Friday:
The Newsnight Show's resident Replutocrat finds favour with Mr Clogg?
Could my old fluffy sparing-partner Mr Frank “I invented the phrase DEATH-TAX” Luntz have completely lost his marbles this week or has he been replaced by a genuinely fair-and-balanced POD PERSON?
The answer is NO.
If a stage magician kept convincing you to pick the Knave of Diamonds (that’s Mr Balloon in this analogy, obviously) then pretty soon his act would get OLD!
Likewise, if Fluffy Frank (NOT a stage magician) wants to keep being IN the news, he has to generate SURPRISING new news from time to time. Then he can look IMPARTIAL. That way when he goes onto his REAL agenda and say that the Labour should keep Mr Frown, everyone will nod at how WISE he is.
Has he actually told us anything new?
We Liberal Democrats all knew already that if people actually LISTENED to what Liberal Democrats say – as opposed to the MEE-JA version (e.g. Mr Nick “mate of Dave” Robinson: "…and today the Lib Dems voted to lift the ban on SPOONS*") – then people actually like us. The evidence is there in the way our poll ratings get a boost every time there's an election on and the Representation of the People Act MAKES the news channels give us coverage.
*made-up example
Has he given up on his old (I keep telling you, Mr Luntz is NOT a stage magician) tricks, either?
Well, obviously Mr Luntz is ALWAYS as surprised by the outcome as the viewers are, but someone on his research team certainly did Mr Millipede no favours (in the "who should lead the Labour" piece shown on Friday) by choosing clips of all the OTHER possible candidates (plus Mr James Purnell) that had them sat down being interviewed by Mr Andy Marrmite but had Mr Millipede stood at a GILDED podium delivering a diplomatic address. Oddly enough, the focus groupies thought Mr Millipede was "out of touch" – how could THAT have happened?
Mr Purnell, incidentally, Junior Minister for Photoshop, what was HE doing on the list of choices, when the likes of Sooty and Ms Jacqui Spliff were not? You would have thought he could have benefited from being in "poll position" at the top right (remember, I said that that might have helped people think positively about Mr Balloon?). But of course, Mr Frank (no doubt quite ACCIDENTALLY) totally undermined that by opening with the question "Does anyone know who this is?" Not only does this EXPECT the answer no, the natural tendency to avoid putting your fluffy foot up to the first question subtly and OBVIOUSLY quite by chance reinforced this. Having got silence as a first response, then asking "Does no one know who is?" is only going to get more silence – who wants to look a NANA and admit that they DID know at this stage? So that's him shot down.
Ms Harriet Harpic was next, of course, and having made everyone feel dumb for not knowing the first person, all Mr Frank's subjects were keen to show that they weren't total thickoes… but what a stroke of luck that someone was SO keen that they shouted out her name so that EVERYONE knew who she was. Ms Harriet survived the Big Brother-stylee evictions until the final three, in spite of some strong negative reactions too her.
But in the end, Mr Frank had convinced his panel to whittle it down to a choice between keeping Mr Frown or replacing him with either Mr Alan Johnson or Mr Jack Man O'Straw. So that's the Prime Monster or a choice of Postman Pat or the Sinister Minister.
If this were a three card trick, you could have a choice between keeping the King or swapping for a Knave or a Deuce. Well what card are YOU going to pick?
Does it actually HURT the Conservatories, for Mr Frank to say that people who HEAR Mr Clogg PREFER Mr Clogg?
Well with Mr Balloon's drinking buddies SO FAR ahead of us and the Labour in polling numbers then no, not directly; and with it depending on that CONDITIONAL “IF people get to hear us” then since Mr Luntz can anticipate that the MEE-JA will NOT suddenly start giving Mr Clogg a decent hearing then actually that won’t make a difference either.
Or perhaps I am just being a CYNICAL old SOCK.
One thing that we CAN take away from this, is that we have a good answer the next time some interviewer is only interested in asking Mr Clogg "aren't you just Mr Balloon?"
That's not what Newsnight found when they asked real voters to choose between us, Mr Clogg can say.
Showing posts with label Frank Luntz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frank Luntz. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Day 2266: Power Crazed Alien Lizards, the Comedy Years
Friday:
Do you remember fluffy Mr Sir Alan Sugar and his POWER CRAZED ALIEN LIZARD Apprentices, from last year?
Well, they're back! And this time the space lizards are disguised as CELEBRITIES.
It was all for COMIC RELIEF, and they raised loads of money for Charity, which was good.
But one of the LIZARD CELEBRITIES had ESCAPED over to BBC2: it was my old friend MR FRANK LUNTZ, doing his own COMIC TURN for the Newsnight Show.
Hoping backwards and forwards between channels it was difficult to tell where the comedy began and where the charity telethon ended.
As I am sure you know, Mr Frank's usual shtick is like a magic show – he offers the audience a deck of knaves and then proves that Mr Balloon is the Queen of Hearts.
[R: king, surely?]
It did not quite work out so well for him this time – some people have suggested that this is because the Newsnight Show insisted on picking the clips that he used, some because it was a smaller group and therefore harder to find either the right sound bites or the right group think.
These are VERY MEAN things to say about poor Mr Frank. It is hardly HIS FAULT that Mr Balloon has not been as shiny as billed in, er, that piece that Mr Frank did back at the Conservatory leadership election.
Anyway, he did his best for his favourite toffee nose chum, and he gives it an EVEN BETTER spin here for the Grauniad.
The huge POP ART posters of the leaders were as HILARIOUSLY SUBTLE as ever: Lord Blairimort in the background all in BLUE (old, cold, Conservatory); Mr Balloon on a nice Liberal orange (fresh, new, Liberal); Sir Mr the Merciless on washed out red (old again, blood, pale and lifeless, and linked to the Labour); and Mr Frown foregrounded in poison green (not the GOOD green of life and vibrancy, the NASTY green of jealousy, envy, bitterness and monsters).
I am sure that Mr Frank must have seen them and GROANED that the designer had got all the colours the WRONG WAY AROUND! After all, if you are going to use colours for the Party Leaders, you surely must mean to use the right party colours. Otherwise people might get MIXED MESSAGES and you could be INFLUENCING your sample.
It is interesting too what a difference the editing can make.
On the telly, Sir Mr the Merciless actually got some rather GOOD scores on Mr Frank's funny dial-o-matic machines. (Watching the people using them, it did not seem to take much of a twist to turn up to 100. Do you think that some NUANCE might be lost if you're only really measuring people in states of good bad or indifferent?)
Anyway, Sir Mr the Merciless seemed to be popping up into the eighties from the clip that appeared. Mr Frank cannot have noticed that because he did not comment on it – and he got very excited when Mr Balloon's scores hit a high of a bit above fifty.
