Author: Penny

As the title of my blog suggests, I am a freelance PR working mainly in the public and voluntary sectors, on projects from small scale copywriting to big social marketing projects. In my time I've worked for government departments, the BBC and a range of other organisations of various stages of dysfunctionality. Now I'm trying to get to grips with the world of the micro-business and facing up to the recession with a fair bit of trepidation.

Five ingredients of a perfect Friday

1. Kick off meeting (with doughnuts) at one of my favourite companies to work with,  on a fantastic new project which could keep us absorbed, challenged – and gainfully employed – until Christmas.

2. Children off to spend two weeks with their grandmother in Scotland.  No washing, wearing, chivvying, tidying, snapping, snipping, squabbling or Spongebob Squarepants UNTIL AUGUST 10.

3. Husband delivering children to Scotland and staying ’til Sunday.  London at my disposal for the weekend.  Control over the contents of the fridge and use of the remote absolute. Only fly in ointment is continuing need to care for cats, who have deposited a dead bird in the kitchen in protest at being abandoned to me.  With luck they will leave home…

4. Large pile of newly bought,  sweet-smelling books beckoning me from the side of the bed.

5. The sun is shining.  And I intend to make hay.

The secret to getting work?

Let people know you want it.  Be referable and ask for referrals.  Talk to people about yourself and your business.  For, as  Alan Clark pointed out when asked how he had the nerve to make so many unwanted advances to young women – “how do you know an advance will be unwanted until you make it?”

Ask and ye shall receive as the good book has it.   Oh, and when you get the work?  Do a good job.

Press officers in an age of twitter

Great post here about whether (and if so, how) press officers within government should respond to stories/debates circulating among digital communities on blogs and via Twitter.  Inevitably there is real frustration about how slow press officers can be to react to the head of steam which can build up around key issues online before they hit the mainstream.  The argument that online inactivity damages departmental reputation must be right.  But it does misunderstand, I think, the key reality of a press officer’s life, which is that they must please their Minister.  On the whole Ministers still don’t get  this stuff and don’t believe that their constituents do either. Some of them blog, a couple are on Twitter (Ben Bradshaw and Harriet Harman, take a bow) But generally their key concern is tomorrow’s front page – in particular the front page of the Mail – or Newsnight, which is why so much activity is short term and reactive rather than designed to build relationships and alliances and deliver a long-term strategy.  Many press officers find this frustrating – although a frighteningly large number still don’t get it either. There’s a serious job to be done in some departments to educate press teams as well as policy leads on the possibilities.

Burn baby, burn

The bonfire of the qangos might not be such a popular rallying cry if the quangos themselves could  point to some hard evidence of their own achievement.  As David Cameron gets his matches ready, there’s a desperate need for NDPBs (and grant-funded voluntary sector bodies too) to be able to demonstrate that they represent value for money.  Sadly, in my experience, staff in bodies like this are happiest when they’re talking about the (undoubted) social need for their services and the benefits they were set up to deliver.  Mention of evaluation, demonstrating value for money, even – heaven forbid – the need to become self-supporting by selling commercial services, makes them come over giddy as a Victorian vicar accidentally catching sight of an uncovered table leg.  They should all be in a tearing hurry to get measures in place which demonstrate hard evidence of their usefulness.  If they can’t it’ll be hard to grieve too much when they start to smoulder.

Stakeholder Management – Lesson One, Not Like This

Government comms isn’t what it was in its Campbell prime; but even accepting that the control freakery of yesteryear is out of place now, the  performance over the Iraq inquiry has been even more dismal than usual.

Even if they don’t care about the democratic principles at stake (depressing enough in itself), have these people not learned anything about dealing with their stakeholders?  Do they not realise that making a major announcement without (seemingly) discussing it with anyone who might have an opinion on it is insane?  Having promised to increase openness to restore public faith in politics, did no-one  think that announcing a secret inquiry with a hand-picked chair   into the most controversial political decision of the past decade was risky?  Didn’t they think to line up some allies to come out in support? (And if they tried and couldn’t find any, shouldn’t that have set some alarm bells ringing?)  Isn’t rigging it so it won’t report until after the election a little, well, rubbish,  presentationally?  Especially as it now looks as though they are rowing back on what they’ve announced – another nail in the coffin of  basic government competence.

