Open Road

Thursday Apr 10th 2008

Human rights and the enemy, an old dilemma

When the British captured Napoleon after the Battle of Waterloo there was the issue of what to do with this spectacular prisoner. We tend to think relatively benignly of Napoleon now, but amongst Lord Liverpool’s government there was little affection for this defeated enemy.

Napoleon was responsible for the slaughter of millions, for a debt in the hundreds of millions and for behaviour that at the time was considered beyond the pale – those who have read the first few pages of War and Peace may recall the characters discussing the scandal of the murder of the Duc D’Enghien. Perhaps not the Hitler of his day, he was certainly the Kaiser Wilhelm.

The government was determined on one thing - not to bring him to Britain. The reason was simple – the Whig opposition would have issued a writ of habeas corpus and put him on the West London party circuit. Imagine Saddam Hussein at the 2004 Oscars.

In the end of course the little fellow was packed off to his comfortable one man Guantanamo Bay on the island of St Helena. Creditably, it never seems to have occurred to the government to simply hand him back to the French royalists, who were quite likely to have killed him as they did Marshals such as Ney.

And so the same problem has returned, in the form alleged Al Qaeda leader Abu Qatada, whom it seems Britain is stuck with. It seems that we can learn a lot from the statesmanship of Lord Liverpool.

Firstly – know your own laws and enforce them properly. The government was very careful to keep Napoleon out of Britain in 1815. It seems that the hapless immigration service should never have allowed Abu Qatada into Britain.

Secondly – there is no need to sacrifice important principles. However much the government hated Napoleon, it seems they never considered turning him over to a probably unpleasant fate.

Thirdly – find a solution. St Helena was a legal fudge, but no-one ever objects to it as inhumane treatment these days. It was a proportionate punishment for Napoleon’s crimes.

The island is, as far as the outside world can tell, still there. I doubt anyone wants another Guantanamo, but I am sure there are people who might prefer exile in the South Atlantic to torture and death in the dungeons of the Middle East.

Monday Apr 7th 2008

Guest Blog from Jonathan Russell on BA and T5

Jonathan Russell is a former Head of Corporate Affairs at Thames Water and PPP. He started his career in the BA Press Office

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS, BUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

The past is a foreign country. No doubt BA management have yearned for that glorious past in the last few days – if only they could get a flight there from Terminal 5. One person bore the full burden of being the Go Between twixt the BA Chief Pilot and his distinctly unloved-feeling paramours stuck in cattle class.

Friday Apr 4th 2008

PR Week podcast on Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife’s state visit to the UK

Graham McMillan, chief executive of Open Road, was interviewed for the PR Week podcast on the subject of Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife’s state visit to the UK.

To view the podcast, click here

Thursday Mar 27th 2008

Getting Hammered with Nicky

It is 100 days today since Nick Clegg became leader of the Liberal Democrats and, like his predecessor but one, it appears that he is obsessed with being hammered, although not quite in the same sense. See if you can spot a pattern…

Thursday 27 March 2008

Nick Clegg criticises plans by the Commons authorities to appeal against an Information Tribunal ruling calling for the full breakdown of 14 MPs and ex-MPs’ expenses to be published.

“The reason why this feels like a needless, additional hammer blow to public confidence in the House of Commons and what MPs do, is, I think we all now accept, that there should be a full declaration of all MPs’ expenses”.

Friday 14 March 2008

Nick Clegg reacts to the publication of ‘the John Lewis List’, showing the maximum amount that MPs have been able to claim on expenses for common household items.

“Clearly the recent scandals about MPs’ pay and expenses have delivered a real hammer blow to public confidence in politics. It needs to change rapidly”.

Thursday 21 February 2008

Clegg is invited to the Today Programme to comment on a data blunder at the Crown Prosecution Service, connected to serious offenders from the Netherlands being left free to commit crimes in the UK.

“This is just yet another hammer blow, if you like, against public confidence, which has been so severely damaged over recent months by the various cases of data losses”.

Friday 28 December 2007

The newly appointed Liberal Democrat leader offers his condolences following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

“Her tragic death is a hammer blow against the dream of pluralism and tolerance in modern day Pakistan”.

Friday 14 December 2007

In his very last days as Home Affairs spokesman, Clegg took issue with the ruling that found that a terrorist suspect had not breached their control order.

“This ruling is another hammer blow to the increasingly discredited control order regime”.

It is easy not to blame Clegg. After all, who ever pays such close attention to anything that the Liberal Democrats have to say? Nevertheless, the time may have come for the third party to think up some new terms of condemnation. This will be at the forefront of Clegg’s mind, no doubt, as he plots the next 100 days. 

Wednesday Mar 12th 2008

Time to wean the junkie BBC off its tax habit

Martin Le Jeune featured in The Financial Times, 11 March 2008 - Copied below.

Today Ed Richards, chief executive of the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, will deliver a speech on his planned review of public service broadcasting to the Royal Television Society.

The BBC’s first director-general, John Reith, famously defined the mission of PSB as “to inform, educate and entertain”. A lot has changed since Reith wrote those words, but not much has moved on in British television, which pretends to be edgy and forward looking while clinging to a system and a way of thinking that, in its essentials, Reith would have recognised.

What are those essentials? A belief that substantial state intervention in the television market is necessary; the maintenance of a specialised tax to fund it; a stubborn refusal to acknowledge in policymaking the contribution made by non-PSB broadcasters; producer capture; and, worst of all, a rampant and condescending paternalism.