Here are two brilliant Ted Talks presentations explaining some of the value of Behavioural Economics, which as I've blogged previously could probably solve all the issues around funding tertiary education at a stroke (for once, quite apposite, given events in London today). Have no fear, they are entertaining as well as illuminating and don't require a PhD to follow them
The first is from Rory Sutherland, erstwhile President of the IPA. I'm betting he's not a Lib Dem - but boy can he present.
The second is from Dan Ariely - who I didn't know, so thanks to once again to Nicola Prigg for the lead.
Enjoy!!
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
The 'Theresa May is a safe pair of hands' myth...
Here's my piece that appeared in yesterday's New Statesman...
The first lesson you’re taught when you enter the world of branding and advertising is this : say one thing simply, clearly and consistently, and the consumer will quickly learn the message you want to send them.
Persil washes whiter.
The world’s favourite airline
Beanz meanz Heinz
Theresa May is a safe pair of hands
I’ll say that last one again shall I?
Either Theresa May herself, or someone very close to her, really understands the power of a consistent and clear positioning. Just Google ‘Theresa May is a safe pair of hands’. You’ll find articles from The Guardian, The Telegraph, Sky, The Spectator, The Express, Dale and Co… all anointing the Home Secretary as the Alastair Darling of the current cabinet – the Minster who can be trusted with the tricky portfolio.
Here’s James Landale on Monday’s ‘BBC News at Ten’.
“Theresa May has been that rare Home Secretary, one that has pleased her Prime Minister by keeping the Home Office largely out of the headlines.”
And then later
“…a Home Secretary who thus far has protected her reputation as a safe pair of hands”.
Now hats off to Theresa May’s spin doctor – we’ve all heard the message. But sadly, that same person seems to have forgotten the second golden rule of marketing: make sure your message reflects the consumer experience.
A Mars a day really does need to help you work rest and play.
A Volkswagen really does need to be reliable.
And your Home Secretary really does need to be a safe pair of hands.
Not someone that mistakenly cites owning a cat as a reason for avoiding deportation. Or ends up with her diary engagements being left in a Glaswegian Concert Hall. Not someone who unilaterally calls for the Human Rights Act to be scrapped and ends up being publicly contradicted by the Attorney General.
They certainly shouldn’t end up having to admit to the House of Commons that ‘we will never know how many people entered the UK who should have been prevented from doing so’ – not when you’re meant to be in charge of that very thing.
Because then articles like this get written. And next time someone types ‘Theresa May is a safe pair of hands’ they’ll read this - and realise that she actually appears to be a rather the opposite.
Butterfingers.
The first lesson you’re taught when you enter the world of branding and advertising is this : say one thing simply, clearly and consistently, and the consumer will quickly learn the message you want to send them.
Persil washes whiter.
The world’s favourite airline
Beanz meanz Heinz
Theresa May is a safe pair of hands
I’ll say that last one again shall I?
Either Theresa May herself, or someone very close to her, really understands the power of a consistent and clear positioning. Just Google ‘Theresa May is a safe pair of hands’. You’ll find articles from The Guardian, The Telegraph, Sky, The Spectator, The Express, Dale and Co… all anointing the Home Secretary as the Alastair Darling of the current cabinet – the Minster who can be trusted with the tricky portfolio.
Here’s James Landale on Monday’s ‘BBC News at Ten’.
“Theresa May has been that rare Home Secretary, one that has pleased her Prime Minister by keeping the Home Office largely out of the headlines.”
And then later
“…a Home Secretary who thus far has protected her reputation as a safe pair of hands”.
Now hats off to Theresa May’s spin doctor – we’ve all heard the message. But sadly, that same person seems to have forgotten the second golden rule of marketing: make sure your message reflects the consumer experience.
A Mars a day really does need to help you work rest and play.
A Volkswagen really does need to be reliable.
And your Home Secretary really does need to be a safe pair of hands.
