Opinions from a loyal Labour Party member
Archive for April, 2010
Tax cuts for millionaires now on Tory website
751 days
You can have some great fun with Google Sidewiki. It let’s you add your own helpful information and explanations to websites.This means you can the truth about the Tories to their website – for anyone to see. You can share Sidewiki entries on Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and Google profiles.
To add your own exposes of the Tories, just install the Google Toolbar with Sidewiki and away you go. You can even highlight specific proposals on the site and add your own explanation of why it’s such a bad policy.
Seven years today since my first blog
757 days
It was seven years ago today (on April 24, 2003) when I started my first blog. Little did I know at the time what an amazing effect it would have on my life and career.
If I hadn’t started that blog I might never have started Wolfstar. It would be great to be able to say that I started the blog because of my amazing intuition and foresight. But unfortunately it wouldn’t be true.
In truth it was probably laziness that made me start the blog. From 1998 to 2005 I was a elected local councillor on Leeds City Council. When I was first elected as a councillor I did something that was extremely unusual at the time and started a councillor website. As I’m not a professional designer or coder this was actually quite hard work and if I’m honest wasn’t particularly brilliant.
That’s why when I first came across ‘blogging’ I was intrigued as I thought, that sounds a lot easier than running my website. And so my first blog was born. It was the first councillor blog in the UK and the third political blog – former Lib Dem MP Richard Allan (now European Head of Public Policy for Facebook) and Labour MP Tom Watson were first and second respectively.
It didn’t take long for The Guardian to find my blog and in July 2003 it ran a profile about the UK’s first blogging councillor. As The Guardian article indicates my councillor blog deliberately wasn’t like many of today’s political blogs. It was determinedly focused on local issues that mattered to people in Leeds and more specifically my ward of Middleton (later Middleton Park) in south Leeds.
But my blog wasn’t just about the minutia of being a local councillor. That sort of the thing is for officers. You can’t run a good councillor blog without being political. It was when I was being highly political about local issues that my blog always received the most attention and engagement. Despite popular belief local politics is party political. That’s one of the problems with many of the official efforts to get councillors blogging. Because they are official they have to be a politics free zone (otherwise the local authority would be accused of funding party political campaigning). But you can’t take the politics out of it. Even seemingly mundane decisions such as when the road sweepers visit can actually be highly political (the Tories want the leafy suburbs to be pristine and don’t care about the council estates).
The other important thing I learnt from my councillor blog was the massive impact what you do online can have on what happens offline. The intention of my councillor blog was never to get all 16,000 of the local electors to read it. What I did want (and succeeded in) was to get local ‘influencers’ to read it. If they knew properly about what I was doing then they could talk face to face to other people in the community. That’s why I was pleased that people like the chairs and secretaries of residents associations read it, the local vicar read it, the local neighbourhood policing team read it (and even asked me to write about them!) All these people then went out and spread the word for me.
The success of my councillor blog meant that it didn’t take long before it dawned on me that blogs weren’t just about making my life easier, but also had enormous potential for my day job as a public relations consultant… but that’s a story for another blog post.
Cross-posted to A PR Guy’s Musings: Stuart Bruce, my professional blog.
Leaders’ Debate live Qik video streaming
759 days
This evening I’m at at Leaders’ Debate party with Eddie Izzard and Hilary Benn. As usual I’ll be tweeting furiously during the debate and afterwards I plan to do some immediate live video streaming interviews.
You can watch them here on my Qik Live Channel:
I’ll be using a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 for the live video streaming and for reasons of transparency I’ve got to remind you that Sony Ericsson is a client of my company Wolfstar. For the technically minded amongst you it’s a Android phone, and IMHO (in my humble opinion the best available!)
Tory emergency budget
762 days
The Tory Emergency Budget – June 24th 2010
View more presentations from UK Labour.
Answer the question Dave
765 days
I tweeted that Cameron couldn’t answer Brown’s question about money for the police and Cameron didn’t even appear to know what was in his own manifesto (the police are in for it), luckily Gordon did know.
The moment, which was the first ‘punch’ of the debate is already on YouTube (via Political Scrapbook)
Eddie Izzard talks about Brilliant Britain with Labour
766 days
While you’re waiting for tonight’s debate (#leadersdebate) between Gordon, David and Nick you could do worse than check out Labour’s latest party political election broadcast with Eddie Izzard:
UPDATE: I didn’t want to admit this at first, but I’ve now just tweeted about the fact that I cried when I first watched this. Eddie’s right. Britain is bloody brilliant. It’s not all down to Labour, in fact it’s mainly down to how brilliant the British people are. But Labour wants to celebrate that brilliance and help people. I’m old enough to have grown up under Thatcher’s Tories and it was bloody horrible. Whatever you think Labour’s faults are don’t let the Tories wreck any hope we have for a brighter future. Trust me, they will, that’s what Tories do. I’ve experienced it.
