PR Blogs

It’s been fascinating to see what some MPs have been claiming for. Chandeliers, horse manure, dog food, lawn mowers, barbecues, light bulbs and so many ‘flipping’ second homes that we lose count.

MPs need to be reimbursed for the inevitable cost of working in two places – their constituencies and the House of Commons. But the present system is broken and needs to be replaced.  There are really only two options here – one is to have a fixed allowance for a second home and that can be spent on a mortgage, rent, hotel room or whatever, and the other is to have (as the armed forces do) set accomodation that they can live in at no cost.

One of the most amazing things in this whole fiasco is that MPs seem to think that no-one would find out. In this age of citizen media those who are paid by the public must expect it. And Speaker Martin was entirely blinkered in seeking to castigate whoever spilled the beans, rather than those whose dubious actions meant the beans were worth spilling.

Many of our MPs seem to need clear and strategic PR advice, the one thing, ironically, that they haven’t bothered to claim for.

The media – print, broadcast and social – is full of swine flu news. It’s also full of speculation, warnings, fear and hype.

Let’s get this in perspective. It’s very sad that so many have died in Mexico, but the figures are really very small. I am highly unlikely to die from swine flu. You are highly unlikely to die from swine flu.

Every year people do die from influenza. It is a serious disease, and we are going to get a serious new strain before too long. When it happens many will die, but probably not as many as Spanish flu around 90 years ago, when somewhere between 20 and 100 million died.

If we want to talk about deaths in 2009 let’s focus on much more serious matters. Many die every day from wars around the world. We could do something about these, if we had the will.

Every day, yes every day, around 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes. That’s 16,000 every day, almost 700 every hour, 11 every minute.

So in the time you have taken to read this another 5 or 6 children have died. We could do something about this.

For those families with children dying from hunger, for those in war zones, with bullets, landmines, cholera and other issues to concern them, swine flu is something of a trivial matter.

So let’s keep things in perspective. And let’s worry about wars, child deaths, global warming and those other things that swine flu have pushed out of our minds. We can keep flu at bay by washing our hands. Let’s not wash our hands of these other important matters.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council should be ashamed of itself. Its decision, to ban Maragaret Haywood from ever being allowed to practise nursing again, is misguided and is a disgrace.

For those who don’t know, Margaret Haywood was so appalled by the neglect of elderly patients at the Royal Sussex Hospital where she worked that she agreed to secretly film conditions for a BBC Panorama documentary. Her decision was not taken lightly. She had reported the issues to her superiors but nothing had been done.

The programme highlighted dreadful instances of neglect. Before the programme was shown everyone who had been filmed had either given their permission for it to be shown or their relatives had done so where the patient had since died.

However the Nursing and Midwifery Council said to undertake the filming was a major breach of its code of conduct and compromised the dignity of elderly patients in the last stages of their lives. Someone needs to tell the council that it was the neglect that compromised their dignity, not the exposure of it.

Margaret Haywood has been in nursing for 20 years and would not have taken such drastic action if the authorities had done their jobs properly. If the Council believes that it is more important to protect the interest of the nursing profession than to uncover and highlight such conditions, then it is not a fit body to rule upon these matters.

Sainsbury’s seems to think that pollack is not a fish its customers want to ask for. It appears they think that the name is just a little too close to something slightly suggestive.

Their solution is to rebrand it as colin, pronounced in the French way. Now apart from the fact that colin in France is hake, do they really think that this is going to make the fish so much more popular? And aren’t most people going to say Colin, as in the boy’s name, and isn’t that just as odd.

This appears to be a strategy to deal with a very silly and insignificant problem, by substituting a name which is not that easy to pronounce and one which is incorrect at that.

Name changing doesn’t hide the problem. Windscale became Sellafield but it still had nuclear leaks. And isn’t pollack, or colin, the rather tasteless fish that is mostly used in school fishcakes and which has put a generation of children off fish for life?

Seems to me that Sainsbury’s have started something they probably wish they hadn’t. A real load of bolins…

When you lose your job it’s a good idea to think about going in a different direction, especially when the Government encourages you to do so.
With so many top bankers suddenly finding themselves with time on their hands the Government has suggested they could go into our schools to teach mathematics. Maths teachers are sorely needed – but bankers?
Isn’t it apparent to everyone that most bankers haven’t been able to do their sums properly for years?

