The ThunderDragon

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.

The internet, says it’s [British] creator ‘needs a way to help people separate rumour from real science’.

Erm, why? People have brains. And, guess what, they can use them too!

People can check the veracity of sources on the internet. And, frankly, only an idiot would take something read in just one place on the ‘net - no matter where that is - as “the truth”.

Even were this not the case, how precisely would any system to verify any website work? Who is to say what the “truth” is? The sort of gossip and rumour spread by Guido might be just that, or it might be true. So what system can be used to verify his blog? Or, frankly, any website.

No sort of peer review or cross-verification could work, as that would leave it wide open to the very thing it is trying to combat. The only way would be to have a repository of “the truth”, and send all defintions through that. Which would go against the entire ethos of the internet.

So it is both a stupid and an unworkable idea. What a way to launch an new organisation. eh?

Image: I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?

I’ve been using Chrome for a few days now, and I like it. It is a lot cleaner looking than Firefox is, and loads quite significantly faster as well.

And, of course, it is far far far superior to Internet Exploder.

In fact, the only downside to Chrome that I can see is the lack of applications.

It is now my browser of choice.

Download it here.

(This is a cross post from the Wardman Wire by Matt Wardman)

I came across Chris Applegate’s rather wonderful algorithm for a David Aaronovitch simulator, based on this column:

• Step 1: Go ad hominem from the very start and label your opponents as being part of some mythical self-styled intellectual commentariat (while ignoring just how eminently qualified you are yourself to belong to that same cadre):
• Step 2: Posit a false dichotomy and put your opponent at one extreme end of it.
• Step 3: Push the boat out even more - emphasise how the bad men will get you if you don’t do what they say. Go for the heart-tugging “as a father” line if need be.
• Step 4: When all else fails, wring your hands and play the race card.
• Step 5: Ask a sub-editor to top it off by giving it the headline “Ignore the paranoid fantasists” and voila! Instant column!

The existence of a convincing algorithm invites a question:

Could we re-engineer Eliza to be an Aaronovitch simulator and thereby prove that belief in the real one is logically unnecessary?

Now, Chris Applegate is a Geek:

the blog, website & general online presence of Chris Applegate, twentysomething geek and generally lost boy

So how about it, Chris?

If we could do the same for a lot of columnists, then our newspapers might be economically viable again.

I had a little try out with Eliza (linked above):

Eliza: Hello. I am ELIZA. How can I help you?
Me: I want to be David Aaronovitch.
Eliza: Why do you want to be david aaronovitch?
Me: I can’t work it out.
Eliza: Have you tried?
Me: It depresses me when I do try.
Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?
Me: No, that’s the problem. I can’t understand it.
Eliza: You are being a bit negative.
Me: I know. I want to be David Aaronovich.
Eliza: Why do you want to be david aaronovitch?

At which point it started to go round in circles, which leads me to think that perhaps we don’t need to do that much development.

Could we even have a “kill 2 birds with one stone” Polly-o-Tron simulator, with an extra plug-in “Tim Worstall” module that would write a good chunk of Tim’s blog at the same time by applying factual corrections, and save enough time to let him stay in the blogosphere when he becomes an MEP?

Just musing over my cornflakes.

Engineering Resources

• Algorithm above.
• Eliza.
• BBC “Have your Say” comment simulator.
• Columns by Mr Aaronovich.
• Columns by La Polly.
• Tim Worstall.
• Ear muffs.

Due to a variety of reasons, in the past week I’ve not had to chance to glance at a newspaper (Well, slight lie, I read a few pages of The Daily Mail yesterday, but I doubt that counts anyway), read an article on a news website, or watch a news bulletin. Nor am I likely to get chance to do so today.

But, as TD is away trying to recreate this video (one presumes), I sort of feel obliged to give people something to do over the weekend instead of reading this blog.

So, people of a certain age, cast your mind back to the 80s. That girl you liked in school. How did you express your admiration? Well, you found a Maxwell, put it into your tape deck and either by carefully recording off the radio so you hit pause just before Bruno Brookes started talking (come on, we all did it); or using a double take deck and taping it across from the original if you actually had it.

