I see Sir Keir Starmer as a bit of a John Smith type. People often said of Smith that he was like your bank manager, at a time before people replaced the b in banker with a w.
To be brutally honest, whilst I like Keir Starmer in lots of ways I'm not really sure about him. Up against Johnson in an election campaign? Dunno. For politicniks he will run rings around BJ but for the vast majority of people I'm not so sure he will cut through.
There comes a point when someone with charisma - such as Johnson - loses so much credibility that he becomes a figure of fun and ridicule.That happened to Macmillan in the early 1960s - by 1962 he was no longer Supermac and people had ceased to be persuaded that they 'had never had it so good' even though living standards continued to rise.Johnson was from the beginning seen as a mendacious charlatan by more than half the electorate . There is likely to be little residual goodwill for him when the feels finally fall off with his popularity already much weakened.
Those who think that charisma matters should look at the evidence. If Johnson is charismatic, it's certainly not leading people to think that he has the necessary charactistics to lead the country, whereas by and large they think that Starmer has the right stuff.
Here's the evidence. The last Opinium asked what factors people thought were most important in a political leader.
To list the top five: 1. 32% said having the nation's best interests at heart. A net +2% said this of Johnson, a net +18% said this of Starmer. 2. 31% said trustworthyness. -17% Johnson, +11% Starmer 3. 29% competance. -12% Johnson, +22% Starmer 4. 25% being in touch with ordinary people. -21% Johnson, +7% Starmer 5. 24% trusted to take big decisions -11% Johnson, +8% Starmer
I suggest that lack of charisma may in certain circumstances be important, in that it's absence might in some circumstances reinforce an impression that a leader lacking confidence is hapless and incompetant and therefore unfit to govern. I think that happened with Ed Miliband. But given that competance is where Starmer scores most strongly, those circumstances don't really apply in his case.
Enoch Powell. Which also shows you that being a great speaker is a dangerous thing as his views are reprehensible to me.
Michael Foot. In his prime before he went quite senile.
Tam Dalyell. Superb in the Commons.
Hillary Benn. Can be a brilliant speaker.
That's about it. I can't think of any others off the top of my head. David Cameron gave a great speech to wow the Conservative party conference in the leadership hustings. Margaret Thatcher, when she wasn't hectoring, could be brilliant. Her climate change speech at the UN was outstanding even if I don't agree with her assessment that private companies are the solution.
Kinnock's Militant speech to conference is one I remember. Electrifying.
Reputedly Brian Walden's speeches in the Commons were worth listening to.
I'm always surprised by how many MPs cannot make a basic short speech without reading it out or having to refer extensively to notes. Inevitably makes for a poorer speech.
Indeed - though Churchill always relied on detailed notes when delivering his speeches.
I do talks and speeches. (Well I did before Covid.😡 And hope to again.) Good ones too.
You need to prepare and know what you are going to say but reading is death to a speech. For them to work there needs to be some extemporising, some element of danger, some communication between speaker and audience beyond the actual speech. The best speakers read their audience, respond to them, adjust what they are saying as they go along as they gauge the reaction. There is a dialogue. Not literal but it is there. A talk has an element of performance about it. I would often walk onto a stage and not know what my first words would be and then they would come to me as I stood there.
I appreciate that politicians and others feel the need to write everything down in case they put a word out of place. But it deadens the talk. Not least because so many forget to make eye contact with people in the audience. The skill I suppose is to make something prepared feel alive and as if it is personal between you and each person listening.
And in the Commons Enoch Powell would famously speak with immaculate grammar and no notes. Michael Foot was also brilliant in the chamber. They were the two speakers of their time in whose presence the chamber would fall silent.
Very good points about speaking. I've done a fair bit in my time. I'm going to say something arrogant for a moment: I know I can have an audience in the palm of my hand within 60 seconds. The metaphorical pin drop.
It's why I seldom now speak in public. It's dangerous. I'm dangerous.
Well now that you've said it, I'm going to say it too. So can I.
But I am, as everyone knows, warm and cuddly. And not dangerous at all. 😌
So says Kweku Mawuli Adoboli - from his prison cell.
He's been deported to Ghana now.
Yeah - during the trial he complained (the great baby) that my team were too quick off the mark providing info to the prosecution to counter his points. He called us The Machine. The following day we had Pink Floyd's poster pinned up in our office.
Oh no, how dare the investigation team be too quick off the mark, when some scumbag trader just blew through more than $2bn of the bank's money!
I know. He's still whingeing about it now. He was actually risking $12 billion. $2.3 billion was the loss once the trades were closed out. If he'd been caught some 6 weeks earlier- and the bank was agonisingly close at one point, the Finance Team having decided to call in my team and then being persuaded not to by his managers - the loss would have been ca. $220 million. That's how fast markets can change.
My attempt to persuade senior management that the difference between 220 million and 2.3 billion was how much my team was worth to the bank fell on stony ground. Sadly.
Here in Wales, the Principality Stadium and the Royal Gwent Nightingales have been decommissioning. Although I believe there is a Nightingale Hospital near Swansea.
My wife's Brexity/pro-Johnson friend maintains Hereford County Hospital ICU is rammed full of Covid-ridden Welsh people.
Enoch Powell. Which also shows you that being a great speaker is a dangerous thing as his views are reprehensible to me.
Michael Foot. In his prime before he went quite senile.
Tam Dalyell. Superb in the Commons.
Hillary Benn. Can be a brilliant speaker.
That's about it. I can't think of any others off the top of my head. David Cameron gave a great speech to wow the Conservative party conference in the leadership hustings. Margaret Thatcher, when she wasn't hectoring, could be brilliant. Her climate change speech at the UN was outstanding even if I don't agree with her assessment that private companies are the solution.
Kinnock was good in small doses.
His speech about Militant in 1985 is probably the best speech I have heard by a UK politician in my lifetime. I liked his "thousand generations" one too.
I thought the thousand generations one rubbish. Either nonsense or innumerate, if you think about it.
It was certainly innumerate but as an explanation as to how opportunity was good for society as well as the individual it spoke to me. (Disclosure, I was the first of my family ever to go to University myself).
It was a fine argument, but we were talking about rhetorical ability, and I thought he blew it.
Even more puzzling that Biden plagiarised it without the obvious modification.
Presumably loyalty to the big family project (Brexit BJ) prevented him from saying that he was also applying for a passport to all of the rich and varied countries of the EU.
To be fair he is just being consistent - a former Euro-MP and a passionate European and environmentalist who happens to be the dad of the PM. People aren't responsible for the opinions of their children or their parents.
I'm pretty sure Stanley wouldn't be such a ubiquitous sight and sound on our airwaves if he wasn't BJ's dad, so swings and roundabouts. Still, he seems less in demand lately, perhaps they've realised amplifying a self indulgent, over entitled flouter of Covid rules isn't a good look.
Or just maybe for all the things that are, its not Boris's fault his dad is a complete arse.
If true, a chip off the old block.
Personally speaking, I find Stanley more coherent than Alexander.
Rather pitiable that Stanley feels a need to create a media circus around it.
Like I said, if true, the eldest son is a chip off the old block.
Circuses and the Johnson family seem to fit hand in glove
Apparently, there are only 3 pubs open in England today, all on the Scilly Isles.
I thought if you when I saw Cumbria was going from tier 2 to tier 4. Not good, and as you say, awful timing.
FWIW, I think the vaccination program will be fine despite the government. As Nick pointed out earlier, the long established infrastructure of the NHS is very well organised to deliver vaccinations and would make it hard for any government to truly fuck up. Easter is tight, but I think it should happen.
What worries me is the difference between promises of 4 million doses and Hancock admitting that they have only actually received half a million.
NHS infrastructure may be fine but if the doses don't actually arrive on time and/or in the quantities needed, what use is the infrastructure.
I hope to be proved wrong.
Be careful mixing up numbers. The MHRA only just issued authorisation.
Half a million are approved and ready to use next week.
About 4 million have already been bottled up but they need authorisation.
About 15 million doses have already been produced and need bottling up and authorising.
The government should honestly be looking to do 19m first doses by the end of January if this is the case. To quote Rishi from earlier this year "do whatever it takes" to see it through. This 2m per week idea is just awful and it's going to take a whole year to get everyone jabbed twice. We need to be doing 5-7m per week. The lack of ambition by the people in charge is lamentable.
I'm hoping it is a rare case of underpromising and overdelivering.
This country has shown it can scale up when needed. The 100k tests a day was laughed at when it was announced and we were doing 5k - its now 500k. A million a week was announced a few weeks ago, now talk of 2 million a week. Hopefully before long 7m a week is reality.
After a year of disappointment from Hancock and Boris I'm inclined to believe they won't get to 2m.
I'm hopeful 2m will be like 100k earlier this year. We get to it, but don't stop there and keep going. Want we don't need is to rest on our laurels, once get to 2m the next step should be 3m then 4m.