In the paper, Mr Frank reduces the remarks about Sir M to '…"yawn", "bland" and "old fart"…'
The comments which the Newsnight Show chose to pick up were those too, but also the youngest member of the panel saying both "I can't believe how ageist you all are" and "Ming is the only one who is trying to do something for young people, fighting tuition fees".
The Newsnight Show showed that Sir Mr the Merciless DOES get caricatured… but also that he can still reach out to people; the newspaper piece does not see beyond the caricature.
Mr Frank picks up on the negative reaction people had to Mr Balloon's webcameron and his photo-ops and stunts. Too much Blair, says the panel, and Mr Frank has to agree. Actually, the panel went into rather more detail about Mr Balloon's shortcomings. "All Spin and NO Substance." Do not say that we haven’t been warning you about this, Mr Balloon. Even YOU would have to admit you are in QUITE A LOT of trouble when Mr Frank is saying it's time to wheel out some policies, I think!
Mind you, when he asserts that "Balloon's policy pronouncements continue to prove that he is not a return to the "old Tories" of the 1980s" I am afraid that Mr Frank is kidding himself.
Sorry Mr Frank but (a) WHAT policy pronouncements? Vague aspirations to cut flying or help families – these are not policies. They are barely even directions of travel!
And (b) flying tax reminded people of stealth taxes; families reminded people of "back to basics". Oops, looks like a return not to the heyday 1980s but to the sleazy, incompetent 1990s.
The last time Mr Frank was on the telly, he was saying how much BETTER the Labour were going to do once Mr Dr Reid was installed in number ten.
"We thankses you, Mr Frank my precious," as the Home Secretary would put it.
Unfortunately, the panel tonight seemed not to have got the memo and were, on the whole, rather warmer towards Mr Frown than Mr Frank would have liked. I think that there was a certain amount of willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt after all his not messing the economy up for the last ten years.
The biggest laugh of the night was, of course, the hilarious drop in all the dials at the moment the Mr Frown clip cut away to Lord Blairimort feigning applause from the sidelines.
So, no winners but one big fat loser. No, not Mr Frank – Lord Blairimort, obviously!
Meanwhile back in the TORCHWOOD TOWER, Mr Sir Alan had hired a CIRCUS for his CLOWNS to perform in. All right, it was a fairground.
He divided his celebrity lizards into two sides. There was a team of GIRLS lead by Trinnie who was a scary robot lady in Doctor Who and Maureen Lipman who was a scary television lady in Doctor Who. And a team of BOYS led by Alistair Henchman and Piers Moron who are scary enough in REAL LIFE.
Trinnie decided that the way to win was to call up all of her INSANELY RICH friends and sting them for thousands (one ticket sold for a hundred and fifty GRAND!). Mr Moron decided that the way to win was to CHEAT.
The incident of the kidnapped chef was NOT a case that needed Sherlock Holmes to solve. In fact Trinnie solved it herself by going downstairs to the boys room and saying "oi, that's my chef!"
In fact, Trinnie lost points with Daddy Alex by threatening the poor chef's job – it was hardly his fault that Mr Moron had locked him in the lavatory, and threatening him that way was just WRONG!
Even so, Mr Moron and Mr Henchman should not have been manhandling her like that, and she was very upset afterwards. They were just like BULLIES in a playground… and based on this I worry that "The Thick of It" may actually be a DOCUMENTARY and not a COMEDY after all!
While Mr Moron was MESSING ABOUT though – promising the Earth and delivering a few grains of dust from the asteroid field – Mr Henchman got down to some serious work.
An early example of Mr Henchman's terrifying power came with the negotiations for who would have which rides and stalls. When the girls revealed that they wanted the dodgems (which the boys wanted too) Mr Henchman said that they could only have the dodgems if the boys got the next THREE picks, and steadfastly refused to reveal any hint of what they would pick.
This gives a rather scary insight into the inner workings of the government where even knowing what you are talking about is a card to be kept secret until you are ready to play it!
Of course, the girls were foolish enough to agree – so the boys gave up one of the things they wanted and came away with all of the other three.
The problem for the boys, though, was that their leaders were just too used to commanding that a thing be done and expecting it be done. They had lost the knack of actually DOING. The key example was Mr Henchman's inability to refill a stapler. So he gave it to Mr Moron to do. Who BROKE the stapler.
And IRONICALLY for men who call themselves movers and shakers – the man behind Lord Blairimort and the man in the Mirror – they just did not think big enough, did not see the big picture.
They got caught up in putting on the best stalls at the fairground, whereas the girls had twigged that the winners would be the ones who brought in the most money. So the girls just shamelessly asked for WHOPPING GREAT DONATIONS. It did not matter that the boys' stalls were all packed out on the night while the girls rides lay empty, nor that the boys sold out of food before the girls – the girls had got tens of thousands of pounds for their tickets and where the boys sold food at a decent mark up, the girls sold it at a totally INDECENT one!
The boys brought in a little under £300,000; the girls rather a lot over £700,000!
Though as Trinnie put it – and won some points back with Daddy Alex for doing so – between them they raised over a million! And then that was doubled on Comic Relief night too!
So kudos to the girls, but who would get fired? They kept us on tenterhooks as log as they could – which was a good thing because we could watch Mr Frank's close up magic on BBC2 while we waited!
It came down to three: Daddy Baker had been responsible for not charging rip-off prices for the food, Mr Henchman had been the team leader, and Mr Moron just because.
I am sorry to say, that Daddy cheered when it was Mr Moron who got it.
"You're fired!" said Mr Sir Alan.
"Again," said Mr Henchman quietly. He'd been waiting for that moment. You could tell.
Sadly, Mr Moron learned nothing from his experience, still blaming spin as he was driven away to the car crusher in Mr Goldfinger's spare car…
Do you remember fluffy Mr Sir Alan Sugar and his POWER CRAZED ALIEN LIZARD Apprentices, from last year?
Well, they're back! And this time the space lizards are disguised as CELEBRITIES.
It was all for COMIC RELIEF, and they raised loads of money for Charity, which was good.
But one of the LIZARD CELEBRITIES had ESCAPED over to BBC2: it was my old friend MR FRANK LUNTZ, doing his own COMIC TURN for the Newsnight Show.
Hoping backwards and forwards between channels it was difficult to tell where the comedy began and where the charity telethon ended.
As I am sure you know, Mr Frank's usual shtick is like a magic show – he offers the audience a deck of knaves and then proves that Mr Balloon is the Queen of Hearts.
[R: king, surely?]
It did not quite work out so well for him this time – some people have suggested that this is because the Newsnight Show insisted on picking the clips that he used, some because it was a smaller group and therefore harder to find either the right sound bites or the right group think.
These are VERY MEAN things to say about poor Mr Frank. It is hardly HIS FAULT that Mr Balloon has not been as shiny as billed in, er, that piece that Mr Frank did back at the Conservatory leadership election.
