2,000 new cases a day over the past week, its highest level yet. The virus has killed more than 221,000 people in the United States.

Polling shows a majority of voters are disappointed in the way Trump has handled the pandemic, which he has repeatedly said would disappear on its own.

PM wants to "build a new Jerusalem"

Listening to Boris Johnson's leader's speech at the Tory party conference today meant that you had to put up with an elementary guide to rhetoric for beginners and a mass of corny old clichés

Behind him was the 3 parted alliterative multi-coloured slogan: BUILD BACK BETTER.

Johnson also want's to "build a new Jerusalem" and, if you think it's going to echo William Blake (i.e. do it in England's 'green and pleasant land') the speech claimed that he's discovered green energy too!

Even The Guardian seems to have been quiteimpressed:

"Boris Johnson has said in his speech to the Conservative party conference that Britain must not return to the status quo after the coronavirus pandemic, promising a transformation akin to the 'New Jerusalem' the postwar cabinet pledged in 1945. The prime minister also mounted a robust defence of the private sector, saying 'free enterprise' must lead the recovery and that he intended to significantly roll back the extraordinary state intervention that the crisis had necessitated."

What I'd like to know is who writes this kind of garbage?

After all, every Tory's heroine Margaret Thatcher took the business of speaking rather more seriously, she relied on some brilliant writers and she rehearsed. Does Johnson think that, as a former president of the Oxford Union debating society, he doesn't need to bother?

BOOKS BY Max Atkinson on public speaking, presentation and communication

Twitter, it seems, is widely used by authors to advertise their own books – as too are various programmes on BBC Radio 4. Yesterday’s Start the Week, for example was presented by Andrew Marr, who gave two authors who gave each of them about 45 minutes to plug their latest books. One, was former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams (whose sermons sometimes included 150 word sentences that were unintelligible to listeners). In retirement, he’s become master of a Cambridge college and has just written a book in St. Benedict. I didn’t bother to check the length of his sentences but can report that he hasn’t changed and I shall not be buying his book.

1. Having written quite a few academic books, my first attempt at writing for a wider public was based on research that I’d done (while fellow of an Oxford college) into audience responses to political speeches. Originally published by Methuen in 1984, it’s still in print (thanks to Routlege).

Reading it now, I don’t think I got the hang of writing for a non-academic audience until Chapter 3. Claptrap – which was also used by Granada Television as the title of the World in Action documentary based on findings reported in the book that you can watch on the opening page of my website at speaking.co.uk

by Max Atkinson (Author) 4.7 out of 5 stars 5 ratings

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2. Twenty years later, after making a living putting into practice the basic principles – i.e. by running hundreds of courses and coaching lindividuals in private and public sectors (+ a few politicians) I wrote a ‘how to do it’ book. This time I was lucky to have a literary agent, Bill Hamilton of AM Heath & Co who understood how to write for different audiences. He taught me how to “address the reader directly.” Without my realising it, a legacy of academic writing was that I was still tending to write in the third person “if a speaker does this… “. Bill suggested I try writing “if you do this….”

His other main piece of advice was that I shouldn’t be afraid of using shortened or elided forms (“don’t” rather than “do not”. etc.) – which as an academic, I’d never have thought of doing. So I went through the original manuacript and, wherever possible changed the text as he’d suggested. At the end of the exercise, I was frankly amazed at how much more ‘readable’ it had made the book.

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3. Peter Semper, an old school-friend, was very positive about Lend me your Ears though he did have a ‘but’: “only thing wrong with it is that it’s far too long for business people like me to read on a train or a flight - so why don’t you do a shorter version aimed at us." After a reasonably favourable response from my agent and publishers my agent and publishers, I asked Peter to have a go at producing a shorter version.

