Jacqui Smith and the adult films scandal: who cares?

Today the news broke that Jacqui Smith had claimed expenses for a number of pay per view films including ‘adult films’ (known to most of us as porn). She immediately apologised, claiming she accidently claimed the money thinking it was an internet bill.

The amount of the expense was £67, which seems so high for an internet bill that it would warrant checking before the claim was made. However thoughts like this have been brushed aside in the ‘Smith claims for husband’s porn’ scandal.

But this might be a good thing. It is clear that the level of scrutiny on MP expenses needs reviewing and this review is more likely to come from public pressure driven through the media.

It was refreshing to see Eric Pickles on Questiontime last week get hammered by the audience for his second home arrangements when he lives 37 miles outside of London.

But the problem with the current debate is that it’s too complicated. Many people aren’t aware of the expense rules for MPs or the time pressures on politicians like Eric. It is difficult to say what is fair and what is not. This means people can be engaged in the debate based on flimsy information or not engaged at all.

However when it comes to claiming tax payer money for adult movies then this is something easy to understand and has broad appeal amongst the electorate. It was interesting to see the BBC in its coverage cite the Sunday Express. I bet it’s not often the BBC use stories the Express break for their political news.

If I was working on the follow up story now, I would investigate smaller expenses further. How many extra costs accidently get slipped into ‘internet bills’ and the like across parliament? It’s like sticking an extra 15 minutes on the time sheet. If everyone does it, it can get accepted as part of the employment culture and that is a slippery slope.

Whatever though, let’s keep these stories focused on the human interest angle. How keen do you think people were to watch Jacqui Smith’s husband apologise today.

Online Campaigning - We've got a long way to go

I went to a seminar a few days ago where we looked at the Conservative Party and the Labour Party websites. It is not something I had done before, so I was shocked to see the gulf in quality between the two.

As much as it pains me to say it the Conservative homepage looks modern, up to date and professionally integrates social networking sites like facebook and twitter and multimedia technology such as embedded videos and blogs.

More impressive though is that much of the content is based on the users. There is a feature called the Conservastive wall which is a range of videos of Conservative supporters explaining what being a Tory means today. It shows the party realise that a modern website is more than just a page of information, but a platform for interaction between the party and the public.



The Labour site in comparison is wordy, poorly structured and the webpage is far too long. Whereas the Conservative homepage is a doorway for a lot of content, the Labour site is trying too hard to provide all of the content in one place.

Furthermore the way it has integrated videos is poor. If your finger doesn’t get too tired scrolling down the page and you do click on a video, you will be taken away from the website to YouTube. This is ridiculous, even I can embed a video. Look I will show you...





What did you think of the changing camera angles? Not what you would call slick is it? It's almost comical.

Also this homepage videos are months old. In comparison, on the Conservatives homepage there is a one minute video of David Cameron on a train to Birmingham. In it he talks about a speech he is going to make to the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce in which he apologised for the party not recognising the causes of the credit crunch earlier. This was headline news a couple of days ago, and the video explains the party’s position in a succinct short sound bite.

An (old)Knight in Shining Armour

The motivations of Labour’s online approach became clearer when reading Toby Helm’s article, ‘Prescott reinvented as online campaigner’ in the Observer on Sunday.

The intro reads, “John Prescott has been chosen as the unlikely leader of Labour’s general election campaign on the internet, as the party prepares to launch a low-budget battle for a fourth term in government.”

So in the context of the vast majority of young(ish) people using interactive social websites to engage with the world every day, the Labour party see the benefit of online campaigning as cost cutting? Didn’t they watch the Obama campaign and the election of the first e-President?

This view is reinforced further in the story. Helm says:

“Labour which is struggling to pay off a deficit of about £20 million sees low cost internet campaigning as a cheap but effective way of to reach mass audiences.

“The party wants supporters to use its website to print off posters and leaflets, which they would then distribute to voters ahead of both June’s European elections and the general election, expected next spring.”

Is this the sound bite that signals Labour are mastering the online campaign? Printing off posters and leaflets?

At least Prescott has a better idea, which is evident from his blog. He says the party can build relationships with new voters through online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. But still, is he the best man to lead the online revolution? I think even Conservatives would agree that his content is entertaining, but that is not the basis for being a master strategist in online campaigning.





Thankfully, I’m not sure that a better website corresponds to thousands more votes. But what worries me most about this difference in approach is that is that it shows the Labour Party to be completely out of touch with the modern world and how people are communicating. I am not a Conservative, but if Labour are going to get my trust and attention they need to raise their game in this area significantly.

