The BNP are mentioned in three stories I have seen in the newspapers [well, on their websites - I don't buy the paper versions any more or, in the case of the BBC, watch the broadcasts] today:
Firstly, the BNP are rejected by UKIP after they proposed an electoral pact at next years European elections with UKIP focusing on the South and the BNP in the North.
Quite rightly, too. The BNP must not be allowed any lee-way to get any form of representaton anywhere. All parties must fight against them at the polls.
Secondly, trade unions want to be able to expel BNP members. As far as I can see, they have no real reasons to be do this except because they want to.
I don’t like the BNP, but as I have saidbefore, banning them and refusing them their right to their own political beliefs and association helps no-one. We should rather engage them in dialogue and expose them that way. For as long as the BNP remain a legitimate political party, they must not be banned for their political beliefs, however disgusting they are.
And thirdly, BNP voters are thick, having an IQ level at the age of 10 of 98.4. Even those who don’t vote had an IQ of 99.7.
Of course this piece of “news” means little*, espiecally since what this study hasn’t done though is provide any form of correlation with their IQ now. But it does kind of make the point of the type of people who vote BNP…
* Especially with the “fact” that Lib Dem voters had an IQ of 108.2 at 10 - if they’re so clever, why don’t they vote for a party that could actually win?
It certainly does appear to, considering that it has got pretty much everything they wanted has happened.
Frankly, it is disgusting the way that the BBC has caved in to the demands of the Daily Hatemail. After all, if being offensie was enough to get sacked, there would hardly be any journalists - and certainly no columnists - in the Mail.
UPDATE: There’s also this post at CentreRight, complaining about the use of the joke “I’m now so old, my pussy is haunted” in response to the challenge “What the Queen didn’t Say in her Christmas Message” on Mock The Week.
We have lots of different channels, and no programme will ever be everyone’s cup of tea. I can’t stand most of the crap on the TV, but I accept that some do. Don’t like the programme? Don’t watch it. Simple enough.
One of my interests (and aims of my blog) is to encourage participation in politics as widely as possible. At least two of the three main parties have been talking about training, including media training, for younger members. The Liberal Democrats are talking about why their Leadership Academy should train everyone as they are all potential leaders.
Meanwhile, the Young Britons’ Foundation ran a training day at the Conservative Party Conference for young activists. Mike Rouse has kindly written an account for the Wardman Wire, which I have also crossposted to the Thunderdragon’s blog.
Conservative Conference Activists’ Training Day
At the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham recently the youth wing of the Conservatives teamed up with The Young Britons’ Foundation to provide activists with the opportunity to learn some media handling skills. There were around 100 attendees, including Torybear.
Vox Pop
This course taught how to handle being “vox popped” and how best to convey a message through a medium like TV.
Experience
The morning started with some presentations and sharing of experiences. Donal Blaney, from the Foundation, shared a particularly amusing tale of an appearance he made once where he discovered via his father who was watching that he had developed a hole in his shoe. From the basics of appearance to handling tough questions the course offered it all.
Attitude
There’s a thirst within Conservative Future for training and skills development. Many young people join the organisation without any previous experience of politics or the media and will have previously had to learn from experience or guidance by peers. This course enables everybody to be prepared for the cameras, the journalists and understand how to shape their communication for their audience. There’s no voodoo or dark arts, just simple training and advice that seems to really work wonders. The activists at conference started nervous but left confident.
Practical
The practical workshop came in the form of pretend “vox pops” where each delegate appeared in front of a camera and was asked a few quetsions: about the conference, about policies or about a made-up event. It’s a tough slog going through everybody that attended, so much so that all that camera handling and movement I was responsible for caused me to pull something in my foot causing days of agony.
Wrapping Up
It was worth it though, because Conservative Future now has a large group of people with much more savvy media skills out there.
I do note, however, that the Tory leader explicitly invited the country to compare himself with Margaret Thatcher in 1979 - when she was “the novice” confronting the “experienced” Jim Callaghan during an economic crisis.
