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Our 5 latest posts are:
- Is it time for a Political Standards Authority?
8 February 2010, 18:19:59
0 comments | Author of this post: Fiona Melville
Years ago, I worked in advertising. For every ad we made, we had to pass the text and a description through an organisation which has evolved into the Advertising Standards Authority. Their job was to ensure that all ads were “legal, decent, honest and truthful by applying the Advertising Codes” and without their approval we couldn’t put an ad out (I don’t know quite what the process is these days – it was some time ago that I did this!)
Anyway, Danny Finkelstein’s post last week about Gordon Brown’s policy inventions got me thinking. While I am as fond as anyone of deliberately misinterpreting what politicians say, I think that the time has come for political advertising to be held to higher standards. And in return, for political parties to be allowed to buy advertising on TV and radio.
Government advertising (all those ads to lose weight, target benefit fraud, combat swine flu…) has increased by 39 per cent in the last year, with 10,000 messages a day.
I was always skeptical about complaints about government advertising, as there are essential messages that any government will want to communicate, and I was never sure about the connection that viewers made between a particular political party and actions carried out by government departments. However, I saw an ad break with at least four government ads in it recently and I have changed my mind – particularly given Labour’s elision of government and Party branding.
I think it’s time to allow political parties to advertise freely (but not for free!) on TV, radio, cinema, newspapers, billboards, online – wherever they want. But in return, they need to be held to higher standards of truth and honesty in the content of those ads – no more lies about what has and hasn’t been announced as policy, and no more deliberate distortions of what are, after all, generally good intentions.
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- Will Straw Fails To Understand The Tory Blogosphere
5 February 2010, 14:03:12
3 comments | Author of this post: David Skelton
I’m a fan of Left Foot Forward. It is amongst the list of ‘must read’ blogs. But in an article a few days ago, they completely misunderstood the nature of the Tory blogosphere.
Sam Coates et al arranged a fairly informal get together for bloggers on Tuesday, at which Eric Pickles gave a short and very entertaining speech. The normally excellent Left Foot Forward added a blog based on a fiction. According to LFF, the disparate and varied Tory blogosphere will now be marching with the discipline and unity of a well drilled battalion – apparently driven on by 7 AM briefings that they will be expected to parrot. This is, of course, totally untrue. Nothing even remotely of the kind was said at the event. In fact, the independence of the blogosphere was loudly celebrated.
There are two important points here. The first is that what Will Straw alleged was said absolutely wasn’t said. The second is that it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the Tory blogosphere. The truth is that the Tory blogosphere is highly independent and highly diverse. The idea that blogs from the progressive centre such as this one will start singing from exactly the same hymn sheet as some of the blogs on the right wing fringe is absurd.
What Straw fails to note and comprehend is that internet and the blogosphere has resulted in the greatest proliferation of sources of news, information and opinion for centuries. Not since the time of the likes of Cobbett’s Political Register and Marat’s L’Ami Du Peuple has such a range of political opinions (from the sensible to the crackpot) been able to reach a wider audience.
In such an uncontrolled environment as the internet and the blogosphere, central control verges between difficult and impossible. As Joe Trippi’s brilliant ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ makes clear, the internet and the blogosphere are, by their very nature bottom up rather than top-down. It is part of the left’s misunderstanding of the blogosphere that they think any kind of central control is even being considered.
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- The Republican Fringe Has Become The Republican Mainstream
5 February 2010, 13:47:33
1 comments | Author of this post: David Skelton
I have blogged a few times about the increasingly rightward drift of the US Republican Party. Even I was surprised by this poll, by the Daily Kos and Research 2000 of 2000 self identified Republicans – showing how far to the ideological fringes the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt had moved.
Some of the key findings of the poll (with my italics) are:
- 39% say that Barack Obama should be impeached. Correct me if I’m wrong but the US Constitution says that impeachment should be a punishment for high crimes and misdemeanours. Seemingly, this sub-set of GOP supporters believe that Obama should be impeached for having the temerity to disagree with them and win an election. Frightening.