As max says whatever it takes. I don't give a stuff if Tescos is doing the distribution or we pay people from Deloitte to organize it or i get jabbed by a squaddie who only just did his training last week in a football stadium car park...if that means millions get vaccinated every week.
Why don't we use dentists and vets. They know how to give injections.
Hell, even I know how to. Had to inject myself every day during 3 pregnancies.
Enoch Powell. Which also shows you that being a great speaker is a dangerous thing as his views are reprehensible to me.
Michael Foot. In his prime before he went quite senile.
Tam Dalyell. Superb in the Commons.
Hillary Benn. Can be a brilliant speaker.
That's about it. I can't think of any others off the top of my head. David Cameron gave a great speech to wow the Conservative party conference in the leadership hustings. Margaret Thatcher, when she wasn't hectoring, could be brilliant. Her climate change speech at the UN was outstanding even if I don't agree with her assessment that private companies are the solution.
Kinnock's Militant speech to conference is one I remember. Electrifying.
Reputedly Brian Walden's speeches in the Commons were worth listening to.
I'm always surprised by how many MPs cannot make a basic short speech without reading it out or having to refer extensively to notes. Inevitably makes for a poorer speech.
Indeed - though Churchill always relied on detailed notes when delivering his speeches.
I do talks and speeches. (Well I did before Covid.😡 And hope to again.) Good ones too.
You need to prepare and know what you are going to say but reading is death to a speech. For them to work there needs to be some extemporising, some element of danger, some communication between speaker and audience beyond the actual speech. The best speakers read their audience, respond to them, adjust what they are saying as they go along as they gauge the reaction. There is a dialogue. Not literal but it is there. A talk has an element of performance about it. I would often walk onto a stage and not know what my first words would be and then they would come to me as I stood there.
I appreciate that politicians and others feel the need to write everything down in case they put a word out of place. But it deadens the talk. Not least because so many forget to make eye contact with people in the audience. The skill I suppose is to make something prepared feel alive and as if it is personal between you and each person listening.
Absolutely! The keys to public speaking are knowing your material and knowing your audience.
I think the difference is that you and I have spent a long time in our respective fields, and can quite happily talk for an hour with a short briefing or go off-piste in response to a question.
A government minister is often constrained by needing to say something very specific and unambiguous, in many cases has only a year or two of experience in a particular department, and doesn't necessarily understand the nuances and verbiage of those to whom that department is a lifelong profession.
Hence they insist on a full script, from which they don't expect to deviate a single word - because most ministers don't know what the hell they're actually talking about!
"The keys to public speaking are knowing your material and knowing your audience."
My material is boring and my audience is a bunch of middle - aged engineers. Oh well...
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I've managed to make contract law and even damages interesting in my time. Sometimes people even laughed. In the right places.
I see Sir Keir Starmer as a bit of a John Smith type. People often said of Smith that he was like your bank manager, at a time before people replaced the b in banker with a w.
To be brutally honest, whilst I like Keir Starmer in lots of ways I'm not really sure about him. Up against Johnson in an election campaign? Dunno. For politicniks he will run rings around BJ but for the vast majority of people I'm not so sure he will cut through.
There comes a point when someone with charisma - such as Johnson - loses so much credibility that he becomes a figure of fun and ridicule.That happened to Macmillan in the early 1960s - by 1962 he was no longer Supermac and people had ceased to be persuaded that they 'had never had it so good' even though living standards continued to rise.Johnson was from the beginning seen as a mendacious charlatan by more than half the electorate . There is likely to be little residual goodwill for him when the feels finally fall off with his popularity already much weakened.
Those who think that charisma matters should look at the evidence. If Johnson is charismatic, it's certainly not leading people to think that he has the necessary charactistics to lead the country, whereas by and large they think that Starmer has the right stuff.
Here's the evidence. The last Opinium asked what factors people thought were most important in a political leader.
To list the top five: 1. 32% said having the nation's best interests at heart. A net +2% said this of Johnson, a net +18% said this of Starmer. 2. 31% said trustworthyness. -17% Johnson, +11% Starmer 3. 29% competance. -12% Johnson, +22% Starmer 4. 25% being in touch with ordinary people. -21% Johnson, +7% Starmer 5. 24% trusted to take big decisions -11% Johnson, +8% Starmer
I suggest that lack of charisma may in certain circumstances be important, in that it's absence might in some circumstances reinforce an impression that a leader lacking confidence is hapless and incompetant and therefore unfit to govern. I think that happened with Ed Miliband. But given that competance is where Starmer scores most strongly, those circumstances don't really apply in his case.
I think that's right. I also think, especially in these troubled times, many people want their leaders to have gravitas. Johnson rarely displays this; Miliband and Kinnock both struggled with it. But Starmer (like Merkel) has oodles of gravitas, and is much less easy to mock than his predecessors (despite attempts to do so like Captain Hindsight, and Johnson trying to make fun of Starmer being a lawyer).
Enoch Powell. Which also shows you that being a great speaker is a dangerous thing as his views are reprehensible to me.
Michael Foot. In his prime before he went quite senile.
Tam Dalyell. Superb in the Commons.
Hillary Benn. Can be a brilliant speaker.
That's about it. I can't think of any others off the top of my head. David Cameron gave a great speech to wow the Conservative party conference in the leadership hustings. Margaret Thatcher, when she wasn't hectoring, could be brilliant. Her climate change speech at the UN was outstanding even if I don't agree with her assessment that private companies are the solution.
Kinnock's Militant speech to conference is one I remember. Electrifying.
Reputedly Brian Walden's speeches in the Commons were worth listening to.
I'm always surprised by how many MPs cannot make a basic short speech without reading it out or having to refer extensively to notes. Inevitably makes for a poorer speech.
Indeed - though Churchill always relied on detailed notes when delivering his speeches.
I do talks and speeches. (Well I did before Covid.😡 And hope to again.) Good ones too.
You need to prepare and know what you are going to say but reading is death to a speech. For them to work there needs to be some extemporising, some element of danger, some communication between speaker and audience beyond the actual speech. The best speakers read their audience, respond to them, adjust what they are saying as they go along as they gauge the reaction. There is a dialogue. Not literal but it is there. A talk has an element of performance about it. I would often walk onto a stage and not know what my first words would be and then they would come to me as I stood there.
I appreciate that politicians and others feel the need to write everything down in case they put a word out of place. But it deadens the talk. Not least because so many forget to make eye contact with people in the audience. The skill I suppose is to make something prepared feel alive and as if it is personal between you and each person listening.
And in the Commons Enoch Powell would famously speak with immaculate grammar and no notes. Michael Foot was also brilliant in the chamber. They were the two speakers of their time in whose presence the chamber would fall silent.
Very good points about speaking. I've done a fair bit in my time. I'm going to say something arrogant for a moment: I know I can have an audience in the palm of my hand within 60 seconds. The metaphorical pin drop.
It's why I seldom now speak in public. It's dangerous. I'm dangerous.
Well now that you've said it, I'm going to say it too. So can I.
But I am, as everyone knows, warm and cuddly. And not dangerous at all. 😌
So says Kweku Mawuli Adoboli - from his prison cell.
He's been deported to Ghana now.
Yeah - during the trial he complained (the great baby) that my team were too quick off the mark providing info to the prosecution to counter his points. He called us The Machine. The following day we had Pink Floyd's poster pinned up in our office.
Oh no, how dare the investigation team be too quick off the mark, when some scumbag trader just blew through more than $2bn of the bank's money!
I know. He's still whingeing about it now. He was actually risking $12 billion. $2.3 billion was the loss once the trades were closed out. If he'd been caught some 6 weeks earlier- and the bank was agonisingly close at one point, the Finance Team having decided to call in my team and then being persuaded not to by his managers - the loss would have been ca. $220 million. That's how fast markets can change.
My attempt to persuade senior management that the difference between 220 million and 2.3 billion was how much my team was worth to the bank fell on stony ground. Sadly.
Serious lack of ambition. The value of your team was clearly the difference between the $2.3bn lost and the $12bn that might have been lost.
In LA, if paramedics can’t resuscitate heart attack victims straight away in place, there is now no further attempt to get them to hospital. They are simply declared dead on the spot.
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I had to give a similar talk to a bunch of traders.
I began it by talking about the one sided UK/US extradition treaty and the conditions in US prisons then had a seamless seque about the Natwest Three.
I got their attention.
Mine was ahead of an FCA Inspection visit on the topic. They asked us to nominate some people they could interview about their understanding.
I started by telling them that a few lucky ones would get to be interviewed by the FCA and the unlucky ones would be interviewed by me. Laughter and 100% attention after that.
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I had to give a similar talk to a bunch of traders.
I began it by talking about the one sided UK/US extradition treaty and the conditions in US prisons then had a seamless seque about the Natwest Three.
I got their attention.
It's been fun to be on the technical side of these sort of investigations, although not at the same level as yourself or Mrs @Cyclefree.
It's quite amazing how much companies pay really stupid people in jobs as traders or salespeople. So stupid that they don't realise that we are all watching what they are doing!
