Best Of

So, back on topic, what does Starmer do with Powell now? Bring her back into the Cabinet weeks after he sacked her for not being very good? Ignore her?

Not going to be easy with comments like this:
"We must give a stronger sense of our purpose, whose side we are on and of our Labour values and beliefs,' she said.

'People feel that this government is not being bold enough in delivering the kind of change we promised.'

And she thinks she is being supportive at this point!

Speaking truth to power is being supportive.

Speaking a load of cliches, OTOH, is pointless.

It is rather.

"Not being bold enough in delivering the kind of change we promised".

Que?

If I never hear the word CHANGE again it will be too soon for me.

Unless it's pertaining to socks.

Politicians don't seem to get that 'change' isn't for most the priority. Change is associated with the world in which Windows 10 is expensively transformed into Windows 11 and upgrades that make everything worse, and new time tables that don't run trains the times you want.

Thye priority for the great majority is steady incremental general improvement in things but even more than that running ordinary stuff really well.

Smeakybpartial quote from talktv, but Labour have picked up on it. Pochin is surely right here, I mean the figures do back her up. Farage won’t condemn it, and he shouldn’t either

Nigel Farage needs to condemn this now, and urgently clarify whether Sarah Pochin’s views on race are welcome in his party.

https://x.com/labourpress/status/1982106185672314978?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

I'd be interested in an advertiser's/marketers view on this. I suspect there are some hard stats behind the diversity we see in adverts - the most valuable customers tend to be in their 20s/30s ; Gen Z/Millenials with their woke views on stuff like race and trans. Does that offset the unease it generates in boomers?

Stuart in London seems to be asking for white DEI hires... and the fact he recognised the character in that ad as "Nigel" was quite memeable too.

How many young people actually watch adverts though? They certainly don't sit through minutes of them on conventional TV.

Smeakybpartial quote from talktv, but Labour have picked up on it. Pochin is surely right here, I mean the figures do back her up. Farage won’t condemn it, and he shouldn’t either

Nigel Farage needs to condemn this now, and urgently clarify whether Sarah Pochin’s views on race are welcome in his party.

https://x.com/labourpress/status/1982106185672314978?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

I'd be interested in an advertiser's/marketers view on this. I suspect there are some hard stats behind the diversity we see in adverts - the most valuable customers tend to be in their 20s/30s ; Gen Z/Millenials with their woke views on stuff like race and trans. Does that offset the unease it generates in boomers?

Stuart in London seems to be asking for white DEI hires... and the fact he recognised the character in that ad as "Nigel" was quite memeable too.

There was a report released at the end of September by Channel 4 breaking down stats in uk ads.

“ Pregnant women appeared in only 0.1 per cent of adverts, while disabled people featured just 4 per cent of the time, a figure unchanged since 2018, despite making up nearly one in five of the population.

By contrast, Black people remain significantly over-represented on screen. The study shows they featured in more than half of adverts in 2022, up sharply from 37 per cent in 2020 following the Black Lives Matter movement.

Black people make up around 4 per cent of the population in England and Wales, according to the 2021 census.

South Asian people appeared in 17 per cent of adverts, higher than the 8 per cent share of the population they represent, while East Asians were present in 11 per cent of campaigns, compared with 1 per cent of the public.

Marcus Ryder, chief executive of the Film and TV Charity, said the imbalance shows the need for broader diversity among decision-makers in the industry.

Not entirely sure how Mr Ryder concluded there need to be more diversity in advertising when the research shows minorities majorly over-represented.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/pensioners-tv-adverts-mirror-on-the-industry-b2837888.html

Given that not all disabilities are visible, I'm not sure how we can decide only 4 percent appearing are disabled. Either the character or the actor.

Smeakybpartial quote from talktv, but Labour have picked up on it. Pochin is surely right here, I mean the figures do back her up. Farage won’t condemn it, and he shouldn’t either

Nigel Farage needs to condemn this now, and urgently clarify whether Sarah Pochin’s views on race are welcome in his party.

https://x.com/labourpress/status/1982106185672314978?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

I'd be interested in an advertiser's/marketers view on this. I suspect there are some hard stats behind the diversity we see in adverts - the most valuable customers tend to be in their 20s/30s ; Gen Z/Millenials with their woke views on stuff like race and trans. Does that offset the unease it generates in boomers?

