Pro Nuclear Push
I find Andy Rowell’s blog compelling; his recent article on the The Covert Pro-Nuclear Push in Schools is very disturbing. Time to dust down my DVD of Edge of Darkness http://www.spinwatch.org/content/blogcategory/248/30/
Big tobacco in Africa
Family weddings, funerals and birthdays always throw up the black sheep of the family. At a recent shindig a distant relative of my wife turned up in his rather extraordinary chrome penis extension. The guests, like proverbial fish wives, gossiped relentlessly – inebriated by vintage champagne and in hush tones speculated on the source of…
Giant among dwarves
I saw a Neval motorbike on the street earlier today, and I had only one thought. My great friend and first freelance client was the crazy Marcel Steiner who ran his Theatre off the side of one twenty years ago. Marcel is a forgotten genius. I found the obituary I penned for the Guardian. He…
2008 The Year of PR – don’t make me laugh
Times are tough in the communications business and it’s going to be a grim 2008 if we believe the statistics. The IPA noted that in the last three months of 2007 there was a large cut back on marketing spend by the major brands. In fact, it was the biggest fall in spending for the…
Show Me The Record Sales
The media’s feeding frenzy on poor old Britney’s latest crisis has suggested that further slips into the pit of despair, have actually been a boon to her record sales. Clearly the media who feed from her problems balance it out by suggesting that they can gaup and plunder column inches and that somehow it does…
Richey: Forlorn figure with his life in a few plastic bags …or a 'vengeful, hateful' ex-con?
THERE was a strong wind gusting through the cornfields as Kenny Richey arrived at his brother’s rural Ohio home, ahead of tomorrow’s return to Edinburgh – delayed a day by fog. He strolled from the car, stuck his nose in the air and ambled for the front door. It is likely Richey will be heading…
Madeleine McCann the movie
The wires are hot this afternoon with the news that the family of Madeleine McCann’s have spoken to the IMG media group about turning the story of her disappearance into a film. Once again Team McCann through the brilliant family spokesman for Gerry and Kate McCann, Clarence Mitchell, has come up with a brilliant angle…
Hillary Clinton and her love affair with John Major's mega phone
So Hillary Clinton’s campaign has reached for a soapbox and megaphone in a desperate attempt to regain momentum to counter the compelling charisma of Barack Obama who is leading the polls. The British broadsheets are all drawing parallels with John Major who pulled his ’92 campaign up with a pair of cosmic sock garters using the…
The Year In Ideas
The Year in Ideas – The Times 29th December 2007 From Islam-friendly finance to the fall of Z-list celebrity, and from the rise of supercrunching to the return of the bonkbuster, leading commentators and Times writers chart the major cultural, economic and social changes of 2007 and offer their predictions on the shape of the…
Spinmaster 2007
2007 will go down in history as an extremely busy year for the humble spin meisters in mediaville. There were plenty of things to occupy the media that had a PR overtone, beginning with the meltdown over celebrity Big Brother’s racist poppadom gate which gave Channel 4 a lot to think about and threatened the…