When even the Lib Dems are credibly pointing out that the government is “weak and pathetic”  things look pretty bleak.  I  now support the Labour Party  the way my Dad supports West Brom – he’s been doing it a long time, it’s a  habit and a reliable family joke; but he didn’t really care when they were relegated.  At the moment I could seriously use some good reasons to get enthusiastic about Labour.

Eulalie

There is no point throwing eggs at Nick Griffin.  Just crack jokes over him.  He’s a ridiculous little man who should be allowed to prove how stupid he is  in debate.

I’ve been wondering who he reminded me of and it suddenly dawned – he’s Roderick Spode minus the ladies underwear (I assume, although I suppose you never know…)

The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: “Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?”

 

My dear! The noise! The people!

In what feels like the equivalent of sticking my fingers in my ears and singing loudly, I’m not blogging about the Labour party, the economy, the loathsome emergence of the BNP from under its stone, or indeed any of the other things that have been keeping me awake at night recently. Instead I’m  trying to recapture the euphoria of watching A Little Night Music in the West End on Friday.  Just, please, go and see it. You’ll thank me.  It has wit,  it has intelligence, it has charm.  It has fabulous frocks and Maureen Lipman being grand underneath a very big wig.  Its central conceit is that the fresh-faced charms of youth just can’t compare with the allure of an intelligent, mature woman (an argument I find completely persuasive). 

Floating out of the theatre I was even reconciled to the horror that is the West End now.  Being out on a Saturday night these days increasingly makes me feel like an easily shockable maiden aunt up from the sticks for a spree.  Why is the music from all the bars so LOUD? Why do all those nice young girls wear clothes that are two sizes too small?  Why is everyone so drunk? (and how the hell do they afford it at those prices?  £7.60 for two cups of coffee.  £7.60.  For coffee.) And where did all those bicycle-rickshaws come from?  When I used to go out regularly  – some time back in the late Jurassic – there were one or two of them hanging about near Leicester Square tube and they looked quite cute.  They have evidently bred like rabbits in the intervening years, turned ferral, and now infest every street in Soho.  If you just give me a minute to lace my stays and button my boots, I shall write to Boris. Something Must Be Done.

Running the whelk stall

Yesterday was the last day of the government contract I’ve been working on since last year.  Coincidentally the day I left my civil service job to go freelance  was the day Tony Blair stood down.  In a very different way yesterday also felt like the end of an era for Labour, even though the fall out this time round will be messier, more rancourous and (almost certainly) fatal for the party.

The permanent replacement in my role has just come into the civil service from a job in the private sector and evidently couldn’t believe the Looking Glass world I was briefing him about. (‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ said Alice. ‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the cat. ‘We’re all mad here.‘ )

It’s not at all impossible that everything I’ve been doing for the past six months will be torn up and thrown away by an incoming Minister after the reshuffle, not because it’s bad or wrong, but because the points have changed and we’re all off on another track as of Monday.  In the meantime, at least in our case yesterday, we carry on as though nothing at all had changed – making arrangements for a Ministerial visit next month, even though there is no Minister, no agreed policy, no diary to fix a date in and no idea of whether or not the policy will survive the week. Or as Lewis Carroll would have it – I can’t go back to yesterday – because I was a different person then.

Bless you

While every one else in the country is absorbed in MPs’ expenses and Joanna Lumley, there is one corner of a Whitehall comms office that is still fighting the battle against swine flu. You can’t open a paper these days without seeing that revolting picture of that man sneezing all over you.

This seems to me to be a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” situation for government.  If there isn’t a pandemic then they will eventually be roasted for wasting public money. If there is they will be roasted for not doing enough to warn us.  But is it really necessary for DH to have to spend money on a leaflet telling people, with diagrams, how to wash their hands? And do you think they’re downhearted that no-one else in the country seems to care?

Passionate about communications solutions

David Mitchell got in before me (and is infinitely funnier than I could have been) about the use and abuse of the word “passionate”.  I feel much the same about “solutions” – as in information solutions  (1,060,000 examples on Google), communications solutions (1,180,000), new media solutions (550,000), security solutions (3,260,000), technology solutions 6,860,000). There is now an event called Procurement Solutions Live “the annual event for buying solutions”.

Last summer when I was trying to find an events company to deliver some conferences for a client, I refused on principle to invite any company to pitch whose website promised that they could deliver “event solutions”.  It’s as good a way of sorting the wheat from the chaff as any – and we found a brilliant company to do the job.  I was almost inspired by this to re-name my business the No Solutions Communications Company – but felt in the end it might be misunderstood…