In LA, if paramedics can’t resuscitate heart attack victims straight away in place, there is now no further attempt to get them to hospital. They are simply declared dead on the spot.
Sorry, I appreciate that there are barriers going up and that some of them haven't become clear until recently which will cause a lot of confusion, but the CE mark no longer being valid has been known about for months, and yet this business person has become aware with 24 hours notice? I might be missing something obvious, but this just seems to be wilful ignorance rather than Brexit.
It's so ridiculous that I doubt the tweet to be honest.
Gavin Esler has no right to bang on about pro Brexit media peddling lies when he readily retweets stuff like that.
In fact, from 11pm he is essentially one of the founders of the group of new extreme pro-European reverse UKIP style fringe who want us to go full fat in to the EU incl Euro, along with Adonis, Grayling and Maugham.
Absolutely. Bloody remainers complaining about the facts. The should Shut Up and enjoy the benefits of Brexit.
I read the tweet and thought "that isn't right, she still has a year". Which was the advice before the deal was signed. Amazingly that isn't now the case. Some products will have to have new markings as of tomorrow! Another one of the fabulous benefits of this omnishambles.
You mean, up to say last week the regs gave her a year? And now suddenly they don't, withj zero notice? Just so I understand this correctly, please ...
Yes. I've had to read up on all of the guidance regarding regulations and so on for work. It was clear that we had 12 months overlap between the old CE mark and the new various UK(GB) / UK(NI) marks. So I read her tweet and thought she had it wrong. Then a quick Google and I started laughing.
Starting tomorrow if your product: * is for the market in Great Britain * is covered by legislation which requires the UKCA marking * requires mandatory third-party conformity assessment * conformity assessment has been carried out by a UK conformity assessment body and you haven’t transferred your conformity assessment files from your UK body to an EU recognised body before 1 January 2021 Then you have to use the new UKCA marking. Tomorrow. Happily they attach an image file.
However did we manage to bollox up the details like this?
Yes but another quick google shows that the guidance you are referring to has been in place since at least September and would have been unaffected by whatever deal we did with the EU because it refers specifically to goods for the UK market.
Plus the Government guidance page states:
"The UKCA marking can be used from 1 January 2021. However, to allow businesses time to adjust to the new requirements, you will still be able to use the CE marking until 1 January 2022 in most cases."
So the idea this has suddenly dropped on her since the deal was agreed is still rubbish.
Fine. So instead we only have the 4 months notice to apply 3 sets of standards and markings instead of the current 1.
I still can't find anyone with a rational argument as to why this cost and red tape burden is better for these businesses than what we have today.
Because we don't decide policy solely for the benefit of the 6% of businesses that actually do trade with the EU
Edit: and only a tiny fraction of those 6% will have to make immediate changes. Everyone else gets a 12 month changeover and existing marked stock does not have to be changed.
I don't care about the 4 months vs 16 months its the ongoing stupidity of pretending that we will be setting our own divergent quality standards for products. We won't - our market isn't big enough for us to impose a UKCA standard that is different to CE.
Yes it is.
Our market is one of the 6 largest markets in the entire world.
And exports to the EU only account for a very small percentage of overall manufacturing output.
I see Sir Keir Starmer as a bit of a John Smith type. People often said of Smith that he was like your bank manager, at a time before people replaced the b in banker with a w.
To be brutally honest, whilst I like Keir Starmer in lots of ways I'm not really sure about him. Up against Johnson in an election campaign? Dunno. For politicniks he will run rings around BJ but for the vast majority of people I'm not so sure he will cut through.
There comes a point when someone with charisma - such as Johnson - loses so much credibility that he becomes a figure of fun and ridicule.That happened to Macmillan in the early 1960s - by 1962 he was no longer Supermac and people had ceased to be persuaded that they 'had never had it so good' even though living standards continued to rise.Johnson was from the beginning seen as a mendacious charlatan by more than half the electorate . There is likely to be little residual goodwill for him when the feels finally fall off with his popularity already much weakened.
Those who think that charisma matters should look at the evidence. If Johnson is charismatic, it's certainly not leading people to think that he has the necessary charactistics to lead the country, whereas by and large they think that Starmer has the right stuff.
Here's the evidence. The last Opinium asked what factors people thought were most important in a political leader.
To list the top five: 1. 32% said having the nation's best interests at heart. A net +2% said this of Johnson, a net +18% said this of Starmer. 2. 31% said trustworthyness. -17% Johnson, +11% Starmer 3. 29% competance. -12% Johnson, +22% Starmer 4. 25% being in touch with ordinary people. -21% Johnson, +7% Starmer 5. 24% trusted to take big decisions -11% Johnson, +8% Starmer
I suggest that lack of charisma may in certain circumstances be important, in that it's absence might in some circumstances reinforce an impression that a leader lacking confidence is hapless and incompetant and therefore unfit to govern. I think that happened with Ed Miliband. But given that competance is where Starmer scores most strongly, those circumstances don't really apply in his case.
Labour in Wales & Scotland are currently carrying out a very thorough testing of the hypothesis that charisma in a political leader is unimportant.
Enoch Powell. Which also shows you that being a great speaker is a dangerous thing as his views are reprehensible to me.
Michael Foot. In his prime before he went quite senile.
Tam Dalyell. Superb in the Commons.
Hillary Benn. Can be a brilliant speaker.
That's about it. I can't think of any others off the top of my head. David Cameron gave a great speech to wow the Conservative party conference in the leadership hustings. Margaret Thatcher, when she wasn't hectoring, could be brilliant. Her climate change speech at the UN was outstanding even if I don't agree with her assessment that private companies are the solution.
Kinnock's Militant speech to conference is one I remember. Electrifying.
Reputedly Brian Walden's speeches in the Commons were worth listening to.
I'm always surprised by how many MPs cannot make a basic short speech without reading it out or having to refer extensively to notes. Inevitably makes for a poorer speech.
Indeed - though Churchill always relied on detailed notes when delivering his speeches.
I do talks and speeches. (Well I did before Covid.😡 And hope to again.) Good ones too.
You need to prepare and know what you are going to say but reading is death to a speech. For them to work there needs to be some extemporising, some element of danger, some communication between speaker and audience beyond the actual speech. The best speakers read their audience, respond to them, adjust what they are saying as they go along as they gauge the reaction. There is a dialogue. Not literal but it is there. A talk has an element of performance about it. I would often walk onto a stage and not know what my first words would be and then they would come to me as I stood there.
I appreciate that politicians and others feel the need to write everything down in case they put a word out of place. But it deadens the talk. Not least because so many forget to make eye contact with people in the audience. The skill I suppose is to make something prepared feel alive and as if it is personal between you and each person listening.
Absolutely! The keys to public speaking are knowing your material and knowing your audience.
I think the difference is that you and I have spent a long time in our respective fields, and can quite happily talk for an hour with a short briefing or go off-piste in response to a question.
A government minister is often constrained by needing to say something very specific and unambiguous, in many cases has only a year or two of experience in a particular department, and doesn't necessarily understand the nuances and verbiage of those to whom that department is a lifelong profession.
Hence they insist on a full script, from which they don't expect to deviate a single word - because most ministers don't know what the hell they're actually talking about!
"The keys to public speaking are knowing your material and knowing your audience."
My material is boring and my audience is a bunch of middle - aged engineers. Oh well...
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I've managed to make contract law and even damages interesting in my time. Sometimes people even laughed. In the right places.
Being a competently engaging public speaker isn't rocket science; there's half a million teachers who do it five times a day, five days a week.
My theory is that politicians don't put in the years getting good at it before hitting the big time. Thatcher had been an MP for twenty years before becoming PM. Major has been in Parliament for a decade, and active in local politics before that.
I see Sir Keir Starmer as a bit of a John Smith type. People often said of Smith that he was like your bank manager, at a time before people replaced the b in banker with a w.
To be brutally honest, whilst I like Keir Starmer in lots of ways I'm not really sure about him. Up against Johnson in an election campaign? Dunno. For politicniks he will run rings around BJ but for the vast majority of people I'm not so sure he will cut through.
There comes a point when someone with charisma - such as Johnson - loses so much credibility that he becomes a figure of fun and ridicule.That happened to Macmillan in the early 1960s - by 1962 he was no longer Supermac and people had ceased to be persuaded that they 'had never had it so good' even though living standards continued to rise.Johnson was from the beginning seen as a mendacious charlatan by more than half the electorate . There is likely to be little residual goodwill for him when the feels finally fall off with his popularity already much weakened.
Those who think that charisma matters should look at the evidence. If Johnson is charismatic, it's certainly not leading people to think that he has the necessary charactistics to lead the country, whereas by and large they think that Starmer has the right stuff.
Here's the evidence. The last Opinium asked what factors people thought were most important in a political leader.