Labour’s manifesto launch showcases cabinet talent
769 days
Today’s manifesto launch highlighted yet another of Labour’s key strengths – the depth and strength of Labour’s cabinet.
Cameron can’t put forward his cabinet team, because it’s no match for Labour’s. Can you imagine Alan Johnson v. Chris Grayling? Alastair Darling v. George Osbourne. Andy Burnham v. Andrew Lansley. Hilary Benn v. Nick Herbert. In each and every case it’s no contest.
That’s why Gordon had the cabinet with him to answer questions. He knows he’s got a talented team.
In contrast Cameron knows he’s got to distance himself from the rest of his cabinet. Not only does their appearance highlight how lightweight they all are, but more importantly it shows people that for all Cameron’s slick salesmanship about compassionate Cameron, it’s still the same old nasty Tories underneath.
For all that Cameron likes to pretend he’s Tony Blair’s heir, the big difference is that Blair had the ability and courage to change the Labour Party. Cameron doesn’t even have the ability or courage to change the Conservative Party so how can we believe him when he says he’ll change the country?
Labour manifesto launch
769 days
Labour’s manifesto launch is a bit different to what a lot of people were expecting. Usually general election manifestos are only bought and read by real political junkies*. But the problem with that is that most people just see what the media chooses to report, they don’t actually get to see the real policies free if media spin and distortion.
Labour’s innovation is to provide the manifesto in a multitude of different formats to suit a wide variety of needs. The most innovative is the film produced by Ridley Scott Associates and Saatchi & Saatchi which is ideal for sharing with friends and family. In just two minutes it gives people a real insight into Labour’s policy pledges in its manifesto.
For those who want more detail you can click through and see a series of other films on specific policy areas such as the economy and health. You can also click through to download PDFs of the actual manifesto. It’s in the PDFs that you get the policy detail that highlights how solid, serious and substantial Labour’s manifesto actually is. Douglas Alexander explained that the rationale behind the animated films was to allow voters to “paddle, swim and dive” into Labour’s manifesto.
Labour’s launch is about putting members and voters at the forefront. Before 1997 Peter Mandelson used to talk about winning the ‘air war’ and the ‘ground war’. The air war was the mainstream media, the ground war was pounding the streets talking to voters. Today it’s even more about the ground war. Except the ground war isn’t just on the streets, it’s online with voters and local party activists talking to each other.
In contrast to the Tories negative advertising campaigns Labour has deliberately chosen a positive theme, reflecting bright sunshine coming up over the horizon and a family looking forward to a future fair for all.
The creative manifesto isn’t just creative for the sake of it, but is also designed to reflect the importance of the creative and digital sector to the UK economy.
That’s why Labour isn’t relying on the broadcast and print media for the manifesto launch. The launch wasn’t introduced by a cabinet minister, but by Labour blogger Ellie Gellard. At the same time Labour is sharing the links to the films with party members so they can share them directly with friends, colleagues and family through email, social media and social networks.
Impressed as I am by Labour’s innovation and as new media as I am, I have to confess I’m disappointed that I won’t be walking down to WH Smith to buy all of the manifestos. Keeping an online video or PDF just isn’t the same.
DISCLOSURE: I did have a sneak preview of the manifesto.
* I used to have a collection of manifestos going back to 1979 which was the first election where I was really aware of and interested in politics (I was nearly 11).
XP: Also posted on A PR Guy’s Musings.
Labour’s party election broadcast – the road ahead
769 days
Labour’s first party election broadcast – the road ahead
Tory NIC cuts – the truth for small businesses
772 days
Small businesses employ almost 60% of the private sector workforce and without a doubt the Tories are right that Labour’s proposed increasing in NIC will hurt. I run a small business and they will hurt us. If you asked me if I wanted them to go ahead I’d say no I don’t as it’s going to cost us money that we don’t have. For us it’s not about preserving profit margins as we plough it all back into the business to grow and create more jobs. The NIC increase will make this harder.
But, and it’s a huge but, the Tory alternative is far, far worse. For Wolfstar to grow and prosper we need an improving and stable economy. We’re a business that sells services to other businesses. Our clients can only spend more money with us, if consumers spend more money with them. The Tory plans to hack and slash essential public services hurts consumers. That hurts our clients. That hurts us. That hurts the people that work for us.
That’s why Labour’s plans for NIC might not be good, but they are a lot better than the Tory alternative.