Fairly quickly, he sent me a copy of what he’d produced and, thanks to the wonders of word-processing technologly, I could see instantly that he’d only managed to cut it down by about a third – which I didn’t think was enough. So I set about cutting out even more and managed to get rid of another third. The result was Speechmaking and Presentation Made Easy: Seven essential steps to success:

Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy: Seven Essential Steps to Success by [Max Atkinson]

Read with Our Free App

4. During the Labour Party’s annual conference in September 2008, Michael Crick (then political editor of BBC TV’s Newsnight, now on Channel 4 News) suggested that I should start a blog. In June 2009, I reached my 250th blog-post. and realised that it was becoming something of an obsession.

The good news was that it was being favourably received. As Ayd Instone notes in his foreword to this next book (p. 7): “Politics.co.uk awarded it the same score (8/10) as Iain Dale’s Diary, one of the country’s top rated blogs. In their review, they said “Not many blogs out there focus so much on politicians’ presentation styles, so this makes a nice addition…a thoroughly impressive piece of work.”

At which point, I should confess that I personally find reading a book or newspaper easier and more satisfying than reading stuff from a screen, which is why the idea of publishing an edited collection of my blog-posts from 2008-2014 appealed to me. The result was:

Seen & Heard: conversations and commentary on contemporary communication

in politics, the media and around the world

Seen & Heard: Conversations and commentary on contemporary conversation

Paperback: £10.99

Jack Charlton, Leeds United & England, R.I.P.

I found today's news as especially sad, not just because I was a Leeds fan when the young Jack was playing for 2nd division Leeds United (while younger brother 'our kid' Bobby played for 1st division Manchester United), but because this talented player (and manager) appears to have been yet another victim of dementia caused by heading footballs

In 2017, a BBC TV documentary Dementia, Football and Me (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41902953) presented by Alan Shearer looked at the impact of heading footballs on the brain - and ultimately on players developing dementia. When watching Shearer heading a ball numerous times, I thought it all very well, but when people quite a lot older than him played football, the balls were made of leather, which meant that they got extremely heavy in wet weather (i.e. for most of the football season).

What 's so depressing about the death of Jack Charlton is that he's by no means the only one of the 1966 team to have suffered from dementia. He lasted until he was 83, as did Ray Wilson who also died of it. Martin Peters succombed to it at 76, while manager and former full-back Sir Alf Ramsey died of it at 79. Nobby Stiles (78) is still alive but has advanced dementia.

This adds up to 42% of those directly involved in our winning the world-cup in 1966 falling victim to dementia. I'm hopeless at statistics, but would say that this must surely be statistically very significant.

(An excellent film about Jack Charlton from today's BBC archive can be seen at

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53373542).

PUBLIC GIVES JOHNSON THUMBS-DOWN

The front page of today's I Newspaper has an interesting headline::

Beneath the headline, it says:

Exclusive 76% of people think lockdown imposed too late, new polling
suggests

>> Prime Minister's approval rating collapses from +38% to -7% in two months

>> 55% say the Government has not handled crisis well with 32% supportive

>> Uk alert level downgraded, allowing ministers to further ease lockdown

>> Scientists warn against complacency's R rate remains stubbornly close to 1

See P6

On page 6, the headline is 'Johnson's approval ratings in the red' above a picture of the PM scratching his head at a primary school yesterday.

And a fascinating letter from the editor, Oliver Duff on page 3 is headlined: PM's pivotal moment

Johnson a hollow, shallow PM and Cummings isn't going

Todays i newspaper has an excellent, if rather depressing, analysis of recent political events involving our P.M and his beloved aide by one of the paper's leading columnists, Ian Birrel:

Boris Johnson relies on Dominic Cummings as a comfort blanket because he has few ideas of his own

The Prime Minister's pathetic appearance at the Commons Liaison Committee shows that he is a hollow, shallow Prime Minster

Clearly Dominic Cummings has little respect for rules. So he must be delighted to have shattered one of the most oft-heard maxims in Westminster: when an adviser becomes the story, they must go.

Never mind that he has been exposed as a fraud – the populist who believes he can behave differently to lesser folk; the data guru unaware changing a blog could be easily detected; the “superforecaster” who failed to see the furore.

Nor indeed that the entire nation could observe the pomposity being pricked of a man who sneers at many other mortals, squirming to keep his job with an absurd story about driving to test his eyesight.