Ah, no actually, he didn’t. That particular narrative was set up by Brown himself with his conference speech, when he spoke the line:
everyone knows that I’m all in favour of apprenticeships, but let me tell you this is not a time for a novice
If he was not setting himself up as Gordon “Experience” Brown in contrast to David “Novice” Cameron, I don’t know what he was doing.
Whilst the news repoerter is delivering a solemn and sober news report about the collapse of Lehman Brothers, two men behind him are kissing and fondling each other.
After the cut-back to the studio, the anchor tries to rescue the situation, describing them as “trying to make light of a bad situation, pretending to console each other.”
This is a cross-post for one week only. Usually you can see the Think-tank roundup at Cassilis on a Friday, or at the Wardman Wire or Liberal Conspiracy soon afterwards.
A weekly roundup of publications, reports, events & articles from the leading UK think tanks.
Welcome to this week’s Think-tank Roundup – everything from ‘new money’ and supply-side oil crunches to the call for better teachers and yes, Michael Gove’s ‘Nuts’ (there was more to his speech than that storm suggested). Things seem to be quiet on the events front but I guess that’s a function of both parliamentary recess and the impending party conference season (of which more soon). I haven’t highlighted the resignations of Lord Haskel & Wilf Stevenson at the Smith Institute as reported by Guido because as yet there’s nothing on the website to that effect. Must read piece this week is probably Gove’s speech if only because it deserves a better airing than it got because of that unfortunate quote about lads mags - details below.
As ever please use the comments for anything I’ve missed…
Reports & Publications…
In a report for Chatham House Paul Stevens argues that “unless there is a collapse in oil demand within the next five to ten years, there will be serious oil ’supply crunch’ - not because of below-ground resource constraints but because of inadequate investment by national & international oil companies”. Read the full report here.
Also from JRF’s Women’s Budget Group a report entitled “Women and poverty: experiences, empowerment and engagement” – ‘While the Government has developed strategies to combat poverty, especially for children and pensioners, there is no strategy to challenge women’s poverty specifically. This project set out to support women living in poverty so that they could go beyond being ‘witnesses’ to poverty to become actively involved in policy development’.
The Oxford Research Group have a report on the regional role for stabilisation in Iraq – based on a meeting held in Riyadh in April between senior influential US and European observers and senior Saudi officials it looks at “five different scenarios for the future of Iraq and then examines competing images of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States, the issues of national identity, sectarianism and federalism, and concludes by exploring a number of possible future paths and processes”.
The Chatham House monthly magazine ‘The World Today’ carries an interesting article by Robert Singh on the US Presidential elections – “US Presidential Election: Choice or Echo?”. Singh contends that the oft-quoted contrast offered between McCain and Obama is actually focused on character and personality traits and may not actually reflect substantial policy differences.
In the latest Fabian Review Danny Dorling argues that where ‘class’ was once about breeding and perhaps latterly occupation, those easy distinctions are no longer possible – nowadays class is all about money. Read the full article here.
Pavel Miller has a good article for the Foreign Policy Centre – “The need to be open-minded about Russia’s approaches”. Pavel argues that “In order to overcome the disagreements, negotiation must prevail through comprehension of Russia’s perspective, as opposed to the confrontational rhetoric and calls for punitive measures endorsed by Senator John McCain”.
As you probably know the Institute of Public Policy Research hosted a speech by Michael Gove, Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families this week on “Liberty, Equality, Family?”. There was significantly more to Michael’s speech than the small media storm around his remarks about ‘lads mags’ – he argues “that strengthening relationships is the key to building a better, happier and fairer society and [should be] the cornerstone of any effective anti-poverty strategy.” If you haven’t read the full speech it’s worth doing and there’s an audio version available too….