Anyway, he did his best for his favourite toffee nose chum, and he gives it an EVEN BETTER spin here for the Grauniad.
The huge POP ART posters of the leaders were as HILARIOUSLY SUBTLE as ever: Lord Blairimort in the background all in BLUE (old, cold, Conservatory); Mr Balloon on a nice Liberal orange (fresh, new, Liberal); Sir Mr the Merciless on washed out red (old again, blood, pale and lifeless, and linked to the Labour); and Mr Frown foregrounded in poison green (not the GOOD green of life and vibrancy, the NASTY green of jealousy, envy, bitterness and monsters).
I am sure that Mr Frank must have seen them and GROANED that the designer had got all the colours the WRONG WAY AROUND! After all, if you are going to use colours for the Party Leaders, you surely must mean to use the right party colours. Otherwise people might get MIXED MESSAGES and you could be INFLUENCING your sample.
It is interesting too what a difference the editing can make.
On the telly, Sir Mr the Merciless actually got some rather GOOD scores on Mr Frank's funny dial-o-matic machines. (Watching the people using them, it did not seem to take much of a twist to turn up to 100. Do you think that some NUANCE might be lost if you're only really measuring people in states of good bad or indifferent?)
Anyway, Sir Mr the Merciless seemed to be popping up into the eighties from the clip that appeared. Mr Frank cannot have noticed that because he did not comment on it – and he got very excited when Mr Balloon's scores hit a high of a bit above fifty.
In the paper, Mr Frank reduces the remarks about Sir M to '…"yawn", "bland" and "old fart"…'
The comments which the Newsnight Show chose to pick up were those too, but also the youngest member of the panel saying both "I can't believe how ageist you all are" and "Ming is the only one who is trying to do something for young people, fighting tuition fees".
The Newsnight Show showed that Sir Mr the Merciless DOES get caricatured… but also that he can still reach out to people; the newspaper piece does not see beyond the caricature.
Mr Frank picks up on the negative reaction people had to Mr Balloon's webcameron and his photo-ops and stunts. Too much Blair, says the panel, and Mr Frank has to agree. Actually, the panel went into rather more detail about Mr Balloon's shortcomings. "All Spin and NO Substance." Do not say that we haven’t been warning you about this, Mr Balloon. Even YOU would have to admit you are in QUITE A LOT of trouble when Mr Frank is saying it's time to wheel out some policies, I think!
Mind you, when he asserts that "Balloon's policy pronouncements continue to prove that he is not a return to the "old Tories" of the 1980s" I am afraid that Mr Frank is kidding himself.
Sorry Mr Frank but (a) WHAT policy pronouncements? Vague aspirations to cut flying or help families – these are not policies. They are barely even directions of travel!
And (b) flying tax reminded people of stealth taxes; families reminded people of "back to basics". Oops, looks like a return not to the heyday 1980s but to the sleazy, incompetent 1990s.
The last time Mr Frank was on the telly, he was saying how much BETTER the Labour were going to do once Mr Dr Reid was installed in number ten.
"We thankses you, Mr Frank my precious," as the Home Secretary would put it.
Unfortunately, the panel tonight seemed not to have got the memo and were, on the whole, rather warmer towards Mr Frown than Mr Frank would have liked. I think that there was a certain amount of willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt after all his not messing the economy up for the last ten years.
The biggest laugh of the night was, of course, the hilarious drop in all the dials at the moment the Mr Frown clip cut away to Lord Blairimort feigning applause from the sidelines.
So, no winners but one big fat loser. No, not Mr Frank – Lord Blairimort, obviously!
Meanwhile back in the TORCHWOOD TOWER, Mr Sir Alan had hired a CIRCUS for his CLOWNS to perform in. All right, it was a fairground.
He divided his celebrity lizards into two sides. There was a team of GIRLS lead by Trinnie who was a scary robot lady in Doctor Who and Maureen Lipman who was a scary television lady in Doctor Who. And a team of BOYS led by Alistair Henchman and Piers Moron who are scary enough in REAL LIFE.
Trinnie decided that the way to win was to call up all of her INSANELY RICH friends and sting them for thousands (one ticket sold for a hundred and fifty GRAND!). Mr Moron decided that the way to win was to CHEAT.
The incident of the kidnapped chef was NOT a case that needed Sherlock Holmes to solve. In fact Trinnie solved it herself by going downstairs to the boys room and saying "oi, that's my chef!"
In fact, Trinnie lost points with Daddy Alex by threatening the poor chef's job – it was hardly his fault that Mr Moron had locked him in the lavatory, and threatening him that way was just WRONG!
Even so, Mr Moron and Mr Henchman should not have been manhandling her like that, and she was very upset afterwards. They were just like BULLIES in a playground… and based on this I worry that "The Thick of It" may actually be a DOCUMENTARY and not a COMEDY after all!
While Mr Moron was MESSING ABOUT though – promising the Earth and delivering a few grains of dust from the asteroid field – Mr Henchman got down to some serious work.
An early example of Mr Henchman's terrifying power came with the negotiations for who would have which rides and stalls. When the girls revealed that they wanted the dodgems (which the boys wanted too) Mr Henchman said that they could only have the dodgems if the boys got the next THREE picks, and steadfastly refused to reveal any hint of what they would pick.
This gives a rather scary insight into the inner workings of the government where even knowing what you are talking about is a card to be kept secret until you are ready to play it!
Of course, the girls were foolish enough to agree – so the boys gave up one of the things they wanted and came away with all of the other three.
The problem for the boys, though, was that their leaders were just too used to commanding that a thing be done and expecting it be done. They had lost the knack of actually DOING. The key example was Mr Henchman's inability to refill a stapler. So he gave it to Mr Moron to do. Who BROKE the stapler.
And IRONICALLY for men who call themselves movers and shakers – the man behind Lord Blairimort and the man in the Mirror – they just did not think big enough, did not see the big picture.
They got caught up in putting on the best stalls at the fairground, whereas the girls had twigged that the winners would be the ones who brought in the most money. So the girls just shamelessly asked for WHOPPING GREAT DONATIONS. It did not matter that the boys' stalls were all packed out on the night while the girls rides lay empty, nor that the boys sold out of food before the girls – the girls had got tens of thousands of pounds for their tickets and where the boys sold food at a decent mark up, the girls sold it at a totally INDECENT one!
The boys brought in a little under £300,000; the girls rather a lot over £700,000!
Though as Trinnie put it – and won some points back with Daddy Alex for doing so – between them they raised over a million! And then that was doubled on Comic Relief night too!
So kudos to the girls, but who would get fired? They kept us on tenterhooks as log as they could – which was a good thing because we could watch Mr Frank's close up magic on BBC2 while we waited!
It came down to three: Daddy Baker had been responsible for not charging rip-off prices for the food, Mr Henchman had been the team leader, and Mr Moron just because.