I write this open letter to you all while reflecting on the many thousands (or probably millions) of letters that you all have sent to us individuals, businesses and organisations over the years.

In these letters you have castigated us for spending more than we actually have; you have chastised us for living beyond our means; you have criticised us for being unwise and over-ambitious; you have chided us for not being prudent.
And now what do we find? You have been far from prudent; you have been unwise and over ambitious; you have been spending more than you have, in other words living beyond your means.

So we now find ourselves in the position, somewhat reluctantly, of being shareholders as well as customers while we try to help you out of the mess you have created.

What is curious to many of us is how your views have see-sawed so quickly. From being people who would lend to anyone at a bus stop, you won’t even lend to each other. This attitude is making the global situation worse. You all knew you were all, quite frankly, dodgy players before. Now we all know you are, you are pretending to be careful. That just means that as well as having to bail youy out, we are taking the hit in terms of a credit squeeze.

I come now to executive pay and bonuses. We are often told that pay for top executives such as you has to be competitive. It seems to many of us that most of you are not competent to run a whelk stall. If you actions plunge us all into recession there will be plenty of top executives around with nothing to do, so we suggest you look at your positions very carefully. We do not expect to see bonuses until we have been repaid, and we look to your remuneration committees to do the decent thing and slash your remuneration. If you want to go elsewhere as a result – good riddance.

I do hope you take these comments to heart. I will finish in a way that I believe is appropriate in view of our new relationship.

Your remain, sirs, my humble and obedient servants,

PS I believe it is customary in your profession to charge a fee of around £40 for writing such a letter as this. I look forward to your payments.

PPS In view of your current financial positions you should not draw further on your accounts, so cash, please.

The case of Max Mosley, the News of the World, and privacy raises issues which need to be carefully considered by the media and by anyone is business or in the public eye.

Firstly the media: for years publications like the News of the World have published stories about figures in the public eye doing things they perhaps wished had not be revealed in the pages of a national newspaper. When they have been challenged about this they raise of issue of public interest. “It is in the public interest,” they say, “that these activities are exposed.”

What the media has been doing is confusing public interest with what is interesting to the public. It is in the public interest to expose crime or serious misdemeanour; it is in the public interest to prevent the public from being misled by some statement or action of an individual or organisation; it is in the public interest to expose corruption, or conflicts of interest by those in power, or hypocritical behavious by those holding high office.

It is interesting the public that a footballer has an affair, or that a film star was drunk in a restaurant, or that a business person enjoyed a sex romp. Interesting maybe, but not in the public interest.

So it is a fine line that editors have to consider – or ought to. What Maxs Mosley did was certainly interesting to the readers of the News of the World and the media which followed the story up. But was it in the public interest?

Now if indeed there had been a ‘Nazi romp’ then that may well have been in the public interest, but the judge found that was not the case and so upheld Mr Mosley’s right to privacy. The judge stressed that his ruling in no way set a precedent, but the media has been sorely vexed by the matter.

However there is a lesson for all people in public office, or in business, or in the public eye in some way, and it is a lesson which has been around for a long time. If you are tempted to do or say something the test is ‘would I want to see this on the front page of a newspaper?’ If the answer is no, don’t do or say it.

Because as sure as eggs is eggs these things will get out. The news pages are littered with the damaged reputations of those who have been unwise enough to ignore this advice.

As a nation we need to grow up a bit. The French don’t care if their political leaders have affairs, so why do we get so bothered?

But the media have to start differentiating public interest and interesting to the public.

Otherwise we may well get a privacy law by the back door.

It’s been a busy week in Plymouth. We have just celebrated Enterprise Week and the city’s business awards (for which we were nominated)and now we are about to celebrate Thanksgiving. Plymouth must be the only city in the UK which has such an extensive Thanksgiving programme,and this year our American guest of honour of the US Defence Attache Read Admiral Ronald Henderson.
For more information about Thanksgiving in Plymouth visit link to a website