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tcrooks3843

Listed below are comments made by tcrooks3843 between Thursday, 11th June 2009 and Monday, 16th November 2009.

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Plotters, quitters and fighters 5:43pm on 16 Nov 2009 The most realistic camp of the 3 is the 'quitters'. Labour should be working out how few seats it may be left with after the election rather than will the Tories have an overall majority.

Very many people, tired of politicians, have made up their minds in large part influenced by the performance of Gordon Brown in office. People are well aware of his role in presiding over the economic mess he has created - one aspect of which is that we are least able to recover quickly from recession. Families with teenage children will especially wonder if and when they will get work to match their skills and academic attainment.

Labour is almost bankrupt so how is it to fight a general election at local level? The only factor that prevents wholesale slaughter of the Labour Party is that it needs many fewer votes than the Tories to retain seats in what has been its hinterland. But many formally safe seats are in danger of switching.
What future for media and journalism? 12:51pm on 30 Aug 2009 An interesting essay. I think it safe to say that as media has advanced from sticks, clay tablets, vellum and parchment so we will advance from newsprint to other forms of media. In my estimation newspapers and news magazines are doomed, and thus explicit so is paid-for-news content.

Paid-for services that include some news provision will, of course, survive. The question is balance. Will these services have much news at all and if so will be of the 'sound bite' variety?

I cannot conceive that subscription and pay-per-item news content will ever make a viable business in the future. The relentless cost-cutting within journalism has had a serious impact on quality of the finished product and I doubt that journalism can recover from this decline. Part of the decline in newspaper readership has to do with the lack of a 'value' proposition. In an increasingly materialistic society unless you can instantly touch and feel the 'quality', people are unlikely to buy.

Why pay for news content unless you are certain that it is going to be of value to you and that the quality of writing and presentation meets your expectations? Sadly, too few journalists these days write well and understand their audience's expectations. And it doesn't really matter if it is celeb gossip or political analysis, the material should be both well researched and enticingly presented. Not everything has to presented in a breathless, cliffhanger style of reporting - yes, Robert, I'm thinking of you. I find the trend towards instant detailed analysis rather silly and self-defeating. If analysis of weighty and complex issues were that easy then there would be instant solutions to the problems of mankind. I'd prefer one thoughtful, and thought provoking, blog post per day/week of much more value than a constant daily outpouring of 'stuff' that degenerates to 'noise'.

In the same way as I trust certain authors to constantly produce books worth reading, I await the point in time when I have similar trust in journalists writing/presenting the news. Might well be a long wait?
A final thought before a summer break 5:04pm on 30 Jul 2009 Nick,

Judged on 3 days as presenter of Newsnight - congratulations, you did an excellent job! You seemed much more at home in this format than with the time pressures of live news. Newsnight needs to get back to a single presenter for 4-5 days per week and you'd be my choice!

I'm not sure how any of your claimed Mandy strategy is going to restore credibility in Brown or Labour. Even he has failed to instil consistency of message across the party and in some recent cases has personally aggravated the problem. And part of the problem is that Brown, Mandy and all just haven't got a coherent view of where to go from the trough of the recession towards a sunnier economic climate. Mandy trots out an indigestible set of phrases to suggest a strategy but when examined closely it all seems to amount to pretty much nothing.

Oh for a General Election!
A massive swing 3:04pm on 24 Jul 2009 Despite the somewhat trite comments I detect that the inhabitants of the Westminster media village are accepting that there is more to this result than a reaction to the MPs expenses saga.

"Oh, where are the miracles when one most needs them?", I can hear Gordon thinking as he wanders, lonely as a cloud, around the Lake District hoping to espy a host of daffodils.
Becoming the story 10:28am on 09 Jul 2009 Nick, you said;

Coulson has already broken rule one for any spin doctor - "Never become the story".

Unlike Campbell, McBride and others Coulson didn't say anything to become the story. In fact he's said remarkably little for a 'spin doctor'.

There has been a section of the press doing some pretty despicable things for the best part of 100 years. Makes the National Enquirer look tame at times. Probably the most that Coulson can be accused of is naivety, isn't it? And he fell on his sword for that!

Commonsense was never the attribute of the media.

As commented elsewhere Guido has some valid points.
Newsnight's Politics Pen 07:44am on 08 Jul 2009 I'm more concerned that Newsnight is being dumbed down yet again. Politics Pen is an example of trying to create theatre out of serious matters. I notice Paxman doesn't seem too comfortable with the idea?

Why is it that Newsnight needs so many presenters? Why is it that items are becoming more and more like sound bite items, even when the live debates have only just got started?

I'd have thought that there was enough going on, both Home and Abroad, to warrant a 60 minute serious nightly news and political analysis programme on TV. By all means have a Politics Pen type of show, but let Light Entertainment run it.

No wonder the BBC is held in such low esteem by all the people I meet when so much muddying of programme content is being allowed.
'A bonfire of the quangos'...? 11:06am on 06 Jul 2009 It is indeed right that quangos be put under the spotlight. Where to start, you might ask?

How about things like GOSE - the Government of the South East, regional assemblies in general, regional development agencies, in fact all the agencies that keep central and local government apart from one another.

Save the money on these and smaller agencies and redistribute the money to local authorities, at the same time making your local authority properly accountable to you, the electorate.
What would Tories cut? 7:09pm on 30 Jun 2009 One might speculate that the Cabinet Secretary will not hold that position once the Tories sweep into power. His recent decision on COINS neatly illustrates how remote from reality the mechanics of central government are, especially the 'mandarins' of Whitehall.

While I can appreciate that an Opposition must be tested to see if they have the goods to run the country, with few exceptions the quality of questioning on future economic recovery, especially on taxes and public spending, seems to be much more laissez faire when interviewing ministers and more combative when demanding the impossible from shadow ministers.

Taxes, public spending, and the future for our next generations are weighty matters. In trying to get to the truth of how each political party will tackle these difficult matters it does seem that the BBC, our public broadcaster, should demand the very best from its political journalists at all times, on air and blogging.

Cameron and Osborne are being scrupulous in not putting forward policy that they cannot know if it can be implemented. The scale of government borrowing is so serious that we deserve to have the COINS information available to all. What is there to hide? Can it possibly be worse than MPs expenses?

If the BBC focussed on what could possibly be in COINS that would have to be redacted before it could be made public then the voters could see for themselves which political party offered the best way forward in dealing with economic recovery.
'Riots on the streets' 2:43pm on 29 Jun 2009 Let's start a small poll on who has captured the public mood right now. Does the public think that there must be cuts in public spending or alternatively rises in direct and indirect taxes?
Who's planning what cuts? 09:11am on 11 Jun 2009 Nick,

Your colleague, Stephanie Flanders, has set out quite clearly on her blog that, while he might have got slightly confused over his numbers, Lansley was quite correct about the public spending consequences.

Meanwhile, our 'great leader' was busy creating his latest work of fiction on public finances on which you seem unable to comment, especially considering his recent statements on how he's going to improve his performance as PM.

Priorities are such funny things but it helps being at the leading edge of events to decide what to blog about and I'm surprised that given the fuss you haven't done a follow up to this blog post.

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