I am sorry to say, that Daddy cheered when it was Mr Moron who got it.
"You're fired!" said Mr Sir Alan.
"Again," said Mr Henchman quietly. He'd been waiting for that moment. You could tell.
Sadly, Mr Moron learned nothing from his experience, still blaming spin as he was driven away to the car crusher in Mr Goldfinger's spare car…
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Day 1953: I've Been Luntzed!
Tuesday
Some of you may remember Mr Frank Luntz, who has appeared on the Newsnight show.
Last month, I did a diary about how I spotted the lady from upstairs in Mr Luntz's latest show on the television and went to ask her about it. I also added some ideas about how a session like that might be open to manipulation. Not by Mr Luntz, of course; a proper pollster wouldn't need such tricks.
Well, Mr Luntz himself has been VERY KIND enough to READ my FLUFFY DIARY and post a REPLY!
(I am AMAZED – and a little bit scared – by the POWER of the Internet!)
I think that it is only FAIR if you read his side of the story too, so here is what he has to say:
Thank you, Mr Luntz for taking the time to read what I said!
Um, if is not too IMPERTINENT, how did you make your SELECTION OF CLIPS of Mr Balloon to show to your guests if you did not know what he LOOKED LIKE before you put out the photos on the day?
I think your second point is A BIT STRANGE. I am sure that it really is MOST IMPORTANT to you that people continue to believe that you CAN make predictions that are right but I do NOT remember you actually MAKING any predictions about how the local elections would turn out.
Did you say that the Conservatories would be gaining more than 300 council seats? That would be a measurable prediction that would show you are good! Or did you predict the twenty plus gains for the British Nasty Party? That would have been a good way to show foresight!
Saying that election night would be a good night for Mr Balloon is a BIT in the SEASIDE FORTUNE TELLER league. You could also try saying that Mr Balloon will meet a tall dark stranger.
Predicting that Mr Balloon would be leader of the Conservatories was more CLEVER – but not THAT MUCH more clever.
If you look at it, a LOT of the Conservatories (and not least general-election-looser Mr Something of the Night!) were looking for the man who could beat Mr Davis David.
It wasn't going to be Sir Malcolm Rifkind; even HE knew he didn't stand a chance. And no matter what the BBC, Guardian, Independent or actual real live members of the public might have WISHED, that man was never going to be Fatty Clarke either! So you really you only had to pick between SWIVEL-EYED EURO-LOON Fantastic Doctor Fox and EMPTY-SPACE-WITH-A-SMILE-DRAWN-ON Mr Balloon.
Before anyone gets the WRONG IDEA: there is NO REASON to think that Mr Luntz was not COMPLETELY GENUINE.
But, if done by someone UNSCRUPULOUS, it could just be another CONJURING TRICK, this time FIND THE LADY!
That is not to say that there is not A LOT OF SKILL involved in doing that sort of thing. A stage magician must do a lot of HARD WORK to guide the way his audience thinks.
Which reminds me, Mr Luntz: have you considered the effect that your prediction might have made on the people choosing Mr Balloon?
As a pollster you can tell me: isn't SELF-FULFILLING PROPHESY one of the things that polls have to work carefully to avoid?
(Doesn't that include things like being careful about the way and order in which you ask questions so as not to be LEADING the respondents. Oh, and probably how you lay out props – like photos – in the setting for the poll. Aren't professional pollsters supposed to be very careful about that sort of thing?)
You are PROBABLY a very FLUFFY and NAÏVE individual a bit like ME, Mr Luntz, and do not realise that SOMETIMES people who are involved in ELECTIONS make use of opinion polls to try and help them win!
Mr the Merciless plays up polls that say the Liberal Democrats are doing well.
(You have probably not seen the BAR CHARTS on Liberal Democrat Focus leaflets.)
Mr Balloon plays up polls that say the Conservatories are doing well.
(Do you remember how that used to happen when he first started?)
HM Margaret Hedgehog plays up polls that say the British Nasty Party are doing well.
(Err.. that might have been a DREADFUL mistake!)
Did you know that Mr Balloon sent out DVDs of YOUR NEWSNIGHT PIECE to all the Conservatory voters in the leadership election? I am sure that this must make you very upset.
No doubt you would be SHOCKED to think that you might have become involved with PROPAGANDA!!
However, what I think is MOST IMPORTANT is that people need to be FULLY INFORMED if they are to make good decisions.
People who read my DIARY know that my Daddies support the LIBERAL DEMOCRATS (go look – it's in my VERY FIRST ENTRY!) so they can take that into account when they read my OPINIONS.
I think people should know your political background too, Mr Luntz, so that they are better able to understand things like your choice of questions and editorial policy.
I talked to the lady who was at your meeting and got a VERY DIFFERENT impression of what people there thought from her than I got from watching the TELLY.
You do not need to be DELIBERATELY manipulating what was shown for this to happen – it is QUITE NATURAL that, for example, someone who LIKED the RIGHT WING PARTIES might pick up more on the positive things about MR BALLOON.
Equally, the nice lady could have been emphasising the NICE things about the Liberal Democrats because she was talking to me! That is why it is GOOD and PROPER that people know that I am a Liberal Democrat elephant so that they can take that into account when reading MY VERSION.
In the same way, people watching the telly should KNOW that the person making the show had, for example, worked for the REPUBLICAN PARTY in America, or alternatively had been at OXFORD UNIVERSITY with friends of Mr Balloon. That way they can BETTER understand what they are watching because they will know that that person might ACCIDENTALLY be favouring Mr Balloon.
I am sure that an honest person like you would agree that keeping quiet about these things makes it look, QUITE UNFAIRLY, like you have something to hide. And it would be HORRIBLE if your reputation suffered for that!
Dear reader, if you have enjoyed Mr Luntz's reply, you might be interested to know that he has also replied to THE LIBERAL REVIEW and to MY DADDY ALEX.
In fact, he has sent the SAME reply to The Liberal Review and to My Daddy Alex.
I am glad that he wrote me a PROPER replay and not SPAM.
I do hope that all these replies are not because Mr Luntz suddenly has a lot more time on his hands.
Some of you may remember Mr Frank Luntz, who has appeared on the Newsnight show.
Last month, I did a diary about how I spotted the lady from upstairs in Mr Luntz's latest show on the television and went to ask her about it. I also added some ideas about how a session like that might be open to manipulation. Not by Mr Luntz, of course; a proper pollster wouldn't need such tricks.
Well, Mr Luntz himself has been VERY KIND enough to READ my FLUFFY DIARY and post a REPLY!
(I am AMAZED – and a little bit scared – by the POWER of the Internet!)
I think that it is only FAIR if you read his side of the story too, so here is what he has to say:
"I came across your reaction to my focus groups and I just had to comment on a couple of points. It's 5:30 am in the states so I won't take it apart bit by bit, but two points need a response.