To list the top five: 1. 32% said having the nation's best interests at heart. A net +2% said this of Johnson, a net +18% said this of Starmer. 2. 31% said trustworthyness. -17% Johnson, +11% Starmer 3. 29% competance. -12% Johnson, +22% Starmer 4. 25% being in touch with ordinary people. -21% Johnson, +7% Starmer 5. 24% trusted to take big decisions -11% Johnson, +8% Starmer
I suggest that lack of charisma may in certain circumstances be important, in that it's absence might in some circumstances reinforce an impression that a leader lacking confidence is hapless and incompetant and therefore unfit to govern. I think that happened with Ed Miliband. But given that competance is where Starmer scores most strongly, those circumstances don't really apply in his case.
I think that's right. I also think, especially in these troubled times, many people want their leaders to have gravitas. Johnson rarely displays this; Miliband and Kinnock both struggled with it. But Starmer (like Merkel) has oodles of gravitas, and is much less easy to mock than his predecessors (despite attempts to do so like Captain Hindsight, and Johnson trying to make fun of Starmer being a lawyer).
Starmer has gravitas. But his weakness is that he acts like a lawyer critiquing his opponent in court & expecting the judge to agree.
That works in a courtroom and when your opponent can be shamed in such a way because he is playing by the same set of agreed rules. It does not work with the PM because political debate is not like a courtroom argument and because he does not follow any rules. He is shameless.
Trying to counter such a person requires a different approach and I don't think Starmer has found it yet.
Enoch Powell. Which also shows you that being a great speaker is a dangerous thing as his views are reprehensible to me.
Michael Foot. In his prime before he went quite senile.
Tam Dalyell. Superb in the Commons.
Hillary Benn. Can be a brilliant speaker.
That's about it. I can't think of any others off the top of my head. David Cameron gave a great speech to wow the Conservative party conference in the leadership hustings. Margaret Thatcher, when she wasn't hectoring, could be brilliant. Her climate change speech at the UN was outstanding even if I don't agree with her assessment that private companies are the solution.
Kinnock was good in small doses.
That's true. His Labour conference assault on Militant was one of the great speeches of my lifetime.
He tends to be judged through the prism of the excruciating Sheffield moment.
True - Another thing I always remember is him stumbling at the beach.
Haha that was so bad!
We've talked about charisma but gravitas must be every bit as important. Kinnock didn't have it, at least by the time the tabloids had set to work Nor did EdM. The bacon sarnie finished him off.
It would be quite funny (for us) this NYE to recall single moments which finished off a politician's aspirations.
Enoch Powell. Which also shows you that being a great speaker is a dangerous thing as his views are reprehensible to me.
Michael Foot. In his prime before he went quite senile.
Tam Dalyell. Superb in the Commons.
Hillary Benn. Can be a brilliant speaker.
That's about it. I can't think of any others off the top of my head. David Cameron gave a great speech to wow the Conservative party conference in the leadership hustings. Margaret Thatcher, when she wasn't hectoring, could be brilliant. Her climate change speech at the UN was outstanding even if I don't agree with her assessment that private companies are the solution.
Kinnock was good in small doses.
That's true. His Labour conference assault on Militant was one of the great speeches of my lifetime.
He tends to be judged through the prism of the excruciating Sheffield moment.
True - Another thing I always remember is him stumbling at the beach.
Haha that was so bad!
We've talked about charisma but gravitas must be every bit as important. Kinnock didn't have it, at least by the time the tabloids had set to work Nor did EdM. The bacon sarnie finished him off.
It would be quite funny (for us) this NYE to recall single moments which finished off a politician's aspirations.
Johnson certainly has no gravitas - anymore than does Trump.
I think that this is obvious. The tier system sort of worked for the original virus. It does not work for the new variant which is far more infectious. Its a race against time to get enough of the vaccine out to slow it down and the cost is going to be terrible.
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I had to give a similar talk to a bunch of traders.
I began it by talking about the one sided UK/US extradition treaty and the conditions in US prisons then had a seamless seque about the Natwest Three.
I got their attention.
It's been fun to be on the technical side of these sort of investigations, although not at the same level as yourself or Mrs @Cyclefree.
It's quite amazing how much companies pay really stupid people in jobs as traders or salespeople. So stupid that they don't realise that we are all watching what they are doing!
The thing that astonishes me (and I think Cyclefree probably can confirm) is the things the traders admit to in work emails and phone calls despite knowing everything is automatically recorded and retained, something similar happens on their work mobiles.
Honestly I never ever want to be involved again when the police come to visit to say someone has made a harassment claim from a mobile number associated with this office.
So yours truly had to go through the backups and list the offending items, even someone as seasoned as me, had a limit.
You haven't lived until you've written a report which says 'Upon investigation of employee X's mobile phone there were inter alia, 48 pictures of a flaccid or a erect penis, and various stages inbetween and 12 video clips of the employee engaging in the solitary vice up to and including climax.'
Enoch Powell. Which also shows you that being a great speaker is a dangerous thing as his views are reprehensible to me.
Michael Foot. In his prime before he went quite senile.
Tam Dalyell. Superb in the Commons.
Hillary Benn. Can be a brilliant speaker.
That's about it. I can't think of any others off the top of my head. David Cameron gave a great speech to wow the Conservative party conference in the leadership hustings. Margaret Thatcher, when she wasn't hectoring, could be brilliant. Her climate change speech at the UN was outstanding even if I don't agree with her assessment that private companies are the solution.
Kinnock's Militant speech to conference is one I remember. Electrifying.
Reputedly Brian Walden's speeches in the Commons were worth listening to.
I'm always surprised by how many MPs cannot make a basic short speech without reading it out or having to refer extensively to notes. Inevitably makes for a poorer speech.
Indeed - though Churchill always relied on detailed notes when delivering his speeches.
I do talks and speeches. (Well I did before Covid.😡 And hope to again.) Good ones too.
You need to prepare and know what you are going to say but reading is death to a speech. For them to work there needs to be some extemporising, some element of danger, some communication between speaker and audience beyond the actual speech. The best speakers read their audience, respond to them, adjust what they are saying as they go along as they gauge the reaction. There is a dialogue. Not literal but it is there. A talk has an element of performance about it. I would often walk onto a stage and not know what my first words would be and then they would come to me as I stood there.
I appreciate that politicians and others feel the need to write everything down in case they put a word out of place. But it deadens the talk. Not least because so many forget to make eye contact with people in the audience. The skill I suppose is to make something prepared feel alive and as if it is personal between you and each person listening.
Absolutely! The keys to public speaking are knowing your material and knowing your audience.
I think the difference is that you and I have spent a long time in our respective fields, and can quite happily talk for an hour with a short briefing or go off-piste in response to a question.
A government minister is often constrained by needing to say something very specific and unambiguous, in many cases has only a year or two of experience in a particular department, and doesn't necessarily understand the nuances and verbiage of those to whom that department is a lifelong profession.
Hence they insist on a full script, from which they don't expect to deviate a single word - because most ministers don't know what the hell they're actually talking about!
"The keys to public speaking are knowing your material and knowing your audience."
My material is boring and my audience is a bunch of middle - aged engineers. Oh well...
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
Indeed, CF. My topic is sometimes biosafety and biosecurity regulations. I turn it around to make it fun, and get them to tell me how they would make a biological weapon, who they'd use it against, and why. We then discuss how institutional and legal rules and regulations might help stop them being successful, and what in addition to those rules and regulations everyone in the lab can do to ensure that their colleagues are not misusing them.
Some of the scenarios they come up with are hilarious. Infected and trained monkeys as vectors for a bioengineered supervirus remains my favorite.
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I had to give a similar talk to a bunch of traders.
I began it by talking about the one sided UK/US extradition treaty and the conditions in US prisons then had a seamless seque about the Natwest Three.
I got their attention.
It's been fun to be on the technical side of these sort of investigations, although not at the same level as yourself or Mrs @Cyclefree.
It's quite amazing how much companies pay really stupid people in jobs as traders or salespeople. So stupid that they don't realise that we are all watching what they are doing!
The thing that astonishes me (and I think Cyclefree probably can confirm) is the things the traders admit to in work emails and phone calls despite knowing everything is automatically recorded and retained, something similar happens on their work mobiles.
Honestly I never ever want to be involved again when the police come to visit to say someone has made a harassment claim from a mobile number associated with this office.
So yours truly had to go through the backups and list the offending items, even someone as seasoned as me, had a limit.
You haven't lived until you've written a report which says 'Upon investigation of employee X's mobile phone there were inter alia, 48 pictures of a flaccid or a erect penis, and various stages inbetween and 12 video clips of the employee engaging in the solitary vice up to and including climax.'
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I had to give a similar talk to a bunch of traders.
I began it by talking about the one sided UK/US extradition treaty and the conditions in US prisons then had a seamless seque about the Natwest Three.
I got their attention.
It's been fun to be on the technical side of these sort of investigations, although not at the same level as yourself or Mrs @Cyclefree.
It's quite amazing how much companies pay really stupid people in jobs as traders or salespeople. So stupid that they don't realise that we are all watching what they are doing!