The Policy Network has an article by David Coates on ‘Reclaiming Moderate America’ – “Recapturing the dominant narrative in US politics is the key task facing contemporary American liberals. That dominant narrative has to recapture the potential of the New Deal from its conservative detractors. It lies not in the nonsense of trickle-down economics, but in policies designed to enhance the strength, skills and security of a vibrant middle class—a middle class expanded at the bottom by policy to raise the poor and at the top by policy to curb the rich.”
The RSA have 5mins of video of Matthew Taylor in conversation with political ‘man of the moment’ and author of Nudge Richard Thaler.
Corine Wood-Donnelly has an article for the Henry Jackson Society on “British influence in a changing world” – ‘The decline in Britain’s relative economic weight can be compensated by its economic experience and expertise in order to retain a leading place in the globalised market. Britain’s existing strong global integration provides a head start in this regard, and its relationship with the European Union, USA and increasingly the Commonwealth will help extend British influence.’
Events & Meetings…
The RSA will be hosting a lecture by influential US commentator Robert Kagan at this years Edinburgh International Book Festival on 22nd August in Charlotte Square – click here for more details.
People…
Ann Rossiter, Director of the Social Market Foundation, has said she is to leave the organisation at the end of August to take up post as Special Advisor to Rt. Hon. John Denham MP, Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills. Natalie Tarry, Deputy Director of the SMF, will serve as Acting Director
Newspapers do appear to make a huge number of typos nowadays. But there are some really bad ones out there. Only yesterday, the Daily Mail published the following headline on their website [click to enlarge]:
Of course, that has now been corrected. But for a number of hours, the Daily Mail was proclaiming on their website that Margaret Thatcher was a Lard. Whether or not it got in to print, however, I don’t know.
However, that isn’t as bad as the typo made by this newspaper:
Yes, they spelt their own name wrong. But at least they were contrite the following day, stating “we sure feel silly”.
Iain Dale’s new political magazine, Total Politics, is to publish its first copy on June 23rd. Some of the content has already been leaked, with the Telegraph’s Three Line Whip revealing that in an interview for the magazine, Gordon Brown revealedthat:
[H]e is not a good dancer, he would rather watch the new Indiana Jones film than the upcoming Bond film Quantum of Solace, that his favourite programme from his youth was That Was The Week That Was, and the last film that made him cry was Hotel Rwanda.
Which, to be honest, are rather boring “facts”.
The question I have for Iain is, however, is: why, when this magazine will be launched very soon and the website says
UK 12 issue subscription, including online, Pre launch offer £33.52 (30% off newsstand price) OFFER CLOSES 6 JUNE 2008
is there no online subscription available?
It’s 1st June today. If Total Politics are going to be able to meet their promises they don’t have long to get the online subscription option up and running.
I was going to subscribe, but I’m not so sure now…
Sometimes you read headlines and can’t help but think “WTF?” A couple of these were around today:
“MoD admit human rights breach” [as it appeared on the website link, rather than on the page itself]. I mean, surely a “breach” is a bit of an understatement in regards to this abuse of a human being which resulted in his death. A “breach” is when you step over the line. This is well and trying smashing right through it. “‘Too many women’ dying from cancer“. You don’t say. Any death from cancer is too many. But also, what about the men that die from cancer? Is there just about the right number of men dying from cancer, or do men simply not count as people?
When you read these headlines, you just have to ask what the hell was going through the mind of the person who wrote it?
UPDATE: This one has appeared as the BBCs main headline today:
“T5 chaos ‘not BA’s finest hour’“. Well duh. Anything that can be described as “chaos” is hardly going to be any organisations “finest hour”, is it? Idiots. Way to go stating the bloody obvious.
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The BNP are mentioned in three stories I have seen in the newspapers [well, on their websites - I don't buy the paper versions any more or, in the case of the BBC, watch the broadcasts] today:
One of my interests (and aims of my blog) is to encourage participation in politics as widely as possible. At least two of the three main parties have been talking about training, including media training, for younger members. The Liberal Democrats are talking about why their 
In a 