Stuart in London seems to be asking for white DEI hires... and the fact he recognised the character in that ad as "Nigel" was quite memeable too.

There was a report released at the end of September by Channel 4 breaking down stats in uk ads.

"...while disabled people featured just 4 per cent of the time, a figure unchanged since 2018, despite making up nearly one in five of the population.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/pensioners-tv-adverts-mirror-on-the-industry-b2837888.html

That stat is quite dubious as not all disabilities are visible.

The Democrats are really searching for an answer for Trump at the moment. I'm not quite sure who that is, but what I do know is it's not Kamala Harris.

I quite like Harris, and I think a lot of the criticism of her is rather overblown. She was, unquestionably, dealt a very bad hand and in 2024 she played it... broadly as well as she could have done, I think. But her big issue is her seeming inability to shift this incredibly tortured way of communicating. She looked at the start of the 2024 campaign like she was finally shaking it off, only to revert more and more to type as the election approached. She fired up Democrats, but it wasn't enough in an election where swing voters were feeling helpless and casting around for solutions - she couldn't speak to those people. I see nothing to suggest she's suddenly learned how to do so.

To put it more simply - Harris is a B- politician at national level.

What the Democrats need is A*

Buttigieg is probably their best bet, though if the approval rating of the Trump and Vance administration remains under 40% still by 2028 even AOC could win

There's a part of me that thinks it should be Bernie, but he might be too old now.

Bernie shot his bolt a long time ago.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/end-of-the-keir-show-how-senior-labour-figures-now-believe-starmer-is-already-toast_uk_68fb5cfee4b03bb1113194c0

“But there was no energy, no ideas and he didn’t have any answers to our questions. It was really very damaging.”

I'm reminded of Basil Fawlty to the moaning guest.

It's the UK in a low growth era with maxed out public finances. What do they expect ... milk and honey and thundering herds of wildebeest?

A plan isn't that much to ask....

They don't need a plan. They need a sustained economic upswing.

Even they must realise that repeatedly shafting the private sector and shovelling money at layabouts isn't the best way to get the economy working again?

You'd think that about two hours in an undergraduate level economics course, or a week working in any private sector firm, would teach them that, but evidently that's beyond them.

Still, why did anyone expect anything better from Labour?

Mmm if only your Thatcher re-tread ideas were implemented we'd be powering ahead of all our peers. Easy peasy. Wonder why it doesn't happen. Ship of fools.

Smeakybpartial quote from talktv, but Labour have picked up on it. Pochin is surely right here, I mean the figures do back her up. Farage won’t condemn it, and he shouldn’t either

Nigel Farage needs to condemn this now, and urgently clarify whether Sarah Pochin’s views on race are welcome in his party.

https://x.com/labourpress/status/1982106185672314978?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

I'd be interested in an advertiser's/marketers view on this. I suspect there are some hard stats behind the diversity we see in adverts - the most valuable customers tend to be in their 20s/30s ; Gen Z/Millenials with their woke views on stuff like race and trans. Does that offset the unease it generates in boomers?

Stuart in London seems to be asking for white DEI hires... and his accidental description of Farage was quite memeable too.

I thought it was just that if you only have white people in your adverts you'll get called racist so everyone has non-white people in which results in the ridiculous statistics.

Yes, that's my point. I don't think there is any advertising standard that means you have to include non-white people, so what you see on the telly just reflects what the advertiser thinks is the most likely to do best for them in sales.

Pretty simple really. If some firm wants to have a whites only policy in their adverts then good luck to them - they'll need it because their target demographic is going to be typically older and poorer, which in my (limited) experience isn't exactly what you should be aiming for. We did used to put old white folk on adverts for binoculars and knee-length waterproofs, come to think of it...

I think the theory is that older people are more set in they buying habits, so are a less promising target for advertisers. Same reason that there are loads of commercial radio stations targeting under fifties and relatively few going for older audiences.

But yeah, the bottom line is that advertising can't afford to be sentimental. If more money could be made by having more white characters in adverts, that's what someone would do. What Pochin, Farage and the rest of them are really cross about is that they are getting old, and one of the consequences is that adverts are no longer aimed at them.

There's no sane politics that solves that problem.