The thing that astonishes me (and I think Cyclefree probably can confirm) is the things the traders admit to in work emails and phone calls despite knowing everything is automatically recorded and retained, something similar happens on their work mobiles.
Honestly I never ever want to be involved again when the police come to visit to say someone has made a harassment claim from a mobile number associated with this office.
So yours truly had to go through the backups and list the offending items, even someone as seasoned as me, had a limit.
You haven't lived until you've written a report which says 'Upon investigation of employee X's mobile phone there were inter alia, 48 pictures of a flaccid or a erect penis, and various stages inbetween and 12 video clips of the employee engaging in the solitary vice up to and including climax.'
TSE, the research from behavioural science (at least from the safety field) is quite clear on this. If you place cameras in the workplace, people modify their behaviour for only a short while. After that, they act as if they don't exist.
I think that this is obvious. The tier system sort of worked for the original virus. It does not work for the new variant which is far more infectious. Its a race against time to get enough of the vaccine out to slow it down and the cost is going to be terrible.
That's why we need total vaccine war. No half measures. We need to pivot the entire economy to focus on vaccine delivery as the highest priority for the next 3-6 months.
The government could be paying the entire overtime wages of workers at the vaccine factory for the next 3 months, for example, and it will still be cheaper than months of more furlough etc.
Enoch Powell. Which also shows you that being a great speaker is a dangerous thing as his views are reprehensible to me.
Michael Foot. In his prime before he went quite senile.
Tam Dalyell. Superb in the Commons.
Hillary Benn. Can be a brilliant speaker.
That's about it. I can't think of any others off the top of my head. David Cameron gave a great speech to wow the Conservative party conference in the leadership hustings. Margaret Thatcher, when she wasn't hectoring, could be brilliant. Her climate change speech at the UN was outstanding even if I don't agree with her assessment that private companies are the solution.
Kinnock's Militant speech to conference is one I remember. Electrifying.
Reputedly Brian Walden's speeches in the Commons were worth listening to.
I'm always surprised by how many MPs cannot make a basic short speech without reading it out or having to refer extensively to notes. Inevitably makes for a poorer speech.
Indeed - though Churchill always relied on detailed notes when delivering his speeches.
I do talks and speeches. (Well I did before Covid.😡 And hope to again.) Good ones too.
You need to prepare and know what you are going to say but reading is death to a speech. For them to work there needs to be some extemporising, some element of danger, some communication between speaker and audience beyond the actual speech. The best speakers read their audience, respond to them, adjust what they are saying as they go along as they gauge the reaction. There is a dialogue. Not literal but it is there. A talk has an element of performance about it. I would often walk onto a stage and not know what my first words would be and then they would come to me as I stood there.
I appreciate that politicians and others feel the need to write everything down in case they put a word out of place. But it deadens the talk. Not least because so many forget to make eye contact with people in the audience. The skill I suppose is to make something prepared feel alive and as if it is personal between you and each person listening.
And in the Commons Enoch Powell would famously speak with immaculate grammar and no notes. Michael Foot was also brilliant in the chamber. They were the two speakers of their time in whose presence the chamber would fall silent.
Very good points about speaking. I've done a fair bit in my time. I'm going to say something arrogant for a moment: I know I can have an audience in the palm of my hand within 60 seconds. The metaphorical pin drop.
It's why I seldom now speak in public. It's dangerous. I'm dangerous.
Well now that you've said it, I'm going to say it too. So can I.
But I am, as everyone knows, warm and cuddly. And not dangerous at all. 😌
So says Kweku Mawuli Adoboli - from his prison cell.
He's been deported to Ghana now.
Yeah - during the trial he complained (the great baby) that my team were too quick off the mark providing info to the prosecution to counter his points. He called us The Machine. The following day we had Pink Floyd's poster pinned up in our office.
Oh no, how dare the investigation team be too quick off the mark, when some scumbag trader just blew through more than $2bn of the bank's money!
I know. He's still whingeing about it now. He was actually risking $12 billion. $2.3 billion was the loss once the trades were closed out. If he'd been caught some 6 weeks earlier- and the bank was agonisingly close at one point, the Finance Team having decided to call in my team and then being persuaded not to by his managers - the loss would have been ca. $220 million. That's how fast markets can change.
My attempt to persuade senior management that the difference between 220 million and 2.3 billion was how much my team was worth to the bank fell on stony ground. Sadly.
Serious lack of ambition. The value of your team was clearly the difference between the $2.3bn lost and the $12bn that might have been lost.
If $12 billion had been lost, there'd have been no bank. I tried to be realistic. My team never ever got paid properly for what we did. Either we stopped bad stuff happening so no-one appreciated us or we did brilliant work when the bank was losing money hand over fist and there was no money to pay anyone.
I think that this is obvious. The tier system sort of worked for the original virus. It does not work for the new variant which is far more infectious. Its a race against time to get enough of the vaccine out to slow it down and the cost is going to be terrible.
I’m pretty concerned with my wife returning to teaching in school next week. Sending teachers back in without vaccination is now irresponsible, IMO.
And reopening secondary schools in January definitely so.
I think that this is obvious. The tier system sort of worked for the original virus. It does not work for the new variant which is far more infectious. Its a race against time to get enough of the vaccine out to slow it down and the cost is going to be terrible.
That's why we need total vaccine war. No half measures. We need to pivot the entire economy to focus on vaccine delivery as the highest priority for the next 3-6 months.
The government could be paying the entire overtime wages of workers at the vaccine factory for the next 3 months, for example, and it will still be cheaper than months of more furlough etc.
I had to go to A&E last night at UCL and it was far busier than the previous time I had gone mid-December. Feedback from the staff was that they were getting overwhelmed by CV cases.
This is outrageous. Even out of BBQ season the brand damage could be immense. Being a Tory has to mean something and with a government running a £400bn deficit in peace time the options are distinctly limited.
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I had to give a similar talk to a bunch of traders.
I began it by talking about the one sided UK/US extradition treaty and the conditions in US prisons then had a seamless seque about the Natwest Three.
I got their attention.
It's been fun to be on the technical side of these sort of investigations, although not at the same level as yourself or Mrs @Cyclefree.
It's quite amazing how much companies pay really stupid people in jobs as traders or salespeople. So stupid that they don't realise that we are all watching what they are doing!
The thing that astonishes me (and I think Cyclefree probably can confirm) is the things the traders admit to in work emails and phone calls despite knowing everything is automatically recorded and retained, something similar happens on their work mobiles.
Honestly I never ever want to be involved again when the police come to visit to say someone has made a harassment claim from a mobile number associated with this office.
So yours truly had to go through the backups and list the offending items, even someone as seasoned as me, had a limit.
You haven't lived until you've written a report which says 'Upon investigation of employee X's mobile phone there were inter alia, 48 pictures of a flaccid or a erect penis, and various stages inbetween and 12 video clips of the employee engaging in the solitary vice up to and including climax.'
LOL, you win! Happy New Year
Want to know the really amusing thing? The reason I was picked for that particular investigation?
My tact and discretion, oh and I knew how iPhones and WhatsApp work.
I had to go to A&E last night at UCL and it was far busier than the previous time I had gone mid-December. Feedback from the staff was that they were getting overwhelmed by CV cases.
This is outrageous. Even out of BBQ season the brand damage could be immense. Being a Tory has to mean something and with a government running a £400bn deficit in peace time the options are distinctly limited.
Does that mean no baby-eating for the whole month of January, or are babies vegetarian?
Sorry, I appreciate that there are barriers going up and that some of them haven't become clear until recently which will cause a lot of confusion, but the CE mark no longer being valid has been known about for months, and yet this business person has become aware with 24 hours notice? I might be missing something obvious, but this just seems to be wilful ignorance rather than Brexit.
It's so ridiculous that I doubt the tweet to be honest.
Gavin Esler has no right to bang on about pro Brexit media peddling lies when he readily retweets stuff like that.
In fact, from 11pm he is essentially one of the founders of the group of new extreme pro-European reverse UKIP style fringe who want us to go full fat in to the EU incl Euro, along with Adonis, Grayling and Maugham.
Absolutely. Bloody remainers complaining about the facts. The should Shut Up and enjoy the benefits of Brexit.
I read the tweet and thought "that isn't right, she still has a year". Which was the advice before the deal was signed. Amazingly that isn't now the case. Some products will have to have new markings as of tomorrow! Another one of the fabulous benefits of this omnishambles.
You mean, up to say last week the regs gave her a year? And now suddenly they don't, withj zero notice? Just so I understand this correctly, please ...
Yes. I've had to read up on all of the guidance regarding regulations and so on for work. It was clear that we had 12 months overlap between the old CE mark and the new various UK(GB) / UK(NI) marks. So I read her tweet and thought she had it wrong. Then a quick Google and I started laughing.
Starting tomorrow if your product: * is for the market in Great Britain * is covered by legislation which requires the UKCA marking * requires mandatory third-party conformity assessment * conformity assessment has been carried out by a UK conformity assessment body and you haven’t transferred your conformity assessment files from your UK body to an EU recognised body before 1 January 2021 Then you have to use the new UKCA marking. Tomorrow. Happily they attach an image file.