- 42% believe that Obama was born outside of the United States. The conspiracy theory, with some fairly offensive undertones, that Obama wasn’t born in the US has a shocking amount of credibility with GOP supporters. Is that any surprise when the likes of Lou Dobbs, formerly of CNN, gave this absurd idea such airtime?
- 63% believe that Obama is a Socialist. That is plain daft – although the likes of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannitty seem to parrot this ridiculous line on a nightly basis. Anybody who thinks that Obama is a socialist clearly doesn’t have the faintest idea about political philosophy or Obama’s platform.
- 21% believe that Acorn ‘stole’ the last election, with another 55% ‘not sure’. Another absurd conspiracy theory given a silly amount of airtime by Fox News. For Glenn Beck, Acorn is almost an obsession.
- 53% believe that Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama. I find it hard to understand how anybody could hold this view.
- 23% believe that their state should secede from the USA, with a further 19% being not sure. Speechless.
- 55% believe that openly gay men should not be allowed to serve in the military and 77% believe that openly gay men should not be allowed to teach in ‘public’ schools. 77% believe that creationism should be taught in schools. 31% believe that contraception should be outlawed and 76% consider abortion to be ‘murder’. It is hard to understand how anybody with broadly socially liberal views could sympathise with a Party in which these views are so broadly held.
Despite recent electoral victories (largely due to the lingering level of unemployment), the Republican Party urgently needs to re-engage with the centre ground if it is to have any hope in 2012. It needs to consider that the conspiracy theories and extreme social conservatism repeatedly parroted by Beck, Hannitty et al might motivate the base but they will not win elections.
On a side point, the Bill O’Reilly interview of Jon Stewart is a must watch. I particularly like the lines that, “they [Fox News and the GOP right] have taken reasonable concerns about this president and this economy and turned it into a full-fledged panic attack about the next coming of Chairman Mao” and “you [Bill O’Reilly] are the voice of sanity at Fox News…that’s like being the thinnest kid at fat camp.”
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- Brown’s Cynical Deathbed Conversion To Electoral Reform
3 February 2010, 09:25:54
1 comments | Author of this post: David Skelton
Gordon Brown’s deathbed conversion to the cause of electoral reform is surely one of the most cynical acts in modern British politics.
Don’t forget that Labour were elected in 1997 on a mandate to have a referendum on electoral reform, just as they were elected in 2005 on a mandate of a referendum on Lisbon. What was one of the major stumbling blocks to holding a referendum on the Jenkins Report? Why it was the steadfast opposition to reform of a certain Gordon Brown! Could this be the same man who yesterday embraced the cause of reforming the electoral system?
Brown’s conversion to reform is an act of unprincipled political desperation. He is looking to change the rules of the game because his team has fallen behind. This is the last throw of the dice by a desperate Prime Minister. It is not a serious case for political reform.
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- In Praise Of Andy Murray… And His ‘Attitude’
1 February 2010, 18:39:43
6 comments | Author of this post: David Skelton
Andy Murray is, almost without doubt, the best British tennis player since Fred Perry. Sadly, he is not getting the credit he deserves from too many people.
I was amazed at how many people said to me last week that they were rooting for his opponents because they didn’t like Murray and his so-called “attitude”. Clearly, people would prefer their tennis players to be fresh faced, “well-spoken” embodiments of middle England than sportsmen with a relentless focus on winning. There is a reason why he has already achieved so much more than people like Jeremy Bates or Tim Henman.
We have a choice to make. We can either expect our sportsmen to be dedicated winners, with a real eye on constant self improvement or we can expect them to have a “nice attitude.”
The Australian cricket team; Mohammed Ali; McEnroe; Phil Taylor and Eric Bristow; Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus… The list could go on and on. But all have been condemned at one point or another for their attitude. And all of them are winners.
Frankly, I prefer sportsmen to have a focus on winning and constantly improving their game. For too long, British sport had been plagued by a satisfaction with being second best. I’m happy that somebody like Murray is utterly focused on improving his game and becoming the best. I’m not massively bothered about what part time sports fans think about that. When he starts winning Grand Slams, as I have no doubt he will, then his ‘attitude’ and focus on winning will have been entirely vindicated.
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