Open Road

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.

Tuesday Mar 11th 2008

Opinion Research has its limits

Now don’t get me wrong.  Opinion research is extremely important and useful.  Hell, we do it here (rather well we like to think.)

But in order to get the best value from it and avoid the pitfalls, it has to be interpreted well, you need to be aware of its limits, what it is good at doing and what it cannot do and lastly, you need to bear in mind that occasionally it can get it wrong.