Not someone that mistakenly cites owning a cat as a reason for avoiding deportation. Or ends up with her diary engagements being left in a Glaswegian Concert Hall. Not someone who unilaterally calls for the Human Rights Act to be scrapped and ends up being publicly contradicted by the Attorney General.
They certainly shouldn’t end up having to admit to the House of Commons that ‘we will never know how many people entered the UK who should have been prevented from doing so’ – not when you’re meant to be in charge of that very thing.
Because then articles like this get written. And next time someone types ‘Theresa May is a safe pair of hands’ they’ll read this - and realise that she actually appears to be a rather the opposite.
Butterfingers.
Monday, 7 November 2011
This democracy business. It's really under the cosh, you know....
When I wrote my piece 'Saving capitalism? The Price could be Democracy' for The New Statesman last week, I wondered if I'd get a lot of 'don't be ridiculous' type comments at my gross exaggeration of the threat to our civil liberties and human rights.
Rather worryingly, the opposite has happened. Everyone seems to be agreeing with me.
Certainly the comments section on my piece is generally in agreement (although one chap in particular has taken a rather unfortunate line - B. Small, I'm talking to you...)
Even before my piece was published, Paul Mason was asking similar questions about the fate of democracy in the Eurozone (didn't go down well with Sarkozy...).
The Guardian has reported this morning that a third, unelected group is now running the levers of power in the Eurozone.
"My colleague David Gow, who is racing to Brussels from Athens, points out though that the levers of power are really in the hands of a third, more secretive group:
GdF used to stand for Gaz de France (the state-owned gas group now locked in fusion with utility company Suez). Now it stands for Groupe de Francfort or Frankfurt Group, an ad hoc, entirely unaccountable cabal of Sarkozy, Merkel, Juncker, Draghi, Barroso, Van Rompuy, Rehn and, the real powerhouse, Lagarde.
It was formed at the October 19 Mozartfest in Frankfurt's Alte Oper to say goodbye to Trichet as president of the ECB. This octet controls, or think it does, the eurozone and - memo to Dave and George - the EU. To whom do they report on their talks, say, with Obama or Wen Jibao?....
The group should not be confused with the Frankfurt School: the philosophers Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer et al who mounted a sustained critique of American cultural imperialism in the 1960s. Times change."
While The Telegraph points to another unelected body that is making a concerted effort to topple the Italian Government - the markets..
"This graph shows just how keen markets are to wave goodbye to Berlusconi. Italy’s benchmark share index, the FTSE MIB, surged this morning on the rumours that he was about to resign - before dropping back as he denied the chatter. But the index is still about 2pc up, suggesting people are not convinced by the official line".
And now, Christine Lagarde, Head of the IMF, has this morning said that Sovereign nations need to start ceding some...sovereignty.... (again, I am quoting The Telegraph here...)
'Euro nations must "cede a little bit of authority, budgetary sovereignty" to overcome the crisis, Christine Lagarde, IMF managing director said. “Critical decisions” have been made by the European Union to resolve the crisis,’’ Lagarde said in speech at Moscow’s State University of the Ministry of Finance. Ceding some sovereignty is required implement the deal “to the benefit of the global economy as a whole.” '
I could go on...let's not forget it wasn't too long ago that our own Prime Minister was suggesting we should start curtailing the free use of social networks to control the people - and getting applauded by the Chinese Government as a result.
But I think my point is made. Democracy is under assault here. Panic is setting in, and democracy is apparently the first thing our leaders run roughshod over to protect Capitalism. And we need to be alert to this - and stop it.
So on a happier note, enjoy this Ted Talks presentation -that (despite some dodgy shooting from the hip with the examples chosen) presents a happier suggestion that maybe, just maybe, Democracy is a more productive system under which Capitalism can flourish than the totalitarian alternative (hat tip to @nicola_prigg for sending me the video).
Meantime everyone, back to the barricades.
Addendum
Sorry - can't resist. here's what The Guardian says is happening in Greece right now; does this sound like democracy in action to you...