"First, when I layed out the photos in the initial session to look at the prospective British Conservative leaders, I didn't even know what Cameron looked like. In fact, the only two people I recognized and knew anything about was Clarke and Fox (whom I had met once before).
"This assertion that the photos were put in some explicit order is ridiculous. They were handed to me in an envelop in that order and that's just how I put them up on the board. I'm sure if I had put Cameron on top, or on the bottom right, or some other place, you would have ascribed a sinister strategy.
"Second, and this is most important, the results of EVERY dial session I have done for Newsnight has been accurately reflected in the subsequent election. The Labour collapse amd Lib-Dem gain, Cameron's election in 2005, and Labour's further drop in 2006 were all documented in the Newsnight sessions. The groups may not confirm what you personally believe, but they do accurately confirm -- based on the election results themselves -- what the people of Britain are thinking.
"Frank Luntz"
Thank you, Mr Luntz for taking the time to read what I said!
Um, if is not too IMPERTINENT, how did you make your SELECTION OF CLIPS of Mr Balloon to show to your guests if you did not know what he LOOKED LIKE before you put out the photos on the day?
I think your second point is A BIT STRANGE. I am sure that it really is MOST IMPORTANT to you that people continue to believe that you CAN make predictions that are right but I do NOT remember you actually MAKING any predictions about how the local elections would turn out.
Did you say that the Conservatories would be gaining more than 300 council seats? That would be a measurable prediction that would show you are good! Or did you predict the twenty plus gains for the British Nasty Party? That would have been a good way to show foresight!
Saying that election night would be a good night for Mr Balloon is a BIT in the SEASIDE FORTUNE TELLER league. You could also try saying that Mr Balloon will meet a tall dark stranger.
Predicting that Mr Balloon would be leader of the Conservatories was more CLEVER – but not THAT MUCH more clever.
If you look at it, a LOT of the Conservatories (and not least general-election-looser Mr Something of the Night!) were looking for the man who could beat Mr Davis David.
It wasn't going to be Sir Malcolm Rifkind; even HE knew he didn't stand a chance. And no matter what the BBC, Guardian, Independent or actual real live members of the public might have WISHED, that man was never going to be Fatty Clarke either! So you really you only had to pick between SWIVEL-EYED EURO-LOON Fantastic Doctor Fox and EMPTY-SPACE-WITH-A-SMILE-DRAWN-ON Mr Balloon.
Before anyone gets the WRONG IDEA: there is NO REASON to think that Mr Luntz was not COMPLETELY GENUINE.
But, if done by someone UNSCRUPULOUS, it could just be another CONJURING TRICK, this time FIND THE LADY!
That is not to say that there is not A LOT OF SKILL involved in doing that sort of thing. A stage magician must do a lot of HARD WORK to guide the way his audience thinks.
Which reminds me, Mr Luntz: have you considered the effect that your prediction might have made on the people choosing Mr Balloon?
As a pollster you can tell me: isn't SELF-FULFILLING PROPHESY one of the things that polls have to work carefully to avoid?
(Doesn't that include things like being careful about the way and order in which you ask questions so as not to be LEADING the respondents. Oh, and probably how you lay out props – like photos – in the setting for the poll. Aren't professional pollsters supposed to be very careful about that sort of thing?)
You are PROBABLY a very FLUFFY and NAÏVE individual a bit like ME, Mr Luntz, and do not realise that SOMETIMES people who are involved in ELECTIONS make use of opinion polls to try and help them win!
Mr the Merciless plays up polls that say the Liberal Democrats are doing well.
(You have probably not seen the BAR CHARTS on Liberal Democrat Focus leaflets.)
Mr Balloon plays up polls that say the Conservatories are doing well.
(Do you remember how that used to happen when he first started?)
HM Margaret Hedgehog plays up polls that say the British Nasty Party are doing well.
(Err.. that might have been a DREADFUL mistake!)
Did you know that Mr Balloon sent out DVDs of YOUR NEWSNIGHT PIECE to all the Conservatory voters in the leadership election? I am sure that this must make you very upset.
No doubt you would be SHOCKED to think that you might have become involved with PROPAGANDA!!
However, what I think is MOST IMPORTANT is that people need to be FULLY INFORMED if they are to make good decisions.
People who read my DIARY know that my Daddies support the LIBERAL DEMOCRATS (go look – it's in my VERY FIRST ENTRY!) so they can take that into account when they read my OPINIONS.
I think people should know your political background too, Mr Luntz, so that they are better able to understand things like your choice of questions and editorial policy.
I talked to the lady who was at your meeting and got a VERY DIFFERENT impression of what people there thought from her than I got from watching the TELLY.
You do not need to be DELIBERATELY manipulating what was shown for this to happen – it is QUITE NATURAL that, for example, someone who LIKED the RIGHT WING PARTIES might pick up more on the positive things about MR BALLOON.
Equally, the nice lady could have been emphasising the NICE things about the Liberal Democrats because she was talking to me! That is why it is GOOD and PROPER that people know that I am a Liberal Democrat elephant so that they can take that into account when reading MY VERSION.
In the same way, people watching the telly should KNOW that the person making the show had, for example, worked for the REPUBLICAN PARTY in America, or alternatively had been at OXFORD UNIVERSITY with friends of Mr Balloon. That way they can BETTER understand what they are watching because they will know that that person might ACCIDENTALLY be favouring Mr Balloon.
I am sure that an honest person like you would agree that keeping quiet about these things makes it look, QUITE UNFAIRLY, like you have something to hide. And it would be HORRIBLE if your reputation suffered for that!
Dear reader, if you have enjoyed Mr Luntz's reply, you might be interested to know that he has also replied to THE LIBERAL REVIEW and to MY DADDY ALEX.
In fact, he has sent the SAME reply to The Liberal Review and to My Daddy Alex.
I am glad that he wrote me a PROPER replay and not SPAM.
I do hope that all these replies are not because Mr Luntz suddenly has a lot more time on his hands.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Day 1940: She’s NOT back!
Wednesday:
Well, I am VERY confused now. I was expecting to see more of my friend the Lady from Upstairs on Newsnight and it turned out that she wasn’t there.
Mr Paul kindly put a link to the Newsnight website on my diary the other day and there are two clips to play. Unfortunately, my Daddies do not have BROADBAND at home and Daddy Richard’s work computer has too fierce a firewall to let him watch it there either. So, we cannot tell what the clips are!
Did anybody else see what happened to Mr Luntz? Or has he been bounced off our screens by the “Attack of the Safety Elephant” saga that had Paxo (the Rooster Booster) interviewing the man who misplaced a thousand people who should probably have been deported?