This diminished character stays in Downing Street to serve as a perpetual symbol of the political elite he claimed to despise. His behaviour has reinforced the most corrosive image for the Conservatives as a party out of touch with ordinary people. The furore could not have come at worse time for his boss as questions arise over the Government’s dire response to deadly pandemic. The big question is why was Boris Johnson so desperate to retain his toxic pal in defiance of much of his party and the public?

There are a slew of suggested answers. Johnson has long been a rule breaker in both his personal and professional life. He dislikes lockdown as someone intuitively sceptical about the state (almost certainly one reason Britain was fatally slow in its response to the virus). Like every incoming prime minister, he is determined not to be pushed around by the media. These are valid explanations. The key reason, however, was exposed when Johnson was forced to finally appear for a grilling by the Commons Liaison Committee.

We know the Prime Minister is a politician who tries to evade tough questioning. This 100-minute session showed the reason for his reluctance. From start to finish, Johnson was floundering – repeating mantras such as the need to “move on” from the Cummings farce, waffling almost incoherently, woefully sluggish in reply to tough questions, admitting he did not read scientific advice “except in exceptional circumstances”, and, most alarmingly, lacking grasp of basic political detail.

Dodging questions over Cummings was demeaning but predictable. Johnson was also fortunate some interrogators sought to grandstand rather than probe. But when urged, for instance, to help hitherto overlooked self-employed workers reliant on dividend payments from their own firms – which the Tory MP Mel Stride rightly called a gaffe in the strong fiscal response to pandemic – Johnson ended up boasting about “a pretty awesome package”.

Darren Jones then raised issues on the self-employed income support scheme, only to be met with blathering about “generous” universal credit. “Prime minister, universal credit is not generous,” the Labour MP replied acidly.

There were several more toe-curling moments. Caroline Nokes, chair of the equalities committee, fired off a series of strong questions on childcare and female representation in decision-making. First came some flannel about female advisers. Then Johnson patronisingly told a woman he fired from senior ministerial office that she might end up the third Tory prime minister. Finally he had to be reprimanded for laughing by the chair with a warning that gender equality was “not a joking matter”.

Mostly it was rather pitiful, like watching a talentless comedian wilt on stage. Yet one moment was terrible. Labour’s Stephen Timms raised the case of a struggling couple in his London consistency with leave to remain in the country but no recourse to public funds. “Hang on,” he replied. “Why aren’t they eligible for universal credit or employment support allowance or any of the other benefits?”

Bear in mind this is a politician who won highest office at the helm of a movement exploiting fear over foreign workers. He has given speeches about migrants treating Britain “as their own country”. He plans to reform the immigration system to make it “fairer”. Yet he was baffled when asked about a key plank of policy introduced in the last century, extended by the Tories and debated dozens of times in Parliament.

Alarmingly, Johnson claimed to have prepared. He was trying to be on his best behaviour. The questions were not even that tricky. Yet he ended up showing that while he can be an engaging and witty performer of set pieces, he lacks many skills demanded of a top politician – from verbal dexterity, beyond mumbling and bumbling, through to a firm grasp of detail and policy. Perhaps this should not be a surprise. The broadcaster Jeremy Vine revealed how much of his act is based on artifice after seeing two identical speeches with the same messed-up hair and gags. But it is depressing to witness in a prime minister, especially amid a pandemic.

For all his showboating success in winning elections, Johnson has a poor record in office. As mayor he rode the coat-tails of his predecessor, his landmark policy of a garden bridge turning into a costly flop. As foreign secretary, his inattention to detail was disastrous. As prime minister, he seems to have no driving cause beyond a hollow brand of patriotism and self-preservation. So it is obvious why he wants the comfort blanket of a trusted aide who poses as someone with bold solutions.

But Britain faces extremely challenging times. A pandemic is raging. People are dying. Flaws in society lie brutally exposed. We face a savage economic downturn, possibly the worst for three centuries. Now we have seen again, harshly exposed in the spotlight of parliamentary accountability, the person in charge of our country. It is not a reassuring image.