Lipstick on a pig?
Cornwall Council leader Alec Robertson has started sending members a "media briefing" to help them recognise the previous week's heroic achievements. Prepared by the council's press office, the document is helpfully divided into lists of "positive news" and "negative news," and as long as the former outnumber the latter then Cornwall's Tribunes can rest easy, secure in the knowledge that the bosses know what they're doing.
But - gadzooks! - don't these lists look rather subjective? For example, the decision of the Secretary of State to approve the St Dennis waste incinerator is only good news if you don't actually live in St Dennis. And, er, the official policy of the council (as set out at a £1million+ public inquiry) is still to oppose the St Dennis incinerator.
There is quite a number of stories claimed as "positive" which could just as easily be described as "negative" - such as writing to the government to protest at changes to the feed-in tariff for solar electricity.
And the much shorter list of "bad news" stories seems to have missed completely the one about last Tuesday's full council meeting, which blocked Alec's plan to pay Special Responsibility Allowances to four newly-created Cabinet Support Members, which saw his coalition partners in the Independent group say they weren't convinced of the need for CSMs at all, and which has left him without a CSM for education.
I wonder if any of the council's 123 members take such official, corporate media briefings seriously. If so, they probably enjoy the ideal environmental conditions for growing mushrooms. I also wonder if such a partisan approach to "news" is an appropriate use of tax-funded resources. Readers are invited to submit their own lists of positive and negative council stories.
I'm ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Devon’s Graham Smith, blogging on news, views and some fresh insights into West Country life, particularly the way government works locally and nationally.
Comment number 1.
At 24th May 2011, Jude Robinson wrote:Do councillors take the media briefings seriously? Short answer for me is 'no' although it does provide a window to another world - the executive's jolly mission to big up the positive and bury the negative.
More importantly though, surely the official policy of Cornwall Council is not to oppose the CERC? If it were, the contract to build it should have been terminated.
The planning application was turned down and the council defended that planning decision. Wouldn't Sita have fought the appeal against the decision on behalf of its contractors, also the council?
It kind of illustrates the mess. Expensively for us.
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Comment number 2.
At 25th May 2011, Saltashgaz wrote:I recall reading a quote that sums this up perfectly, it goes something like; politics has become more about the right and left, than right and wrong.
Political representatives are afraid of the honest truth, because everything has to be spun for political gain; there is no honour in politics or being a public representative anymore.
This in turn leads to us getting the wrong kind of people attracted into this field, rather than people who understand they are supposed to represent the people who voted and pay for them - they see it as nothing more than the bottom rung of the political ladder subservient to those in Westminster, ordinary members of the public by default no longer believe anything a political representative say anymore
Subjectively this position could have been caused by the press stirring hysteria every time the truth is told, requiring it to be twisted, turned and tailored before being announced best example of this is the massive black hole Labour created spending money like it was going out of fashion and now crying when cuts are made and using the press to stir this up whilst forgetting the absolute fact we have never been so in debt, due to them. So I do not think the press come out of this smelling of roses
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