"Formally the governor of the Bank of Greece for almost eight years, from October 1994 to May 2004, Papademos is widely regarded as a "neutral figure," who is well respected in Europe and would be a safe pair of hands at the helm of government. But friends who know him well have told our correspondent that Papademos, who is also a well-respected academic, is unlikely to agree to the job without carefully weighing things up first.
"As things stand, the leaders of both political parties want to give him his cabinet, tell him what to do and let him go by the end of January. It's a recipe for disaster," said Stefanos Manos a former conservative finance minister.
"Lucas is a thoughtful person, an honest guy, a clever person but he's also very cautious ... he's going to want to lay down his terms and as they stand I very much doubt that he will accept. I don't think for a moment he is willing to be a puppet PM."
The confusion may well mean that nothing is decided before this evening, when markets in Europe have already closed and Wall Street could be getting edgy."
Rather worryingly, the opposite has happened. Everyone seems to be agreeing with me.
Certainly the comments section on my piece is generally in agreement (although one chap in particular has taken a rather unfortunate line - B. Small, I'm talking to you...)
Even before my piece was published, Paul Mason was asking similar questions about the fate of democracy in the Eurozone (didn't go down well with Sarkozy...).
The Guardian has reported this morning that a third, unelected group is now running the levers of power in the Eurozone.
"My colleague David Gow, who is racing to Brussels from Athens, points out though that the levers of power are really in the hands of a third, more secretive group:
GdF used to stand for Gaz de France (the state-owned gas group now locked in fusion with utility company Suez). Now it stands for Groupe de Francfort or Frankfurt Group, an ad hoc, entirely unaccountable cabal of Sarkozy, Merkel, Juncker, Draghi, Barroso, Van Rompuy, Rehn and, the real powerhouse, Lagarde.
It was formed at the October 19 Mozartfest in Frankfurt's Alte Oper to say goodbye to Trichet as president of the ECB. This octet controls, or think it does, the eurozone and - memo to Dave and George - the EU. To whom do they report on their talks, say, with Obama or Wen Jibao?....
The group should not be confused with the Frankfurt School: the philosophers Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer et al who mounted a sustained critique of American cultural imperialism in the 1960s. Times change."
While The Telegraph points to another unelected body that is making a concerted effort to topple the Italian Government - the markets..
"This graph shows just how keen markets are to wave goodbye to Berlusconi. Italy’s benchmark share index, the FTSE MIB, surged this morning on the rumours that he was about to resign - before dropping back as he denied the chatter. But the index is still about 2pc up, suggesting people are not convinced by the official line".
And now, Christine Lagarde, Head of the IMF, has this morning said that Sovereign nations need to start ceding some...sovereignty.... (again, I am quoting The Telegraph here...)
'Euro nations must "cede a little bit of authority, budgetary sovereignty" to overcome the crisis, Christine Lagarde, IMF managing director said. “Critical decisions” have been made by the European Union to resolve the crisis,’’ Lagarde said in speech at Moscow’s State University of the Ministry of Finance. Ceding some sovereignty is required implement the deal “to the benefit of the global economy as a whole.” '
I could go on...let's not forget it wasn't too long ago that our own Prime Minister was suggesting we should start curtailing the free use of social networks to control the people - and getting applauded by the Chinese Government as a result.
But I think my point is made. Democracy is under assault here. Panic is setting in, and democracy is apparently the first thing our leaders run roughshod over to protect Capitalism. And we need to be alert to this - and stop it.
So on a happier note, enjoy this Ted Talks presentation -that (despite some dodgy shooting from the hip with the examples chosen) presents a happier suggestion that maybe, just maybe, Democracy is a more productive system under which Capitalism can flourish than the totalitarian alternative (hat tip to @nicola_prigg for sending me the video).
Meantime everyone, back to the barricades.
Addendum
Sorry - can't resist. here's what The Guardian says is happening in Greece right now; does this sound like democracy in action to you...