However did we manage to bollox up the details like this?
Yes but another quick google shows that the guidance you are referring to has been in place since at least September and would have been unaffected by whatever deal we did with the EU because it refers specifically to goods for the UK market.
Plus the Government guidance page states:
"The UKCA marking can be used from 1 January 2021. However, to allow businesses time to adjust to the new requirements, you will still be able to use the CE marking until 1 January 2022 in most cases."
So the idea this has suddenly dropped on her since the deal was agreed is still rubbish.
Fine. So instead we only have the 4 months notice to apply 3 sets of standards and markings instead of the current 1.
I still can't find anyone with a rational argument as to why this cost and red tape burden is better for these businesses than what we have today.
Because we don't decide policy solely for the benefit of the 6% of businesses that actually do trade with the EU
Edit: and only a tiny fraction of those 6% will have to make immediate changes. Everyone else gets a 12 month changeover and existing marked stock does not have to be changed.
I don't care about the 4 months vs 16 months its the ongoing stupidity of pretending that we will be setting our own divergent quality standards for products. We won't - our market isn't big enough for us to impose a UKCA standard that is different to CE.
Yes it is.
Our market is one of the 6 largest markets in the entire world.
And exports to the EU only account for a very small percentage of overall manufacturing output.
Has Gavin Esler just not left the BBC before redundancy payments get capped more firmly?
This is outrageous. Even out of BBQ season the brand damage could be immense. Being a Tory has to mean something and with a government running a £400bn deficit in peace time the options are distinctly limited.
Does that mean no baby-eating for the whole month of January, or are babies vegetarian?
Well exactly, it must mean the former which is ridiculous. Who gets anything out of eating baby sprouts? Membership numbers are poor enough already.
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I had to give a similar talk to a bunch of traders.
I began it by talking about the one sided UK/US extradition treaty and the conditions in US prisons then had a seamless seque about the Natwest Three.
I got their attention.
It's been fun to be on the technical side of these sort of investigations, although not at the same level as yourself or Mrs @Cyclefree.
It's quite amazing how much companies pay really stupid people in jobs as traders or salespeople. So stupid that they don't realise that we are all watching what they are doing!
The thing that astonishes me (and I think Cyclefree probably can confirm) is the things the traders admit to in work emails and phone calls despite knowing everything is automatically recorded and retained, something similar happens on their work mobiles.
Honestly I never ever want to be involved again when the police come to visit to say someone has made a harassment claim from a mobile number associated with this office.
So yours truly had to go through the backups and list the offending items, even someone as seasoned as me, had a limit.
You haven't lived until you've written a report which says 'Upon investigation of employee X's mobile phone there were inter alia, 48 pictures of a flaccid or a erect penis, and various stages inbetween and 12 video clips of the employee engaging in the solitary vice up to and including climax.'
TSE, the research from behavioural science (at least from the safety field) is quite clear on this. If you place cameras in the workplace, people modify their behaviour for only a short while. After that, they act as if they don't exist.
Also, even telling people that you're watching and recording what they do on their computers and phones, the vast majority don't think that you actually are, or think it will only ever be looked at retrospectively when someone screws up a deal - rather than an as an active source of investigations involving a team of IT and compliance people.
This is outrageous. Even out of BBQ season the brand damage could be immense. Being a Tory has to mean something and with a government running a £400bn deficit in peace time the options are distinctly limited.
I'm outraged that I get told to "f##k off and join the Lib Dems" but then this abomination is allowed to slide.
"The crucial point is surely this. Private enterprise has shown it has the spirit, creativity and energy to deliver a vaccine. It should be trusted to deliver the roll-out as well."
I think those unfairly blaming Johnson for the lack of UK testing capacity compared to Germany in the spring, should also unfairly give Johnson credit for the quicker vaccination start compared to Germany now, to be consistent.
Conversely, those in the spring claiming that Germany's greater testing capacity in the spring showed that the NHS was rubbish and should be replaced, should now be advising the Germans to scrap their entire health system and copy the NHS because the vaccine rollout is going faster so far in the UK. To be consistent.
Enoch Powell. Which also shows you that being a great speaker is a dangerous thing as his views are reprehensible to me.
Michael Foot. In his prime before he went quite senile.
Tam Dalyell. Superb in the Commons.
Hillary Benn. Can be a brilliant speaker.
That's about it. I can't think of any others off the top of my head. David Cameron gave a great speech to wow the Conservative party conference in the leadership hustings. Margaret Thatcher, when she wasn't hectoring, could be brilliant. Her climate change speech at the UN was outstanding even if I don't agree with her assessment that private companies are the solution.
Kinnock's Militant speech to conference is one I remember. Electrifying.
Reputedly Brian Walden's speeches in the Commons were worth listening to.
I'm always surprised by how many MPs cannot make a basic short speech without reading it out or having to refer extensively to notes. Inevitably makes for a poorer speech.
Indeed - though Churchill always relied on detailed notes when delivering his speeches.
I do talks and speeches. (Well I did before Covid.😡 And hope to again.) Good ones too.
You need to prepare and know what you are going to say but reading is death to a speech. For them to work there needs to be some extemporising, some element of danger, some communication between speaker and audience beyond the actual speech. The best speakers read their audience, respond to them, adjust what they are saying as they go along as they gauge the reaction. There is a dialogue. Not literal but it is there. A talk has an element of performance about it. I would often walk onto a stage and not know what my first words would be and then they would come to me as I stood there.
I appreciate that politicians and others feel the need to write everything down in case they put a word out of place. But it deadens the talk. Not least because so many forget to make eye contact with people in the audience. The skill I suppose is to make something prepared feel alive and as if it is personal between you and each person listening.
Absolutely! The keys to public speaking are knowing your material and knowing your audience.
I think the difference is that you and I have spent a long time in our respective fields, and can quite happily talk for an hour with a short briefing or go off-piste in response to a question.
A government minister is often constrained by needing to say something very specific and unambiguous, in many cases has only a year or two of experience in a particular department, and doesn't necessarily understand the nuances and verbiage of those to whom that department is a lifelong profession.
Hence they insist on a full script, from which they don't expect to deviate a single word - because most ministers don't know what the hell they're actually talking about!
"The keys to public speaking are knowing your material and knowing your audience."
My material is boring and my audience is a bunch of middle - aged engineers. Oh well...
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I've managed to make contract law and even damages interesting in my time. Sometimes people even laughed. In the right places.
Being a competently engaging public speaker isn't rocket science; there's half a million teachers who do it five times a day, five days a week.
My theory is that politicians don't put in the years getting good at it before hitting the big time. Thatcher had been an MP for twenty years before becoming PM. Major has been in Parliament for a decade, and active in local politics before that.
Having an audience that is there because they have to be does make a bit of a difference though. There are some topics it is hard to make interesting, though I can't think of any in Physics that are like that.
Also, even telling people that you're watching and recording what they do on their computers and phones, the vast majority don't think that you actually are, or think it will only ever be looked at retrospectively when someone screws up a deal - rather than an as an active source of investigations involving a team of IT and compliance people.
If you try and visit certain websites on our corporate systems it redirects to a webpage reminding you of the corporate use policy, and a note that you can email if you would like the page unblocked.
I think that this is obvious. The tier system sort of worked for the original virus. It does not work for the new variant which is far more infectious. Its a race against time to get enough of the vaccine out to slow it down and the cost is going to be terrible.
I’m pretty concerned with my wife returning to teaching in school next week. Sending teachers back in without vaccination is now irresponsible, IMO.
And reopening secondary schools in January definitely so.
Yes. I really did not want it to come to this. I feel that the 2 most important years of my son's school career have been devastated but having any schools open in January is nuts. Its not just the mixing of the kids and the exposure of the adults, there is also the traffic and transportation it generates. We absolutely need to hunker down. Now. At least an additional 50k lives are at stake, probably more.
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I had to give a similar talk to a bunch of traders.
I began it by talking about the one sided UK/US extradition treaty and the conditions in US prisons then had a seamless seque about the Natwest Three.
I got their attention.
It's been fun to be on the technical side of these sort of investigations, although not at the same level as yourself or Mrs @Cyclefree.
It's quite amazing how much companies pay really stupid people in jobs as traders or salespeople. So stupid that they don't realise that we are all watching what they are doing!
The thing that astonishes me (and I think Cyclefree probably can confirm) is the things the traders admit to in work emails and phone calls despite knowing everything is automatically recorded and retained, something similar happens on their work mobiles.
Honestly I never ever want to be involved again when the police come to visit to say someone has made a harassment claim from a mobile number associated with this office.
So yours truly had to go through the backups and list the offending items, even someone as seasoned as me, had a limit.
You haven't lived until you've written a report which says 'Upon investigation of employee X's mobile phone there were inter alia, 48 pictures of a flaccid or a erect penis, and various stages inbetween and 12 video clips of the employee engaging in the solitary vice up to and including climax.'