Well, I am VERY confused now. I was expecting to see more of my friend the Lady from Upstairs on Newsnight and it turned out that she wasn’t there.
Mr Paul kindly put a link to the Newsnight website on my diary the other day and there are two clips to play. Unfortunately, my Daddies do not have BROADBAND at home and Daddy Richard’s work computer has too fierce a firewall to let him watch it there either. So, we cannot tell what the clips are!
Did anybody else see what happened to Mr Luntz? Or has he been bounced off our screens by the “Attack of the Safety Elephant” saga that had Paxo (the Rooster Booster) interviewing the man who misplaced a thousand people who should probably have been deported?
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Day 1938: She's Back
Monday:
HEADS UP
The nice Lady from UPSTAIRS has told me that Mr LUNTZ will be BACK on NEWSNIGHT on WEDNESDAY night.
Apparently MR FROWN is in for a BIG doing over!
I will report more once this has been on the telly.
HEADS UP
The nice Lady from UPSTAIRS has told me that Mr LUNTZ will be BACK on NEWSNIGHT on WEDNESDAY night.
Apparently MR FROWN is in for a BIG doing over!
I will report more once this has been on the telly.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Day 1934: Blimey! It's the Upstairs Neighbour!
Thursday:
Daddy Alex had already conked out, and Daddy Richard was on his way to bed last night and I was watching NEWSNIGHT, like I do sometimes, but paint me stripy and call me a zebra if I didn't see the lady who lives upstairs, on the TELLY!
Unfortunately, she was in the audience for another turn by second-rate STAGE MAGICIAN Frank Luntz, who was doing his "AMAZING" mind reader act again.
So I have been upstairs to ask her what it was like!
The first thing I learned was that everyone there arrived with pretty strong opinions, angry about being let down by the government, whether it was over crime or education or the health service. Mr Blair and Mr Frown were going to be on a hiding to nothing with this audience right from the start.
In spite of what you might have seen on the telly, the audience was not REALLY that positive for Mr Balloon. They were open minded, and willing to listen to what he might have to say, but so far they don’t know what to make of him as he hasn’t got any policies. What they wanted to say was that they were being shown Mr Balloon at the start of his career – and they all remembered how they had felt much the same about Mr Blair back at the start of his career. AND they remembered how BETRAYED by Mr Blair they feel now. So they were wary of him as well as open to him. Though on the whole they were pretty certain that he WAS a TRUE BLUE Conservatory. Just like Mr Blair.
The NEWSNIGHT piece kept SUSPICIOUSLY QUIET about Mr the Merciless. But there in the room, apparently he got a very strong response: he was very much the man that the people in the studio TRUSTED, and he was the man they thought would be BEST for LOCAL GOVERNMENT (not, I have to say, for NATIONAL government, where they felt – interestingly – that they wanted more of a “PARTY” politician). They also felt that the LIBERAL DEMOCRATS were the party most trusted to get things sorted out locally.
I hope I have represented their views properly.
I think that this is all very interesting because it shows that NEWSNIGHT put QUITE a different SPIN on what they really said.
Oh, I forgot to ask her: would it make a difference if she knew that Mr Luntz was at University with Mr Balloon and his little gang of friends?
For those of you who don't know, Mr Luntz CLAIMS to be an expert in polling opinions and then "AMAZINGLY" convinces the audience that they THINK that his old university CHUM Mr Balloon is best. Last year he pulled off this trick at the Conservatory Party Leader contest and along with Mr Nick Mate-of-Dave Robinson helped to get Mr Balloon his job.
Mr Luntz is a bit of a DODGY GEEZER as these people have noticed.
His TECHNIQUE involves playing clips from the TELLY to the audience and giving them a KNOB to twist.
At the risk of upsetting the MAGIC CIRCLE, I will now tell you about the FIVE rather obvious ways that he can TRICK them.
Number One:
He gets to choose the audience.
The people in the studio are described as "SWING voters", but that COULD mean that they are voters who swing between Conservatory and one of the other parties.
Something like between SIXTY and SEVENTY percent of people WON'T consider voting for OPUS DAVE – they prefer to choose between the Labour and the Liberal Democrats or one of the other parties like the Nationalists or the Greens (NOT Mr Balloon's Blue-Greens). And they are all KEPT OUT by Mr Luntz's TECHNIQUE.
So, he could actually pick an audience with a subtle Conservatory bias and still describe it in a way that sounds (to coin a phrase) FAIR and BALANCED.
Number Two:
He gets to choose which clips to play.
Oddly enough if you play the audience ten minutes of MR FROWN droning on about exponential growth in targets for widget straightening, then the audience is going to start thinking that MR FROWN is a bit BORING. If you follow that with Mr Balloon getting lots of applause for making one of his snappy speeches about how he likes NICE things then the audience will quickly feel more positive about him.
Number Three:
He gets to choose which bits are seen by up people watching the telly.
If he shows the audience in the studio a ten MINUTE selection of clips, but then only picks out ten SECONDS to broadcast on NEWSNIGHT then it is EASY to pick and choose the bits that make it LOOK like Mr Balloon is getting the popular response and Mr Blair is going down the plughole or Mr the Merciless is flat in the middle.
(You can see this from the fact that the clip we saw of Mr Balloon was of him getting APPLAUSE and at that point the lines were going up. Well DUR! Speeches are written so that the audience response goes UP at the points were you're meant to clap!)
Number Four:
He controls the lines that appear on the screen.
The lines on the screen are SUPPOSED to represent the responses that he is getting from the studio audience TWISTING their KNOBS. But how do we KNOW that their KNOBS are connected up to anything at all? And even if they ARE, it is not difficult to FAKE the line going UP and this ENCOURAGES the audience to dial UP or to FAKE the line going DOWN and this ENCOURAGES the audience to dial DOWN. People LIKE going with the flow: if the MOOD seems to be "this is BAD" then people start to AGREE that it is bad and will start to say so. Even if the line is FAKE to begin with, people can remember that they AGREED with it afterwards.
(Pollsters see this after ELECTIONS: more people will SAY that they voted for the WINNER than actually DID vote for the winner because people like to be IN with the CROWD, especially the WINNING crowd.)
Number Five:
He gets to ask the questions afterwards.
At the end of Mr Frown's go, he can say "Oooh, you all seem to find Mr Frown very BORING – why do you find Mr Frown BORING?" This means that people are ALREADY thinking in terms of how they JUSTIFY saying that Mr Frown is BORING. People who DON'T think he was boring are more likely to keep quiet because the MOOD of the room is against them and they don't want to stick their neck out. So it LOOKS like the whole room is AGAINST Mr Frown. (And if anyone says anything positive, then Mr Luntz can edit it out before it goes to telly.)
Then he can ask: "Now, the response to Mr Balloon was REALLY AMAZINGLY POSITIVE – why are you so positive about Mr Balloon?" And the people who can think of positive things will answer with those positive things. It is like being back at school and KNOWING THE ANSWERS: it gives you a GOOD FEELING to tell teacher what he wants to hear.