"Formally the governor of the Bank of Greece for almost eight years, from October 1994 to May 2004, Papademos is widely regarded as a "neutral figure," who is well respected in Europe and would be a safe pair of hands at the helm of government. But friends who know him well have told our correspondent that Papademos, who is also a well-respected academic, is unlikely to agree to the job without carefully weighing things up first.
"As things stand, the leaders of both political parties want to give him his cabinet, tell him what to do and let him go by the end of January. It's a recipe for disaster," said Stefanos Manos a former conservative finance minister.
"Lucas is a thoughtful person, an honest guy, a clever person but he's also very cautious ... he's going to want to lay down his terms and as they stand I very much doubt that he will accept. I don't think for a moment he is willing to be a puppet PM."
The confusion may well mean that nothing is decided before this evening, when markets in Europe have already closed and Wall Street could be getting edgy."
Saving Capitalism? The Price could be Democracy.
Here's my piece over the Weekend in "The New Statesman". I'll be expanding further on it's themes anon...
Right now everyone seems to be getting terribly excited about saving capitalism. Which is fair enough, in the face of global meltdown.
However it seems to me that the price of saving capitalism is increasingly likely to be ‘democracy’. Which would be a shame as I’m a big fan of democracy. On the whole, I think it’s a good thing.
“What insight” I hear you cry, “what understanding of the basic tenets of human rights’.
No? Well, consider this.
Let’s start with Occupy London (or Wall Street, Oakland, Tunbridge Wells, wherever). Apart from the fact that some folk think they make the place look a bit untidy, the main issue people have with the Occupy crowd is ‘that they don’t have any answers’.
They have a list of things they don’t want – but not a list of things they do.
And I say, so what? What’s wrong with just asking the questions? The Occupy folk aren’t standing for elected office, nor claiming to be able to solve the problems of the global economy. The finest economic minds in the world plus George Osborne haven’t cracked that one. So it seems a bit unreasonable to expect some bloke in a tent who just thinks that taxpayers money shouldn’t be shuffled through to bankers in the form of bonuses, to then have all the answers to the greatest economic crisis since the 1930’s. If it was that easy, we’d all just pop into Millets and seek the opinion of the man on the till.
We’ll ask the questions. It’s the job of our elected elders and betters to answer them.
And now it would also seem we’re not allowed to mark our representatives homework either. Hence every democratically elected politician in the world goes white as a sheet at the thought of asking the Greek people if they’re happy with the deal done on their behalf.
Funnily enough, I’m not a huge fan of referendums at the drop of a hat. I rather like Edmund Burke’s view of democracy: “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion’.
But there’s a time and a place for everything. And when years of extreme austerity measures stretch out before a population, pensions are slashed, public spending is squeezed, every ministry has an independent ‘observer’, installed from Brussels, and none of it ever featured in any sort of manifesto proposal – well, asking the people if they are up for it doesn’t seem so bad? Does it?
So, we seem to be in a world where asking questions without knowing the answers, or questioning the answers you’ve been given, is seen as a thoroughly bad thing. Which to me is an affront to democracy.
Still, at least no-one’s raising the spectre of war or postulating about the chances of a military coup to force things through.
Oh? Lordy.
Right now everyone seems to be getting terribly excited about saving capitalism. Which is fair enough, in the face of global meltdown.
However it seems to me that the price of saving capitalism is increasingly likely to be ‘democracy’. Which would be a shame as I’m a big fan of democracy. On the whole, I think it’s a good thing.
“What insight” I hear you cry, “what understanding of the basic tenets of human rights’.
No? Well, consider this.
Let’s start with Occupy London (or Wall Street, Oakland, Tunbridge Wells, wherever). Apart from the fact that some folk think they make the place look a bit untidy, the main issue people have with the Occupy crowd is ‘that they don’t have any answers’.
They have a list of things they don’t want – but not a list of things they do.
