Tag archive for ‘Media’
-
Cameron’s poor judgement on Irish peace process
This evening’s BBC News at Ten coverage of the historic Stormont vote on policing and justice was striking for the absence of voices from the very community whose confidence in policing has been lacking for so long. Unless I blinked and missed it not a single nationalist or republican voice was to be heard during the top story on the BBC’s flagship news bulletin.
Despite this limitation one thing came through crystal clear. The alliance the Tories have formed in the [...] -
Standard City Hall editor’s blog is back
The Evening Standard’s City Hall editor Pippa Crerar recently returned from maternity, and now her Standard blog is back.
It’s a welcome return, adding an extra dimension to online City Hall-watching. Here’s her take this week on the confirmation hearing for Kit Malthouse’s appointment, and possible future directions for the MPA.
Read Pippa’s blog here. -
Boris Johnson – dodging public accountability
Boris Johnson’s appearance on LBC’s Nick Ferrari show this morning highlights two clear issues with his administration.
The first is broken promises. In his manifesto Boris Johnson gave a commitment [pdf, see page three] that he would reintroduce tidal flow in the Blackwall tunnel. Now he says he can’t do it for legal reasons.
There are two options. Either he was right during the election, in which case it is simply incompetent not to implement his promise. Or he is right now, in which [...] -
Johnson gets twitter guidance over party-political tweet
Boris Johnson will receive guidance by the GLA’s Monitoring Officer over the use of his Mayor of London twitter account after the Greater London Authority’s Standards’ Committee found he could be seen to have breached the Authority’s code of conduct by tweeting on a party political matter.
The three- person sub-committee, with a majority of independent members, investigated a complaint from a member of the public who questioned whether it was appropriate for Johnson to use his mayoral twitter feed to welcome the Sun’s endorsement [...] -
Moonwalking bear necessities
Not much reported, but noteworthy all the same, is the news that Transport for London’s “moonwalking bear” cycling safety ad has won a gold award at the IPA Effectiveness Awards for advertising.
As the judges commented, “Faced with the difficult task of reducing the number of deaths and the number of injuries that cyclists sustain on London’s roads, this campaign moved away from traditional shock tactic strategy and instead tried to understand what is causing these accidents.”
Commissioned during [...] -
How Labour won the Jedward wars
The Conservatives have produced a ‘poster’ portraying Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling as Jedward, who’ve just been voted out of the X-Factor. It’s an answer to Labour’s ad showing Cameron and Osborne as the pop duo with the slogan “you won’t be laughing if they win.”
But unlike some of those hip hop answer tracks that outstrip the original dissing the Tory answer is a mere weak echo. If you don’t take it to another level, forget about it. Labour’s ad [...] -
Conservatives vulnerable over ‘government by the rich, for the rich’
Two articles today put a view of the Conservative party that refuses to go away and which Labour clearly belives has potentially deep resonance with the electorate – that Cameron’s Tories represent government by the rich for the rich. Whilst Cameron himself has made inroads with the electorate the same cannot be said of his party as a whole.
Kevin Maguire in the Mirror reports Denis MacShane being pulled up by the Deputy Speaker for calling Tory front bencher a millionaire. “Highlighting how out-of-touch the [...] -
Trevor Kavanagh’s justified chutzpah
The Sun’s former political editor Trevor Kavanagh was interviewed this afternoon on the BBC’s news channel on the subject of his paper’s fortieth birthday.
With great chutzpah he argued that The Sun sets the agenda for broadcasters – what would broadcasters like the BBC do without The Sun’s agenda-setting coverage to report in the mornings and evenings? Kavanagh’s audacity in sitting with two BBC presenters and telling them that his paper sets their agenda was, in a sense, brilliant, largely because [...] -
(Not just) a Standard night out
Just back from an Evening Standard bash on Horseferry Road. (No, of course I’m not on this list).
I’ll leave it to the Standard’s staff to report the event properly tomorrow, including perhaps Ken Livingstone’s and Boris Johnson’s interesting chat…
Amusingly, Ken bumped into Rachel Johnson on the way in to the party – so you could say he arrived with the mayor’s sister.
Shameless name-dropping alert. Among those I had a chance to speak to were Boris Johnson’s chief of staff Simon [...] -
Gordon Brown – more accountable to the media than Boris Johnson
Watching Gordon Brown hold his regular Downing Street press conference today underscores how woefully London is served in this respect by Boris Johnson’s attitude to the media.
Brown exposes himself to questioning on the most important issues of the day. He is joined by a colleague or colleagues to promote an issue that he wants to push on a particular occasion but does not use this to block questions on other subjects. He is willing to be questioned for some time [...]