He also uses some more SUBTLE psychological tricks.
In his Tory-leader bit last year, he had photos of the five candidates up on a board at the front, but a bit to the right of the middle where the telly was. I think it was Malcom Rifkind on his own at the top, then on the first line were Mr Balloon on the left and Mr Davis David on the right and then Fatty Clarke and Fantastic Doctor Fox on the bottom. This may sound like a really SILLY thing, but it is actually a basic PR TRICK: the first one you look at is Mr Balloon and you associate him with left, nearer the centre, and first. Mr Davis David then looks like the man who is right, extreme, and second. Mr Rifkind is isolated and also looking down on you, the others are losers because they are second rank. It is a GIMMICK that PR people use to PRIME their audience: it doesn't work on it's own but it is there to make them EASIER to LEAD.
For last night's piece, the walls of his studio were decorated with portraits of the party leaders in a variety of different colours: I saw Mr the Merciless in Red and Blue, for instance. The aim here is to BREAK UP the usual party/colour associations so that it EMPHASISES the "they're all the same" feeling in people's heads. AND probably to undermine the Labour's new "Dave the Chameleon" campaign by making ALL of the leaders be chameleons too.
His last question was "I'm just a dumb American: you all seem pretty angry about a lot of issues but you re-elected this government last year. Why did you do that?"
You can tell he is being DOUBLE CLEVER here because he claims he is being DUMB!
This is CLEVER (in the sense of INSIDIOUS!) as it puts the studio people on the back foot: it makes them look for SOMEONE ELSE to BLAME for the things that they are cross about (because otherwise it's THEIR OWN fault!)
So you could pretty much guarantee (which is JUST the way that a STAGE MAGICIAN does MIND READING) what they will say: "We hadn't got a proper choice" and "All the parties are the same."
This is all to ADD to the TRICK of making people think that Mr Balloon is NEW and therefore DIFFERENT, even if it is the ONLY difference, while everyone else is OLD and part of the SAME old failures.
Add to that the TWIST that you are SAFE to vote Conservatory because the other parties are not so different. This is just the same as Mr Balloon's current "Vote Blue Feel Green" (translation: "be selfish; I'll cover for you") campaign to make people THINK voting Balloon is OK.
Of course this is a GREAT BIG FIB.
In the first place, we did NOT re-elect this government last year: they ONLY got 35% of your votes. But the SYSTEM is RIGGED so that Mr Blair STILL got a majority that he DOES NOT DESERVE.
(It is in the interest of Mr Blair AND Mr Balloon to keep the RIGGED SYSTEM because otherwise they might have to listen to what PEOPLE actually WANT, rather than using FOCUS GROUPS like Mr Luntz's little trick gathering!)
And in the second place, the parties REALLY ARE NOT that similar.
(Although, to be FAIR, Mr Balloon has NO POLICIES at the moment, so he MIGHT be identical to Mr Blair or he MIGHT be identical to GENGHIS KHAN, he just wont tell us. Which is NOT VERY HONEST, really, if you THINK about it.)
If you want a party that will try to control everything, to fix everything, govern from the centre, do everything for you, nanny you from cradle to grave so long as you fill in all the right forms and feed all of your life into an INSANE COMPUTER in exchange for a bit of plastic card and don't mind paying huge taxes to be spent on checking targets (and they might also bomb a Middle Eastern country or two, but don't mind that as they won't ever ask you for a mandate to do it) then you have Mr Blair's gang.
If you want a party that will try to give you the best start in life with free education to university level and the most dignity in old age with a proper pension and free care when you need it but then expects you to take some responsibility for the environment and for your local services because they will hand power down to the local level and want to change the system so that it isn't rigged in anyone's favour (even their own) then you can vote for Mr the Merciless and the Liberal Democrats.
Or if you want a party that, er, employs a STAGE MAGICIAN, well I suppose you've got Mr Balloon
Daddy Alex had already conked out, and Daddy Richard was on his way to bed last night and I was watching NEWSNIGHT, like I do sometimes, but paint me stripy and call me a zebra if I didn't see the lady who lives upstairs, on the TELLY!
Unfortunately, she was in the audience for another turn by second-rate STAGE MAGICIAN Frank Luntz, who was doing his "AMAZING" mind reader act again.
So I have been upstairs to ask her what it was like!
The first thing I learned was that everyone there arrived with pretty strong opinions, angry about being let down by the government, whether it was over crime or education or the health service. Mr Blair and Mr Frown were going to be on a hiding to nothing with this audience right from the start.
In spite of what you might have seen on the telly, the audience was not REALLY that positive for Mr Balloon. They were open minded, and willing to listen to what he might have to say, but so far they don’t know what to make of him as he hasn’t got any policies. What they wanted to say was that they were being shown Mr Balloon at the start of his career – and they all remembered how they had felt much the same about Mr Blair back at the start of his career. AND they remembered how BETRAYED by Mr Blair they feel now. So they were wary of him as well as open to him. Though on the whole they were pretty certain that he WAS a TRUE BLUE Conservatory. Just like Mr Blair.
The NEWSNIGHT piece kept SUSPICIOUSLY QUIET about Mr the Merciless. But there in the room, apparently he got a very strong response: he was very much the man that the people in the studio TRUSTED, and he was the man they thought would be BEST for LOCAL GOVERNMENT (not, I have to say, for NATIONAL government, where they felt – interestingly – that they wanted more of a “PARTY” politician). They also felt that the LIBERAL DEMOCRATS were the party most trusted to get things sorted out locally.
I hope I have represented their views properly.
I think that this is all very interesting because it shows that NEWSNIGHT put QUITE a different SPIN on what they really said.
Oh, I forgot to ask her: would it make a difference if she knew that Mr Luntz was at University with Mr Balloon and his little gang of friends?
For those of you who don't know, Mr Luntz CLAIMS to be an expert in polling opinions and then "AMAZINGLY" convinces the audience that they THINK that his old university CHUM Mr Balloon is best. Last year he pulled off this trick at the Conservatory Party Leader contest and along with Mr Nick Mate-of-Dave Robinson helped to get Mr Balloon his job.
Mr Luntz is a bit of a DODGY GEEZER as these people have noticed.
His TECHNIQUE involves playing clips from the TELLY to the audience and giving them a KNOB to twist.
At the risk of upsetting the MAGIC CIRCLE, I will now tell you about the FIVE rather obvious ways that he can TRICK them.
Number One:
He gets to choose the audience.
The people in the studio are described as "SWING voters", but that COULD mean that they are voters who swing between Conservatory and one of the other parties.
