Open Road

Friday Jan 4th 2008

Iowa, the winners and the losers

The phoney war is over. Voting, caucusing to be more precise, has finally started. And not a moment too soon, I have to say. Over the course of several recent trips to the US I have to admit to fatigue at Presidential primary politics. The seemingly scores of candidates have been on the road for over a year, there have been dozens of debates already, counting money has become the new spectator sport for Beltway insiders and Iowa – originally elevated by Jimmy Carter’s insurgency campaign in 1976 – has been lifted to a harbinger status which is hard to fathom when you compare this small Midwestern state’s demographics to the rest of the United States. I also admit to being concerned over whether any of these candidates are best placed to lead the US right now. More importantly, like many others I had become bored with constant media speculation over what might happen and itchy for the game to get going.

Thursday Jan 3rd 2008

Orwell and Harman - the odd couple

An unlikely couple you might think.  But together they featured in Salieri’s Christmas and helped him to understand a little more about the world according to New Labour.
One is of course a well-respected figure in left-of-centre circles…while the other is married to Jack Dromey.  But, cheap jokes apart, Salieri was reading a brilliant collection of Orwell’s journalism for Tribune in the 1940s - buy it here - when Harman came on the wireless suggesting that prostitution be made illegal (by the device of making it a criminal offence for men to purchase sex from women).  Report here. 

Thursday Dec 13th 2007

“I have nothing to declare except my celebrity …”

I have a guilty secret.

Well, perhaps it’s not that secret – not to my close friends and family. And not that guilty either actually – I see the towering piles of glossy mags in my flat as a charming idiosyncrasy rather than the funeral pyres of my critical faculties.

So yes, I admit it, I am a Celebophile.

But much as I love those (mostly) under-talented, overpaid, overhyped individuals, it’s a brave PR professional that jumps into the world of celebrity endorsements without carefully looking at the graveyard of past failures.

Wednesday Dec 12th 2007

Fifteen Predictions for 2008 - some serious, some not

Gordon Brown will remain unpopular.  He will be 6-8 points behind the Conservatives at the end of 2008

The credit crunch will hang around for the whole of 2008

The UK economy will grow by 1.9 per cent

Alistair Darling, if he is still Chancellor and hasn’t been replaced by Ed Balls, will raise taxes further, largely by stealth, in the Budget as the Treasury will be running out of cash

We will all get immensely bored by the Bill to ratify the European Reform Treaty

Monday Dec 3rd 2007

The Trade Mag Drag

Once upon a time, before hanging up my soft-soled journalistic shoes for tighter fitting consultancy brogues, I was a features editor. And this week I’ve found myself trawling through some of the more – how shall I put it? – technical trade publications to see what they have planned in the features department for the year ahead.