TSE, the research from behavioural science (at least from the safety field) is quite clear on this. If you place cameras in the workplace, people modify their behaviour for only a short while. After that, they act as if they don't exist.
Also, even telling people that you're watching and recording what they do on their computers and phones, the vast majority don't think that you actually are, or think it will only ever be looked at retrospectively when someone screws up a deal - rather than an as an active source of investigations involving a team of IT and compliance people.
Yep, in the safety field often they can't even pretend to themselves that the footage won't be reviewed, as it is and people are confronted with footage of unsafe behaviours (not with the aim of punishment, but of improvement). So it's not as though they are put up without their knowledge, or camouflaged, or can be forgotten about, because footage is used actively in continuous improvement efforts.
Also, even telling people that you're watching and recording what they do on their computers and phones, the vast majority don't think that you actually are, or think it will only ever be looked at retrospectively when someone screws up a deal - rather than an as an active source of investigations involving a team of IT and compliance people.
If you try and visit certain websites on our corporate systems it redirects to a webpage reminding you of the corporate use policy, and a note that you can email if you would like the page unblocked.
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I had to give a similar talk to a bunch of traders.
I began it by talking about the one sided UK/US extradition treaty and the conditions in US prisons then had a seamless seque about the Natwest Three.
I got their attention.
It's been fun to be on the technical side of these sort of investigations, although not at the same level as yourself or Mrs @Cyclefree.
It's quite amazing how much companies pay really stupid people in jobs as traders or salespeople. So stupid that they don't realise that we are all watching what they are doing!
The thing that astonishes me (and I think Cyclefree probably can confirm) is the things the traders admit to in work emails and phone calls despite knowing everything is automatically recorded and retained, something similar happens on their work mobiles.
Honestly I never ever want to be involved again when the police come to visit to say someone has made a harassment claim from a mobile number associated with this office.
So yours truly had to go through the backups and list the offending items, even someone as seasoned as me, had a limit.
You haven't lived until you've written a report which says 'Upon investigation of employee X's mobile phone there were inter alia, 48 pictures of a flaccid or a erect penis, and various stages inbetween and 12 video clips of the employee engaging in the solitary vice up to and including climax.'
LOL, you win! Happy New Year
Want to know the really amusing thing? The reason I was picked for that particular investigation?
My tact and discretion, oh and I knew how iPhones and WhatsApp work.
Your discretion is indeed legendary. Imagine if they appointed someone who would talk about such a thing on a public forum?
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I had to give a similar talk to a bunch of traders.
I began it by talking about the one sided UK/US extradition treaty and the conditions in US prisons then had a seamless seque about the Natwest Three.
I got their attention.
It's been fun to be on the technical side of these sort of investigations, although not at the same level as yourself or Mrs @Cyclefree.
It's quite amazing how much companies pay really stupid people in jobs as traders or salespeople. So stupid that they don't realise that we are all watching what they are doing!
The thing that astonishes me (and I think Cyclefree probably can confirm) is the things the traders admit to in work emails and phone calls despite knowing everything is automatically recorded and retained, something similar happens on their work mobiles.
Honestly I never ever want to be involved again when the police come to visit to say someone has made a harassment claim from a mobile number associated with this office.
So yours truly had to go through the backups and list the offending items, even someone as seasoned as me, had a limit.
You haven't lived until you've written a report which says 'Upon investigation of employee X's mobile phone there were inter alia, 48 pictures of a flaccid or a erect penis, and various stages inbetween and 12 video clips of the employee engaging in the solitary vice up to and including climax.'
LOL, you win! Happy New Year
Path - that's nothing! One Monday morning I had to read some emails which had been flagged to us. My team was doing training sessions on Communications - What Not to Do etc.
This particular individual had not attended the compulsory training so I rang his manager to tell him so that he could make him attend. He asked me - "Well, how bad are these emails?"
I replied: "Well they start with fucking and end up with fisting."
"Oh, for fuck's sake!" he said and put the phone down.
Then rang back to apologise. I said I quite understood that this was not what he wanted to hear but it was me who'd had to read the bloody things and see the pictures and so would he get the scrote to training pdq.
And that was by no means the worst.
I always ended the training sessions by telling them that they should write stuff they would be ok with their mother reading and that by "mother" I meant me.
But @TimT is right. You can train and train as much as you want. There will always be those who ignore or think they can get away with it.
What this shows is that non members can get a lot more of what they want if they get sponsorship from a member. Every member no matter how small has a vote and bagging rights. Something for the UK government to consider...
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I had to give a similar talk to a bunch of traders.
I began it by talking about the one sided UK/US extradition treaty and the conditions in US prisons then had a seamless seque about the Natwest Three.
I got their attention.
It's been fun to be on the technical side of these sort of investigations, although not at the same level as yourself or Mrs @Cyclefree.
It's quite amazing how much companies pay really stupid people in jobs as traders or salespeople. So stupid that they don't realise that we are all watching what they are doing!
The thing that astonishes me (and I think Cyclefree probably can confirm) is the things the traders admit to in work emails and phone calls despite knowing everything is automatically recorded and retained, something similar happens on their work mobiles.
Honestly I never ever want to be involved again when the police come to visit to say someone has made a harassment claim from a mobile number associated with this office.
So yours truly had to go through the backups and list the offending items, even someone as seasoned as me, had a limit.
You haven't lived until you've written a report which says 'Upon investigation of employee X's mobile phone there were inter alia, 48 pictures of a flaccid or a erect penis, and various stages inbetween and 12 video clips of the employee engaging in the solitary vice up to and including climax.'
LOL, you win! Happy New Year
Want to know the really amusing thing? The reason I was picked for that particular investigation?
My tact and discretion, oh and I knew how iPhones and WhatsApp work.
Your discretion is indeed legendary. Imagine if they appointed someone who would talk about such a thing on a public forum?
I see Sir Keir Starmer as a bit of a John Smith type. People often said of Smith that he was like your bank manager, at a time before people replaced the b in banker with a w.
To be brutally honest, whilst I like Keir Starmer in lots of ways I'm not really sure about him. Up against Johnson in an election campaign? Dunno. For politicniks he will run rings around BJ but for the vast majority of people I'm not so sure he will cut through.
There comes a point when someone with charisma - such as Johnson - loses so much credibility that he becomes a figure of fun and ridicule.That happened to Macmillan in the early 1960s - by 1962 he was no longer Supermac and people had ceased to be persuaded that they 'had never had it so good' even though living standards continued to rise.Johnson was from the beginning seen as a mendacious charlatan by more than half the electorate . There is likely to be little residual goodwill for him when the feels finally fall off with his popularity already much weakened.
Those who think that charisma matters should look at the evidence. If Johnson is charismatic, it's certainly not leading people to think that he has the necessary charactistics to lead the country, whereas by and large they think that Starmer has the right stuff.
Here's the evidence. The last Opinium asked what factors people thought were most important in a political leader.
To list the top five: 1. 32% said having the nation's best interests at heart. A net +2% said this of Johnson, a net +18% said this of Starmer. 2. 31% said trustworthyness. -17% Johnson, +11% Starmer 3. 29% competance. -12% Johnson, +22% Starmer 4. 25% being in touch with ordinary people. -21% Johnson, +7% Starmer 5. 24% trusted to take big decisions -11% Johnson, +8% Starmer
I suggest that lack of charisma may in certain circumstances be important, in that it's absence might in some circumstances reinforce an impression that a leader lacking confidence is hapless and incompetant and therefore unfit to govern. I think that happened with Ed Miliband. But given that competance is where Starmer scores most strongly, those circumstances don't really apply in his case.
I think that's right. I also think, especially in these troubled times, many people want their leaders to have gravitas. Johnson rarely displays this; Miliband and Kinnock both struggled with it. But Starmer (like Merkel) has oodles of gravitas, and is much less easy to mock than his predecessors (despite attempts to do so like Captain Hindsight, and Johnson trying to make fun of Starmer being a lawyer).
Starmer has gravitas. But his weakness is that he acts like a lawyer critiquing his opponent in court & expecting the judge to agree.
That works in a courtroom and when your opponent can be shamed in such a way because he is playing by the same set of agreed rules. It does not work with the PM because political debate is not like a courtroom argument and because he does not follow any rules. He is shameless.
Trying to counter such a person requires a different approach and I don't think Starmer has found it yet.
I think he is finding it when he quotes Johnson as he did in the last debate. Johnson as usual offers no direct answer, but mumbles to the crowd later. Then Sks intervenes and says I am happy to give way for you to explain. Johnson just sits there again making it clear the point made. Sks seem to be getting quicker on his feet in the chamber .
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I had to give a similar talk to a bunch of traders.
I began it by talking about the one sided UK/US extradition treaty and the conditions in US prisons then had a seamless seque about the Natwest Three.
I got their attention.
It's been fun to be on the technical side of these sort of investigations, although not at the same level as yourself or Mrs @Cyclefree.