Something like between SIXTY and SEVENTY percent of people WON'T consider voting for OPUS DAVE – they prefer to choose between the Labour and the Liberal Democrats or one of the other parties like the Nationalists or the Greens (NOT Mr Balloon's Blue-Greens). And they are all KEPT OUT by Mr Luntz's TECHNIQUE.
So, he could actually pick an audience with a subtle Conservatory bias and still describe it in a way that sounds (to coin a phrase) FAIR and BALANCED.
Number Two:
He gets to choose which clips to play.
Oddly enough if you play the audience ten minutes of MR FROWN droning on about exponential growth in targets for widget straightening, then the audience is going to start thinking that MR FROWN is a bit BORING. If you follow that with Mr Balloon getting lots of applause for making one of his snappy speeches about how he likes NICE things then the audience will quickly feel more positive about him.
Number Three:
He gets to choose which bits are seen by up people watching the telly.
If he shows the audience in the studio a ten MINUTE selection of clips, but then only picks out ten SECONDS to broadcast on NEWSNIGHT then it is EASY to pick and choose the bits that make it LOOK like Mr Balloon is getting the popular response and Mr Blair is going down the plughole or Mr the Merciless is flat in the middle.
(You can see this from the fact that the clip we saw of Mr Balloon was of him getting APPLAUSE and at that point the lines were going up. Well DUR! Speeches are written so that the audience response goes UP at the points were you're meant to clap!)
Number Four:
He controls the lines that appear on the screen.
The lines on the screen are SUPPOSED to represent the responses that he is getting from the studio audience TWISTING their KNOBS. But how do we KNOW that their KNOBS are connected up to anything at all? And even if they ARE, it is not difficult to FAKE the line going UP and this ENCOURAGES the audience to dial UP or to FAKE the line going DOWN and this ENCOURAGES the audience to dial DOWN. People LIKE going with the flow: if the MOOD seems to be "this is BAD" then people start to AGREE that it is bad and will start to say so. Even if the line is FAKE to begin with, people can remember that they AGREED with it afterwards.
(Pollsters see this after ELECTIONS: more people will SAY that they voted for the WINNER than actually DID vote for the winner because people like to be IN with the CROWD, especially the WINNING crowd.)
Number Five:
He gets to ask the questions afterwards.
At the end of Mr Frown's go, he can say "Oooh, you all seem to find Mr Frown very BORING – why do you find Mr Frown BORING?" This means that people are ALREADY thinking in terms of how they JUSTIFY saying that Mr Frown is BORING. People who DON'T think he was boring are more likely to keep quiet because the MOOD of the room is against them and they don't want to stick their neck out. So it LOOKS like the whole room is AGAINST Mr Frown. (And if anyone says anything positive, then Mr Luntz can edit it out before it goes to telly.)
Then he can ask: "Now, the response to Mr Balloon was REALLY AMAZINGLY POSITIVE – why are you so positive about Mr Balloon?" And the people who can think of positive things will answer with those positive things. It is like being back at school and KNOWING THE ANSWERS: it gives you a GOOD FEELING to tell teacher what he wants to hear.
He also uses some more SUBTLE psychological tricks.
In his Tory-leader bit last year, he had photos of the five candidates up on a board at the front, but a bit to the right of the middle where the telly was. I think it was Malcom Rifkind on his own at the top, then on the first line were Mr Balloon on the left and Mr Davis David on the right and then Fatty Clarke and Fantastic Doctor Fox on the bottom. This may sound like a really SILLY thing, but it is actually a basic PR TRICK: the first one you look at is Mr Balloon and you associate him with left, nearer the centre, and first. Mr Davis David then looks like the man who is right, extreme, and second. Mr Rifkind is isolated and also looking down on you, the others are losers because they are second rank. It is a GIMMICK that PR people use to PRIME their audience: it doesn't work on it's own but it is there to make them EASIER to LEAD.
For last night's piece, the walls of his studio were decorated with portraits of the party leaders in a variety of different colours: I saw Mr the Merciless in Red and Blue, for instance. The aim here is to BREAK UP the usual party/colour associations so that it EMPHASISES the "they're all the same" feeling in people's heads. AND probably to undermine the Labour's new "Dave the Chameleon" campaign by making ALL of the leaders be chameleons too.
His last question was "I'm just a dumb American: you all seem pretty angry about a lot of issues but you re-elected this government last year. Why did you do that?"
You can tell he is being DOUBLE CLEVER here because he claims he is being DUMB!
This is CLEVER (in the sense of INSIDIOUS!) as it puts the studio people on the back foot: it makes them look for SOMEONE ELSE to BLAME for the things that they are cross about (because otherwise it's THEIR OWN fault!)
So you could pretty much guarantee (which is JUST the way that a STAGE MAGICIAN does MIND READING) what they will say: "We hadn't got a proper choice" and "All the parties are the same."
This is all to ADD to the TRICK of making people think that Mr Balloon is NEW and therefore DIFFERENT, even if it is the ONLY difference, while everyone else is OLD and part of the SAME old failures.
Add to that the TWIST that you are SAFE to vote Conservatory because the other parties are not so different. This is just the same as Mr Balloon's current "Vote Blue Feel Green" (translation: "be selfish; I'll cover for you") campaign to make people THINK voting Balloon is OK.
Of course this is a GREAT BIG FIB.
In the first place, we did NOT re-elect this government last year: they ONLY got 35% of your votes. But the SYSTEM is RIGGED so that Mr Blair STILL got a majority that he DOES NOT DESERVE.
(It is in the interest of Mr Blair AND Mr Balloon to keep the RIGGED SYSTEM because otherwise they might have to listen to what PEOPLE actually WANT, rather than using FOCUS GROUPS like Mr Luntz's little trick gathering!)
And in the second place, the parties REALLY ARE NOT that similar.
(Although, to be FAIR, Mr Balloon has NO POLICIES at the moment, so he MIGHT be identical to Mr Blair or he MIGHT be identical to GENGHIS KHAN, he just wont tell us. Which is NOT VERY HONEST, really, if you THINK about it.)
If you want a party that will try to control everything, to fix everything, govern from the centre, do everything for you, nanny you from cradle to grave so long as you fill in all the right forms and feed all of your life into an INSANE COMPUTER in exchange for a bit of plastic card and don't mind paying huge taxes to be spent on checking targets (and they might also bomb a Middle Eastern country or two, but don't mind that as they won't ever ask you for a mandate to do it) then you have Mr Blair's gang.
If you want a party that will try to give you the best start in life with free education to university level and the most dignity in old age with a proper pension and free care when you need it but then expects you to take some responsibility for the environment and for your local services because they will hand power down to the local level and want to change the system so that it isn't rigged in anyone's favour (even their own) then you can vote for Mr the Merciless and the Liberal Democrats.
Or if you want a party that, er, employs a STAGE MAGICIAN, well I suppose you've got Mr Balloon
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)