P.S I realise this blog is too long for an online post – I’m still learning too.

Politics: Leadership vs. Management

I started this blog by saying that I believe the paradigm of politics is changing. The essence of what politicians try to communicate, i.e. their political position, is becoming secondary to the way they communicate it and how this makes people feel.

I had a flippant conversation a couple of weeks ago, in which I suggested elections should be fought on the grounds of competence rather than ideological beliefs. It is difficult to predict the crisis’ a government will face in a term, so surely it is better to be led by people who are calm and collected under pressure and good at solving a problem?

With this in mind, I proposed general elections look more like a graduate recruitment assessment day than a forum for ideological debate. The public should watch live David Dimbleby give the proposed cabinet a task and then assess them on how they work together to complete it.

This should be followed by competency based interviews with questions such as ‘Describe a time you have persuaded a person to take a certain course of action’ and ‘Describe the biggest problem you have faced. What did you do to overcome the problem?’

The argument against
Matthew Paris, a conservative political columnist for the Times, prompted me to think of this in his article ‘Put away your mops and buckets’

Paris argues that politicians are becoming ‘glorified shop managers’ devoid of political position. They assume the big ideological questions are settled, the business of government is agreed and democratic politics is about who runs the business best.

To Paris this is negative. He says: “We want politics to be about more than wiping up spillages...We are looking for leadership dominated by a human mind, a unifying set of ideas, and the beat of a human heart.”

Despite my flippant comments about competency assessment, I do agree with Paris in principle. However in practice all too often the messages communicated do not correlate with the action being taken. Gordon Brown saying “British jobs for British workers” is a prime example. It’s a great sound bite underpinned by political principle, but in practice it’s an impossibility.

Paris describes politicians as ‘feeble managers’. But this is not acceptable. Someone with a vision and a set of unifying ideas needs the managerial skills to implement their vision effectively.
Otherwise the unifying ideas they preach are pointless and misleading.

The media shaping the agenda - The Guardian's 'Tax-Gap' series

The Guardian has been running a series of features under the name ‘Tax-Gap’ over the past couple of weeks. I have read a number of the articles which show how companies based in the UK are avoiding UK tax contributions by locating parts of their business, such as trademarks and brand names, in low duty countries such as Ireland, Switzerland and Holland.

The campaign has impressed me because the Guardian has actively put on the news agenda an issue that is of interest to the public especially in the current economic climate in which tax payers money is being used to stabilise the economy. But what power do the media have in prompting action by the government in relation to the issues it raises?

On the front of the Guardian on Thursday 19th February, nearly two weeks after the ‘Tax-Gap’ series started, the leading story was titled, “Brown targets Switzerland in global tax haven crackdown”. It reports that Gordon Brown has been negotiating with world leaders a tough regulatory system for tax and banking that will cover every country. The framework is likely to be discussed at the G20 summit in London in April, which Brown will chair.

It would be niave to say that Gordon Brown’s action is a direct result of the Guardian’s campaign or that it is just a coincidence that the story appears on the front page. However I think it is fair to say it makes a difference by putting the issue in the public realm and creating a feeling that this is something the public want addressed. The government will have been well aware of the Guardian’s campaign and the potential feelings the campaign invokes in the public.

This is where the media plays a vital role in holding government accountable in a way the average Joe never could. The homepage says: “[The series] has taken a team of specialists more than three months and involved checking scores of trademark registers and sets of company accounts in Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Ireland.”

In the ‘Reaction to the tax-gap series’ page on the Guardian website one commenter says:

“What you are doing is what I feel is one of the primary reasons for papers to exist. Keep up the good work" Alan C Rollins, Tallahassee, Florida, 8 February

I would tend to agree.

Pressure from the Spin Doctor and the News Desk - A lecture with Michael White

Today I went to a lecture by Michael White, Assistant Poltical Editor for the Guardian. Michael has been with the Guardian for over 30 years and before that worked in local news.

He talked a lot about how the media had changed since he joined a newspaper and I wanted to highlight a couple of the things he said as they relate to the increasing influence political communication has in shaping the news agenda.

The first thing Michael said was that the media is now driven by market forces and by technological developments (new media).

1) The media is a hugely competitive market in which newspapers, broadcasters, news agencies and radio stations are competing to break stories first and provide the best and most sensational content.