And I say, so what? What’s wrong with just asking the questions? The Occupy folk aren’t standing for elected office, nor claiming to be able to solve the problems of the global economy. The finest economic minds in the world plus George Osborne haven’t cracked that one. So it seems a bit unreasonable to expect some bloke in a tent who just thinks that taxpayers money shouldn’t be shuffled through to bankers in the form of bonuses, to then have all the answers to the greatest economic crisis since the 1930’s. If it was that easy, we’d all just pop into Millets and seek the opinion of the man on the till.
We’ll ask the questions. It’s the job of our elected elders and betters to answer them.
And now it would also seem we’re not allowed to mark our representatives homework either. Hence every democratically elected politician in the world goes white as a sheet at the thought of asking the Greek people if they’re happy with the deal done on their behalf.
Funnily enough, I’m not a huge fan of referendums at the drop of a hat. I rather like Edmund Burke’s view of democracy: “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion’.
But there’s a time and a place for everything. And when years of extreme austerity measures stretch out before a population, pensions are slashed, public spending is squeezed, every ministry has an independent ‘observer’, installed from Brussels, and none of it ever featured in any sort of manifesto proposal – well, asking the people if they are up for it doesn’t seem so bad? Does it?
So, we seem to be in a world where asking questions without knowing the answers, or questioning the answers you’ve been given, is seen as a thoroughly bad thing. Which to me is an affront to democracy.
Still, at least no-one’s raising the spectre of war or postulating about the chances of a military coup to force things through.
Oh? Lordy.
Friday, 4 November 2011
I'm not a liar. I'm a snake oil salesman.
Neither the news that applications to university have dropped off as the new tuition fees regime approaches, nor the boost in applications that occurred a few months ago as people got in early before the change, should come as a surprise to anyone who knows anything about behavioural economics.
For those who suspect that behavioural economics sounds like some wheeze dreamt up by a set of marketing whiz kids to pull the wool over consumer’s eyes – well, yes, you’d largely be right. It’s the art (I use the word advisedly) of positioning a product or service in a way to specifically change people’s behaviour, capitalizing on the fact that humans do not necessarily always act logically. A commonly quoted example is how to persuade people to take the full course of a medicine they have been prescribed. People tend to stop taking medicine as soon as they feel better, get ill again, and have to start the course from scratch. Give them a set of blue tablets and white tablets, and tell them that they are not allowed to take the white one’s until the blue have all gone – and hey presto, nearly everyone finishes the blue course, which is actually the full dose.
Such thinking has been popularised in the book ‘Nudge’, and is of course a favourite of and George Osborne in particular.
Where tuition fees are concerned, the laws of behavioural economics are acting against government policy, not in favour of it.
You can tell people until you are blue in the face that the new system is fairer, that they’ll pay back less each year, that more people are eligible for assistance and all the rest of it. They won’t be listening.
Because behavioural economics says that trebling fees can’t be a better or fairer deal than the current system, can it? Even if it actually is….
Now, this is the part for me where the sleepless nights kick in. Because I can solve the whole issue in a minute. I can encourage people from less well off backgrounds to go to university, genuinely give people a better and fairer deal, and secure funding for tertiary education going forward. And snake oil salesman that I am, I can do it without resorting to messy old legislation.
I’ll just stop calling them tuition fees. And call it a capped graduate tax. And instead of telling people they have a debt, I’ll give them a long-term tax commitment.
No promises broken. No upfront fees. A higher threshold for payments to start. Everyone happy?
I’ve been told Ministers received advice they couldn’t call the new system a graduate tax. So I submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Department of Business and Skills. No such guidance has been discovered. In fact, it seems the opposite is true. The advice I’ve seen says – ‘in some respects the loan repayment is equivalent to a capped graduate tax (and presentationally, there is an advantage in describing it as such).’
Actually everyone, it’s not presentation . It’s behavioural economics.
And you might all call me a slippery, manipulative, sleight-of-hand merchant of spin (go on, you’re already typing it, aren’t you…).
But at least people will stop shouting liar at me.