Mixtapes have died out with the introduction of CDs and mp3s - it’s rare you find a new car with a Cassette deck. It’s possible to add files onto a CD, or even have a mp3 playlist, but the romance simply isn’t there. There was skill in making a mixtape that there isn’t in a CD. The reassuring clunk of the mechanism. There was just something about it all.

Thankfully, someone has seen the lack of this, and made the 21st Century version.

OK, so an internet mixtape from mixwit might not have quite the same idea - there’s nothing to hold after all. But you can see the tape and things moving around - it’s quite fun.

So, on the wet June weekend, if you’ve nothing better to do - go and have a play. You can save them all to show off (see mine here - I often use them for Musical Bites, particularly the alphabetical playlist feature) - perhaps to that girl behind the bikesheds who might otherwise get a boring old CD…

~Asp

Gordon Brown has launched a new gimmick initiative - and an online one at that!

Ask The PM.

Politicians get a chance in prime ministers question time and other question times - I think it’s time the public had a chance.

We have until June 21st to submit questions. So we should all get on our webcams and submit questions to Gordo. When [and if] they will be answered, however, is not detailed. This apparently going to be a “regular event” - but how often? Once a week? Once a month? Once a quarter? Currently the details are so vague that there is nothing there to hold Brown to,

But, the thing is, which questions will he answer? The site says that he will respons to “the most popular questions submitted by the YouTube community.” But how is that to be measured? There doesn’t appear to be any voting mechanism on the “View” feature, and the videos there are shown by random. There’s also the question of whether a review/censorship procedure is in place as well…

However, this is quite a good idea. It’s different, even if a bit of a WebCameron-esque. Though WebCameron doesn’t have that questions facility any more [or most of the other interactive tools it used to]. Probably because people ask awkward questions, and online, you can’t avoid answering them - something which Gordo will soon realise. People get vitirolic online in a way they wouldn’t in person, and Gordo may well soon experience that.

Let’s make sure that we all ask the PM a question or five. And maybe we’ll get some answers. Though somehow I doubt it.

Yesterday I bought myself a Wii.

Such fun!

And far more involving than ‘normal’ video game consoles, sicne you have to move with the game and there is an obvious link between what you do and what happens in the game, rather than just button-bashing.

The main downside is that my right arm is now hurting after several hours of nigh-on constant use!

But anyway - great fun! So the quantity and quality, or at least what quality there is, might be hit by the Wii addiction RSI injury game playing.

Adam Boulton has an interesting post on his blog on how MPs communicate with constituents:

Conversation really perked up when one of [the MPs] said he replies to emails from constituents with a “proper” posted letter in an envelope. It turns out that others all did the same…

The MPs felt that constituents felt that their issue was being treated more seriously if they got a typed reply on crested and headed paper…

Of course free postage for MPs may also help to keep the letter alive.

If I send an email, I expect to receive an email in return. If I send a letter, I expect to receive a letter in return. If I make a phone call, I expect to receive a phone call in return if I cannot speak to whoever I am calling there and then.

It’s pretty simple - the mode of communication you use tends to be the one you prefer.

So why are MPs wasting our money on sending letters to us when all we want in reply is a - compeltely free - email? And why are they wasting paper by sending totally unnecessary letters? According to Adam Boulton, because MPs think that constituents see something written on headed parliamentary paper is “treated more seriously” than an email reply.

What a load of bollocks. To start with, we are not little children who are impressed by a pretty picture on heavy paper. And, secondly, in the modern age, emails can be modified just as much to make them look “official”, with crests and everything too!

This is the 21st century. News is 24/7. No longer is a letter a fast, or even nowadays necessarily a secure or reliable service. Email, however, is all of the above and, indeed, allow instant communication between constituent and elected representative. They say they want to listen… well, if they reply by letter to emails, they really don’t seem to want to do so all that much!