2) Technological developments have transformed the speed and methods of reporting news. Rather than having 3 news bulletin a day people can keep up with what is happening 24/7 through the internet and television. Furthermore it is no longer acceptable to just do newspapers, or just do broadcasting. To compete in the news market you have to provide content through a variety of mediums.

What this has done is put pressure on reporters to deliver content that is better than their competitors’, in the quickest possible time.

In line with the increasing capability and competition within the media, spin doctors have emerged to try and influence political news. It is now a battle between the media and the spin merchants to control the news agenda.

Michael made this point by saying, you have the spin doctor on one phone, and you have the news desk on the other phone both putting on pressure. It means you don’t get the privilege and space to develop your own ideas as much anymore.

What this does is leave journalists continually questioning themselves,

Am I wrong or are they wrong?

Am I seeing what I think I am seeing, or am I seeing what I am told I am seeing?

What was also interesting was that he said, when referring to Westminster politics: “The chamber is empty but Abingdale Green is full.” (The green outside Parliament where camera crews do interviews etc). It seems that just as much political work is done outside of parliament as it is done inside these days.

Multi-media journalism seems like a cut throat world when thought of like this - Keep on top of the technology and be hungry for the competition is the advice I took!

Political Point Scoring - Defection to the Tories

On the front of the Sunday Times today was a story titled ‘Tories steal welfare guru from Brown’. It reported the defection of David Freud, the government’s chief advisor on welfare, to the Conservative party. He is expected to be made a peer in the coming week and take up a front bench position.

After reading the story the question left in my mind was, “Have the Conservatives lured Freud to their party because he is a capable politician with a shared ethos on welfare or is this a political strategy designed to damage the government?”

The answer is probably a bit of both.

The story cites Freud as meeting with George Osborne before the defection which suggests some form of vetting and consensus building. Still, in terms of the Labour – Conservative divide this is a strange move. Traditionally the approach taken to welfare by the two party’s is polar.

But maybe political positioning in this case is secondary to the damage it inflicts on the government by being splashed across the front page of a Sunday Newspaper. Is the timing just a coincidence? Were the Conservative Party comments quoted in the article made merely off the cuff? I very much doubt it.

I remember reading about the defection of the Conservative MP Alan Howarth to the Labour Party in 1995 in the run up to the 97 election. The announcement was carefully planned so as to inflict the greatest damage possible on the Conservative Party.

It is probably not a surprise then to see the latest YouGov poll embedded into the Sunday Times article showing the 12% lead the Tories currently have over Labour. This demonstrates the toll stories like this are having on the government.

All in all it's a good day on the political strategy front for the Conservatives.

Media, Communication and Society - An Introduction

Welcome to my new blog.

Over the last few years I have become increasingly aware of the power the media have in shaping peoples’ perceptions and educating them. At times I have been pleased to see the media exercise this power in a responsible manner and at times I have been outraged at the irresponsible approach they have taken.

My undergraduate dissertation concluded that a tabloid newspaper helped to create and reinforce misconceptions about asylum and immigration in the UK. For example, I found that asylum and immigration was put strongly on the news agenda in the aftermath of the London bombings in 2004. However the bombings had no direct connection to asylum seekers. Such association can intensify ethnic tensions in an already heated community.

Furthermore, last year I watched from a Muslim country, already uncomfortable with the perceptions of the west towards their country and culture, as the Archbishop of Canterbury was lamented in the British media for comments he made about Shariah law. These comments, in my opinion, were overblown and misrepresented by the media. It showed misunderstanding on the part of British culture towards Muslim culture. How do stories like this impact cultural understanding and international relations?

On the other hand the media plays a role in holding public institutions accountable and this is a core responsibility for it in a democratic society. Just a couple of weeks ago, undercover reporters from the Sunday Times exposed four House of Lord peers for offering to amend bills for their clients in return for money. This scoop is clear evidence of the media doing their job.

I was actually surprised to hear Lord Robert Winston on the BBC’s ‘This Week’ questioning the integrity of the media in recording the peers inside the House of Lords because it is banned to do so. To me it is more important for the media to expose the Peer’s alleged wrongdoing.

What has also become apparent to me is that the government recognise the power the media have in society and I believe a new paradigm has emerged in which political communication is primary to political position. I am nearing the completion of Alastair Campbell’s Diary and have been continually surprised at the extent of the power struggle he describes between the government and the media to shape the news.

For the next six months my blog will focus on highlighting these trends and seek to draw conclusions as to what role the media plays in British society, and to what extent this role is influenced by decision makers.