For those who suspect that behavioural economics sounds like some wheeze dreamt up by a set of marketing whiz kids to pull the wool over consumer’s eyes – well, yes, you’d largely be right. It’s the art (I use the word advisedly) of positioning a product or service in a way to specifically change people’s behaviour, capitalizing on the fact that humans do not necessarily always act logically. A commonly quoted example is how to persuade people to take the full course of a medicine they have been prescribed. People tend to stop taking medicine as soon as they feel better, get ill again, and have to start the course from scratch. Give them a set of blue tablets and white tablets, and tell them that they are not allowed to take the white one’s until the blue have all gone – and hey presto, nearly everyone finishes the blue course, which is actually the full dose.
Such thinking has been popularised in the book ‘Nudge’, and is of course a favourite of and George Osborne in particular.
Where tuition fees are concerned, the laws of behavioural economics are acting against government policy, not in favour of it.
You can tell people until you are blue in the face that the new system is fairer, that they’ll pay back less each year, that more people are eligible for assistance and all the rest of it. They won’t be listening.
Because behavioural economics says that trebling fees can’t be a better or fairer deal than the current system, can it? Even if it actually is….
Now, this is the part for me where the sleepless nights kick in. Because I can solve the whole issue in a minute. I can encourage people from less well off backgrounds to go to university, genuinely give people a better and fairer deal, and secure funding for tertiary education going forward. And snake oil salesman that I am, I can do it without resorting to messy old legislation.
I’ll just stop calling them tuition fees. And call it a capped graduate tax. And instead of telling people they have a debt, I’ll give them a long-term tax commitment.
No promises broken. No upfront fees. A higher threshold for payments to start. Everyone happy?
I’ve been told Ministers received advice they couldn’t call the new system a graduate tax. So I submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Department of Business and Skills. No such guidance has been discovered. In fact, it seems the opposite is true. The advice I’ve seen says – ‘in some respects the loan repayment is equivalent to a capped graduate tax (and presentationally, there is an advantage in describing it as such).’
Actually everyone, it’s not presentation . It’s behavioural economics.
And you might all call me a slippery, manipulative, sleight-of-hand merchant of spin (go on, you’re already typing it, aren’t you…).
But at least people will stop shouting liar at me.
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
£10m. The Price of Democracy.
My latest missive from The New Statesman. If you'd prefer to read it in situ, do feel free....
Rather excitingly, I discovered the price of democracy this week. It was printed in the Financial Times. Apparently, it's £10m.
In the midst of allegations about mystery donations from shadowy figures funding almost-but-not-quite-official alternative foreign policies, it's quite surprising to find anyone willing to hang so precise a figure on the value of voting. And given the hundreds of millions of pounds the UK has just invested on the military campaign in Libya, I'm sure many will want to argue with the paucity of the amount suggested.
Why £10m? Well, that's the figure an unnamed, (and therefore unashamed), "senior Labour Party source" has suggested as a reasonable cap on individual party spending in a general election campaign.
So there you have it. If you'd like to buy a ticket to the General Election lottery, and want to have a fair chance of winning it, that's the suggested price of entry. And remember folks, you've got to be in it to win it.
That is the problem with just adding a spending cap to party funding and doing nothing else: you limit the field of horses likely to win by a clear length to -- well, most likely, two.
Jonathan Freedland has just drawn an excellent analogy between Premier League football and the inequality of wealth. In the Premier League the richest clubs keep buying the best players, drawing the biggest crowds, winning the most trophies and making the most money, with which they buy the best players and so it goes on. Or as Freedland puts it, it's "an unsustainable system where the rich win and the poor go to the wall."
The same is exactly true of party political funding. While the Lib Dems have attracted more donations from individual and corporate donors than Labour, come May 2015, does anyone expect the Lib Dems to have the same financial muscle as Labour? One thing the Fox affair has re-emphasised is that it looks unlikely the Tories will be strapped for cash. Hence, the hegemony of the best funded parties delivering the most votes goes on.
