Lack of activity

March 8, 2010 — admin

I’m really sorry about the lack of activity during the past week or so. I’ve been so busy with wedding preparations, various evening meetings and doing my CIPR diploma that it’s been difficult to find the time in the evening to update. I have a mock Critical Reasoning Test in at the beginning of next week that I’m frantically reading up for at the moment. It’s all interesting stuff about persuasion and the nature of public relations but I’m struggling to fit much else in, especially now the garden is getting going again (our lounge table is covered in seed propagators).

There are a couple of things that are ongoing – notably that I will be involved in a LDF Character Study meeting on March 25 on behalf of Horsell Residents’ Association. Further details will follow.

In addition, on St Patrick’s Day (March 17) I will be splitting my time between the HRA management committee and a Tune In event at HG Wells. My understanding is that’s it’s open to all, so why not come along?

I am trying to keep up with everything on Twitter, which is less time-consuming and can be done throughout the day. Why not follow me if you don’t already?

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Ten good things about the BBC

January 28, 2010 — admin

I’ve done two things today. Firstly, following a discussion on Twitter with @PaulTwinn, who took issue with my last posts and comments about Nick Robinson, I’ve added Biased BBC to my blogroll because it is a decent blog that has some insight into the very subtle way BBC bias manifests itself.

I accept totally that people within the organisation don’t detect bias or believe that they are on anything other than the middle ground. I’ve never worked for the BBC, but I do have a Master’s Degree in Journalism and Media Theory, five years in the industry and am studying for a Postgraduate diploma in Public Relations after three years in that industry. So I know how the system works. And it isn’t just me claiming there is bias in the corporation – they admit it themselves.

Anyway, enough of the BBC bashing, I think it’s important to remember that the BBC’s coverage of politics is staffed by many good journalists who are earnestly seeking to present the truth to people in the best way that they can. Taking it a stage further, the BBC is also graced with many very courageous and skilled reporters who risk their lives in war zones and undercover investigations to bring the news into people’s front rooms. It is not without reason that the BBC commands respect across the globe.

I am one of the few people I know who believe that the BBC’s investment in BBC3 and BBC4 and digital technology is money well spent – the corporation cannot afford to rest on its channels complacent in the knowledge the licence fee exempts it from having to make progress. It doesn’t and the BBC has been prepared to make risky decisions to stay with its commercial rivals.

So the second thing I am doing today is enforcing a bit of impartiality upon myself by listing 10 reasons why I am happy to pay a licence fee – even if I believe it could be cheaper!

1) The BBC carries British values and standards throughout the world and will remain the most trusted and respected trans-global broadcaster well into the 21st century. Such regard is not built up for no reason.

2) There exists a tradition of quality wildlife and natural world programming at the BBC that the corporation has maintained and even improved (the Planet Earth series was the best recent example). I hope this will continue even when Sir David Attenborough cannot.

3) The BBC has made a substantial proportion of its back catalogue available to the public first on VHS and then on DVD. Okay, this helps bolster its income but means that people born after Fawlty Towers was originally broadcast are able to enjoy it, along with other classics such as Yes, Minister and The Office.

4) iPlayer – the corporation has displayed a high degree of acumen and foresight by pioneering this technology and making it available on platforms such as Virgin, BT and even the iPhone as it doesn’t require Flash Player.

5) The BBC has one of the most accessed and wide-ranging websites in the UK, not to mention one that is fully customisable and has content from cookery to history. It is certainly a lot better than Sky’s and ITN’s and of the online newspapers, only the Grauniad runs it close.

6) Jeremy Clarkson. It’s fair to say that he is the antithesis of everything that the liberal BBC stands for. It’s not just that he’s there – ITV could have done that – it’s that an organisation with such a loud exponent of its collective political anathema gives him a platform that its instincts tell it should be denied. Long may it continue.  

7) BBC Parliament. Hardly anyone can receive it and of those that can, hardly anyone watches it. But as Sir Humphrey said of Radio 3, the countryside, the opera and the universities “It’s vital to know that they’re there!” Televising parliament was a huge turning point in our political culture and the BBC covers it well. It’s not its fault that no-one’s interested.

8 ) Local radio. In many places, it has been marginalised by commercial competitors but it still serves a small but significant part of the population who if it wasn’t there, would have little or no access to local news. Local radio plays a part in helping communities define themselves.

9) The Reith Lectures, which have been commissioned by the BBC since 1948 and most recently broadcast on Radio 4. The 2008 lectures on China were particularly fascinating – it’s a shame that they are not put out on TV; BBC2 is an obvious home for them.

10) Charitable events, notable Comic Relief and Children in Need. The corporation has helped raise more than £1bn since the 1980s with these two charities and that is something to be very satisfied by. Some may think it’s all got a bit too much but in this case I believe the end justifies the means.