It's quite amazing how much companies pay really stupid people in jobs as traders or salespeople. So stupid that they don't realise that we are all watching what they are doing!
The thing that astonishes me (and I think Cyclefree probably can confirm) is the things the traders admit to in work emails and phone calls despite knowing everything is automatically recorded and retained, something similar happens on their work mobiles.
Honestly I never ever want to be involved again when the police come to visit to say someone has made a harassment claim from a mobile number associated with this office.
So yours truly had to go through the backups and list the offending items, even someone as seasoned as me, had a limit.
You haven't lived until you've written a report which says 'Upon investigation of employee X's mobile phone there were inter alia, 48 pictures of a flaccid or a erect penis, and various stages inbetween and 12 video clips of the employee engaging in the solitary vice up to and including climax.'
LOL, you win! Happy New Year
Want to know the really amusing thing? The reason I was picked for that particular investigation?
My tact and discretion, oh and I knew how iPhones and WhatsApp work.
Your discretion is indeed legendary. Imagine if they appointed someone who would talk about such a thing on a public forum?
I think that this is obvious. The tier system sort of worked for the original virus. It does not work for the new variant which is far more infectious. Its a race against time to get enough of the vaccine out to slow it down and the cost is going to be terrible.
That's why we need total vaccine war. No half measures. We need to pivot the entire economy to focus on vaccine delivery as the highest priority for the next 3-6 months.
The government could be paying the entire overtime wages of workers at the vaccine factory for the next 3 months, for example, and it will still be cheaper than months of more furlough etc.
Brewdog are a bunch of c**ts who have a remarkable PR game that makes people think they are not c**ts.
Maybe to help they could have closed down their Edinburgh pub that was serving pints in open containers to a queue tens of people deep with zero distancing.
I've had to give talks about Suspicious Transaction Reports. To a bunch of traders. Neither are on the face of it scintillating.
You can make pretty much anything interesting.
I had to give a similar talk to a bunch of traders.
I began it by talking about the one sided UK/US extradition treaty and the conditions in US prisons then had a seamless seque about the Natwest Three.
I got their attention.
It's been fun to be on the technical side of these sort of investigations, although not at the same level as yourself or Mrs @Cyclefree.
It's quite amazing how much companies pay really stupid people in jobs as traders or salespeople. So stupid that they don't realise that we are all watching what they are doing!
The thing that astonishes me (and I think Cyclefree probably can confirm) is the things the traders admit to in work emails and phone calls despite knowing everything is automatically recorded and retained, something similar happens on their work mobiles.
Honestly I never ever want to be involved again when the police come to visit to say someone has made a harassment claim from a mobile number associated with this office.
So yours truly had to go through the backups and list the offending items, even someone as seasoned as me, had a limit.
You haven't lived until you've written a report which says 'Upon investigation of employee X's mobile phone there were inter alia, 48 pictures of a flaccid or a erect penis, and various stages inbetween and 12 video clips of the employee engaging in the solitary vice up to and including climax.'
Congratulations on identifying the coming man within your organistion.
Ah, the ever present 'Other places are mean about us' rallying cry which people are way way too sensitive about.
As others have pointed out previously the EU and national leaders are tough, hard nosed operators. They wont treat us more or less generously depending on their views of our leaders, only their policies.
And no one should ever care if the general public elsewhere dont like the leaders of a different country. We can worry about our crap leaders without feeling embarrassed about it, everyone gets them eventually.
Ah, the ever present 'Other places are mean about us' rallying cry which people are way way too sensitive about.
As others have pointed out previously the EU and national leaders are tough, hard nosed operators. They wont treat us more or less generously depending on their views of our leaders, only their policies.
And no one should ever care if the general public elsewhere dont like the leaders of a different country. We can worry about our crap leaders without feeling embarrassed about it, everyone gets them eventually.
I read that and initially thought; a bit rich of the Germans to talk about other people's dishonest aggressive leaders. And then I thought; past experience is a great teacher. Not that I'm comparing Johnson to Hitler.
Comments
Here's the evidence. The last Opinium asked what factors people thought were most important in a political leader.
To list the top five:
1. 32% said having the nation's best interests at heart. A net +2% said this of Johnson, a net +18% said this of Starmer.
2. 31% said trustworthyness. -17% Johnson, +11% Starmer
3. 29% competance. -12% Johnson, +22% Starmer
4. 25% being in touch with ordinary people. -21% Johnson, +7% Starmer
5. 24% trusted to take big decisions -11% Johnson, +8% Starmer
I suggest that lack of charisma may in certain circumstances be important, in that it's absence might in some circumstances reinforce an impression that a leader lacking confidence is hapless and incompetant and therefore unfit to govern. I think that happened with Ed Miliband. But given that competance is where Starmer scores most strongly, those circumstances don't really apply in his case.
My attempt to persuade senior management that the difference between 220 million and 2.3 billion was how much my team was worth to the bank fell on stony ground. Sadly.
My wife's Brexity/pro-Johnson friend maintains Hereford County Hospital ICU is rammed full of Covid-ridden Welsh people.
Even more puzzling that Biden plagiarised it without the obvious modification.
I began it by talking about the one sided UK/US extradition treaty and the conditions in US prisons then had a seamless seque about the Natwest Three.
I got their attention.
Circuses and the Johnson family seem to fit hand in glove
I just estimated my insulin jabs and I am at about 40,000+ since 2001, at least 7,000 with real syringes.
I started by telling them that a few lucky ones would get to be interviewed by the FCA and the unlucky ones would be interviewed by me. Laughter and 100% attention after that.
It's quite amazing how much companies pay really stupid people in jobs as traders or salespeople. So stupid that they don't realise that we are all watching what they are doing!
And still fuckwits claim it's all fake.
My theory is that politicians don't put in the years getting good at it before hitting the big time.
Thatcher had been an MP for twenty years before becoming PM. Major has been in Parliament for a decade, and active in local politics before that.
That works in a courtroom and when your opponent can be shamed in such a way because he is playing by the same set of agreed rules. It does not work with the PM because political debate is not like a courtroom argument and because he does not follow any rules. He is shameless.
Trying to counter such a person requires a different approach and I don't think Starmer has found it yet.
Honestly I never ever want to be involved again when the police come to visit to say someone has made a harassment claim from a mobile number associated with this office.
So yours truly had to go through the backups and list the offending items, even someone as seasoned as me, had a limit.
You haven't lived until you've written a report which says 'Upon investigation of employee X's mobile phone there were inter alia, 48 pictures of a flaccid or a erect penis, and various stages inbetween and 12 video clips of the employee engaging in the solitary vice up to and including climax.'
Some of the scenarios they come up with are hilarious. Infected and trained monkeys as vectors for a bioengineered supervirus remains my favorite.
The government could be paying the entire overtime wages of workers at the vaccine factory for the next 3 months, for example, and it will still be cheaper than months of more furlough etc.
I'm hoping to make it all with the book .......😏
Sending teachers back in without vaccination is now irresponsible, IMO.
And reopening secondary schools in January definitely so.
https://twitter.com/BrewDogJames/status/1344584543341326338?s=20
My tact and discretion, oh and I knew how iPhones and WhatsApp work.
NEW THREAD
Conversely, those in the spring claiming that Germany's greater testing capacity in the spring showed that the NHS was rubbish and should be replaced, should now be advising the Germans to scrap their entire health system and copy the NHS because the vaccine rollout is going faster so far in the UK. To be consistent.
There are some topics it is hard to make interesting, though I can't think of any in Physics that are like that.
Don't get many emails...
This particular individual had not attended the compulsory training so I rang his manager to tell him so that he could make him attend. He asked me - "Well, how bad are these emails?"
I replied: "Well they start with fucking and end up with fisting."
"Oh, for fuck's sake!" he said and put the phone down.
Then rang back to apologise. I said I quite understood that this was not what he wanted to hear but it was me who'd had to read the bloody things and see the pictures and so would he get the scrote to training pdq.
And that was by no means the worst.
I always ended the training sessions by telling them that they should write stuff they would be ok with their mother reading and that by "mother" I meant me.
But @TimT is right. You can train and train as much as you want. There will always be those who ignore or think they can get away with it.
Johnson as usual offers no direct answer, but mumbles to the crowd later.
Then Sks intervenes and says I am happy to give way for you to explain.
Johnson just sits there again making it clear the point made.
Sks seem to be getting quicker on his feet in the chamber .
Maybe to help they could have closed down their Edinburgh pub that was serving pints in open containers to a queue tens of people deep with zero distancing.
Take away my fucking arse.
As others have pointed out previously the EU and national leaders are tough, hard nosed operators. They wont treat us more or less generously depending on their views of our leaders, only their policies.
And no one should ever care if the general public elsewhere dont like the leaders of a different country. We can worry about our crap leaders without feeling embarrassed about it, everyone gets them eventually.
And then I thought; past experience is a great teacher.
Not that I'm comparing Johnson to Hitler.