When the Kelly Report on party funding is published in a few weeks time, I'd like to think that Cameron and Miliband will agree that merely capping the millionaires' club is neither fair, nor healthy in a democracy where the ability of rich vested interests to fund campaigns can ensure that the winning team can only be wearing red or blue (and not yellow).
Although I'm not hopeful. After all, Messer's Fergusson or Mancini seem unlikely to do the decent thing and give Norwich a leg up, if they can help it.
Rather excitingly, I discovered the price of democracy this week. It was printed in the Financial Times. Apparently, it's £10m.
In the midst of allegations about mystery donations from shadowy figures funding almost-but-not-quite-official alternative foreign policies, it's quite surprising to find anyone willing to hang so precise a figure on the value of voting. And given the hundreds of millions of pounds the UK has just invested on the military campaign in Libya, I'm sure many will want to argue with the paucity of the amount suggested.
Why £10m? Well, that's the figure an unnamed, (and therefore unashamed), "senior Labour Party source" has suggested as a reasonable cap on individual party spending in a general election campaign.
So there you have it. If you'd like to buy a ticket to the General Election lottery, and want to have a fair chance of winning it, that's the suggested price of entry. And remember folks, you've got to be in it to win it.
That is the problem with just adding a spending cap to party funding and doing nothing else: you limit the field of horses likely to win by a clear length to -- well, most likely, two.
Jonathan Freedland has just drawn an excellent analogy between Premier League football and the inequality of wealth. In the Premier League the richest clubs keep buying the best players, drawing the biggest crowds, winning the most trophies and making the most money, with which they buy the best players and so it goes on. Or as Freedland puts it, it's "an unsustainable system where the rich win and the poor go to the wall."
The same is exactly true of party political funding. While the Lib Dems have attracted more donations from individual and corporate donors than Labour, come May 2015, does anyone expect the Lib Dems to have the same financial muscle as Labour? One thing the Fox affair has re-emphasised is that it looks unlikely the Tories will be strapped for cash. Hence, the hegemony of the best funded parties delivering the most votes goes on.
When the Kelly Report on party funding is published in a few weeks time, I'd like to think that Cameron and Miliband will agree that merely capping the millionaires' club is neither fair, nor healthy in a democracy where the ability of rich vested interests to fund campaigns can ensure that the winning team can only be wearing red or blue (and not yellow).
Although I'm not hopeful. After all, Messer's Fergusson or Mancini seem unlikely to do the decent thing and give Norwich a leg up, if they can help it.
Monday, 24 October 2011
And We're Back...
Hello Everyone
As the astute/bored amongst you will have noticed, I've had a few weeks rest from the blog post conference. This was partly because I wanted to give myself a bit of a breather, partly because I had work to do (got to keep the wolf from the door) and especially because I wanted to step back and have a look at the whole thing again.
Now I'm back and while the click baitingly awful puns to drag you kicking and screaming to Ham Common will remain, I am going to try and post fewer but better researched, slightly more cogent and hopefully vaguely crafted blog posts. You however, will be the judge of whether I've succeeded.
In a slightly surprising turn of events, I have also been asked to submit stuff for consideration to The New Statesman on a vaguely regular basis. I'll keep you posted. See - the puns remain.
Anyway, it's nice to be back.
As the astute/bored amongst you will have noticed, I've had a few weeks rest from the blog post conference. This was partly because I wanted to give myself a bit of a breather, partly because I had work to do (got to keep the wolf from the door) and especially because I wanted to step back and have a look at the whole thing again.
Now I'm back and while the click baitingly awful puns to drag you kicking and screaming to Ham Common will remain, I am going to try and post fewer but better researched, slightly more cogent and hopefully vaguely crafted blog posts. You however, will be the judge of whether I've succeeded.
In a slightly surprising turn of events, I have also been asked to submit stuff for consideration to The New Statesman on a vaguely regular basis. I'll keep you posted. See - the puns remain.
Anyway, it's nice to be back.
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