So there we are – ten very good things about the BBC. I don’t oppose it, I don’t want to see it privatised, it has an important place in the nation’s fabric. I accept that it will always be an organisation with a culture that prefers a particular way of presenting things. But I won’t just ignore that fact.

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Bernays source

January 24, 2010 — admin

I spent yesterday at the University of Nottingham starting out on my PR diploma, which if I pass it will allow to become a full member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. It was a fairly intense day of discussion and critical analysis of what has always been to me an entirely practical pursuit- I have no formal PR qualifications or training at all having gained degrees in music and then journalism.

As part of the opening session, we watched a short segment from a TV programme called The Century of the Self, which first aired in 2002 and for reasons of copyright hasn’t seen any further broadcast since then. It is the story of how the theories of Sigmund Freud were taken up by later members of his family, including his daughter Anna Freud and nephew Edward Bernays and used to control the masses in a new way that defined 20th century history.

In particular, Eddie Bernays used the idea that we all have dangerous and primal instincts contained within ourselves than can be exploited to control thinking, break taboos and change behaviour. He became a key member of the American administration in the First World War as the champion of pro-war propaganda and after the war took the very same ideas and launched a new venture, which he called “counsel in public relations“.

It’s all on YouTube and it is really is gripping viewing for anyone interested in how democracy and consumerism has developed during the past 100 years. Matthew Freud, the great-grandson of Sigmund, PR guru and wife of Elisabeth Murdoch, was also involved in the production. Some of the commentary slightly over-states the accepted academic view of the importance some of the featured individuals had – but that only serves to demonstrate what good self-publicists they were!

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Of Mice and Men

January 17, 2010 — admin

Learning that you are sharing your dwelling with mice is a problem that goes back to the dawn of civilisation. And many thousands of years later, the methods of controlling them haven’t changed hugely. About two weeks ago I noticed something dark on the floor out of the corner of my eye when on the XBox – it immediately shot back down into our as yet unfinished (and unfurnished) fireplace.

Subsequent inquiry unearthed a rather unpleasant trail of evidence that suggested Mr Mouse’s appearance that night was not his first. My other half isn’t keen on mice and wouldn’t go downstairs until I promised to block up the fireplace temporarily. While I’m not what I’d call an animal lover insofar as I wouldn’t consider a domestic pet, I am a nature lover and animals form an important part of that tapestry. So I bought some live traps with the hope of releasing the mice on Horsell Common.

After baiting them with raisins, nothing happened for about 72 hours. Then I came down one morning to find two live traps activated – but neither contained a mouse and one didn’t contain any bait either. I spent  hours trying to figure out how any mouse could have got into the trap, taken the bait and got out again while leaving the trap activatated. I’m still not entirely sure.

So after having read up a bit more on the subject, including about the diseases the mice can spread and the fact that house mice don’t get on terribly well in the wild when released anyway, I decided to get tough and set some regular traps. It seemed the kindest thing to do for the mouse as well, given it was likely simply to find another house and get trapped there instead. In addition, I had another sighting of our mouse, this time in the kitchen. Even though I saw it and blocked what I believed were all the escape routes, was it behind our fridge when I pulled it out? Of course not.

So I baited up four traps – three behind the fridge and one elsewhere. I came down this morning to find that the one elsewhere and one behind the fridge had been relieved of their bait but were still cocked for action with not a rodent in sight. Another trap had had its bait nibbled at but not totally removed. I have to admit at being impressed with the ingenuity of my opponent.

And apparently, this isn’t uncommon. More reading online has suggested that a) Mice can seemingly disappear through solid walls b) they have learned how to evade and avoid traps (presumably the fact that these traps have been the same for many hundreds of generations of mice doesn’t help) and c) peanut butter is the suggested bait because it is sticky and difficult to remove without triggering hazards.

I have now invested in two superior traps as well as a jar of peanut butter. There is also a suggestion for a different kind of trap – a homemade one – that mice haven’t evolved to avoid. My father thinks I should poison them but I’m loath to do this - apart from anything else, using the destructive power of human chemical knowledge seems an unfair advantage and akin to an admission of defeat.

If the wily mouse wants a contest, a contest it shall have.

Update 18/12: Poor Mr Mouse lost the contest sometime between midnight and 8am this morning in our dining room. His last meal was peanut butter and I can vouch that it was almost painless – a good clean trap. He may have been a highly-developed scavenger rodent but he was no match for the power of the Rentokil Advanced Mouse Trap and currently awaits collection by Woking Borough Council in my residual waste bin.

My other half was very relieved. “How did he look?” she asked. Er, I think it’s fair to say that he’d looked better…

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Winter wonderland

January 9, 2010 — admin

Parts of the borough look great in the snow, apart from the horrible street furniture

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Not mystic, missed it

January 1, 2010 — admin

Well that’s it, it’s now 2010 and a very Happy New Year to you. It’s been a fantastic New Year’s Day – a bit chilly but lovely and sunny and if you’ve been walking on the common today, I hope you enjoyed the midwinter stillness as I did.

It’s going to be a busy year. I hope by the end of it, the country will be going in a different direction, I will be happily married and have done justice to my election campaign, whatever the outcome. There are also one or two other things that I hope will also go my way too – but more of those if and when they happen.

What I’m not going to do is try to predict what 2010 – or the 2010s – will bring. I find this kind of filler journalism very annoying – and it doesn’t cover very well for the fact that no-one’s in the office today and they’ve had to get all the material written by other people. The truth is that at the beginning of 2000 we had no idea that September 11 would happen just 21 months later and change the landscape of world affairs for the decade.

At any time - and not just at the beginning of decades – a major event could occur to change world history and the direction of humankind. In 2001, it was tragic not only that 3,000 people were killed in the September 11 bombings but that event gave a definition – The War on Terror – to the whole decade that followed. The 2000s have been characterised as a bad decade, associated with slaughter in the Middle East and an escalation of the extremist Christian/Islamic tensions as well as economic mismanagement and failure.

That may be so, but for me the 2000s were all about my 20s and I enjoyed them nevertheless. What I do know about them is that a) I would never have imagined on January 1, 2000 that a few months later a terrorist group would bring down one of the world’s most iconic structures using hijacked passenger airplanes and b) that money invested in the FTSE-100 on that day would be worth less on December 31, 2009. Therefore predicting the future is, at best, a vanity.

While September 11 and recession are serious subjects, scaling things down a little I think part of the fun of life is not knowing what comes next. We all accept our inevitable milestones – marriage, births, deaths, promotions and life goals, although some are less welcome than others. But the bits that come in between - the unforseen opportunities and challenges – are what make life vivid and test our morals, abilities and fibre.

Long may they remain unforseen, even by BBC journalists.

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Christmas is coming

December 23, 2009 — admin

Sorry I’ve not updated the blog as regularly recently – there’s a week gap between the last update and this one. It’s just because I can’t now update at work and evenings have been busy with the meeting glut before Christmas. Normal service will be resumed either before or after the New Year, depending on how much there is to write about!

Talking of which, I won’t be blogging over the next couple of days -  I will be spending time with family and we have 14 here on Boxing Day to celebrate our first Christmas in Horsell.

I hope that you have a tranquil and joyful Christmas, whatever you are doing and however you like to celebrate.

Regards, Simon

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Lexmark’s not hot

November 25, 2009 — admin

Taking a brief hiatus from political discussion and a foray into general interest, I bought some printer paper from the Lexmark shop on Amazon at the end of last month to produce prints for some new picture frames. The Lexmark printer we have contained a sage warning in the manual only to use official Lexmark paper otherwise it could damage the printer, which I’m sure is total rubbish but you never want to take the risk, do you?

Anyway, on Amazon it was £2.72 and free delivery was about five to seven working days. Nearly three weeks later, the small package turns up – I could have crawled to the shops and bought it myself in that time. So I wander over to Amazon and leave a pretty honest review, thus:

“Outrageously slow delivery (3 weeks) for a routine item. I bought this because I couldn’t get it in my town and didn’t want to wait for an opportunity to drive elsewhere for it. I could have driven to the factory in Switzerland and back in the time it’s taken to arrive. Very poor service – product seems fine. Couldn’t recommend seller and won’t use again. Two stars generous.”

And it seems I’m not the only one – several others mention poor delivery times. Earlier today, I received the following message:

“Hi,
I am sorry to hear that you did not receive your goods for such a long period of time.
As a good will gesture we have refunded you in full and we hope that you will review the feedback you have left in light of receiving a free item.
Kind Regards
Rachael
Lexmark Shop UK”

My first reaction was unfettered pique – how dare they try to place a moral obligation on me to withdraw my honest feedback simply because they chose to give me a refund, which is only worth £2.72 to them after all. Colleagues at work seemed to kind of get that idea too – my other half was more pragmatic and told me not to be so pompous; but then she is in the business of getting good prices for things.

I’m not sure what to do. Is my integrity worth just £2.72 and should a company be allowed to buy off valid criticism? If they had approached me to offer a refund I would have told them I would not withdraw my remarks and advised them to keep my money. Even if the thing had been offered free, I wouldn’t have taken it with such a long lead time.

On the other hand, they are trying to put right a customer service issue and cure – albeit in a clumsy and unsubtle way that makes a PR Officer wince – a reputation issue too. And my other half is almost certainly right about my pomposity. Suggestions welcome.

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