A (hopefully) welcome return

After a few weeks off from the ol' blogosphere, the Rutland Correspondent returns

After meeting up with Twitterer @JayRutland and another drama-group buddy from those hazy old days in Oakham, he asked me (amongst a few things) for comment on the expenses scandal. Having purposefully kept quite on the issue, because of the ad nausem coverage by New Labour same old biased BBC and the good people at ITN, I shall now break silence. 

From now on, can we please call it the allowance scandal? They are, after all, allowed such finance as part of the job to supplement wages and other taxed income.

I would put forward the Simon Woodroffe argument(another name amongst Old Oakhamian rankings). By paying MPs more, we wouldn't have this issue. Alright, they've fiddled allowances, but tell me who else doesn't in middle management across the UK. In the words of Simon Woodroffe (roughly) 'if we pay these people peanuts, we're going to get monkeys. Give them more and we'll have a better quality of MP'. Woodroffe, founder of the YO! empire, has some most excellent words.

On a more Rutland-centric note: Alan Duncan, ha'way now. He's actually not too bad, though not too good either on the old finance front. Let's take a quick look at public information on his wallet here. Cutting through some of the Grauniad spin on things, he's a fairly straight up guy (excuse the pun)

To end with, lets just bask in the glory of song. The O'Jays, famed for their music from the US' Apprentice television series, provide the song 'For the Love of Money'. Poignancy, current, satirical, whatever.

Viva la Capitalism/Conservatives

There's only one, MHT

Long live the Torch Of Freedom: 4/5/79 - 4/5/09

I'll even let Boris tell the tale....

Rutland Prison Riots!

HMP Ashwell has played host to a 400-man prison riot!

Details can be found here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/7994616.stm

UPDATE: I will be uploading the photos from Oakham in my next post, as promised. I thought the Ashwell riots took precedence.

Is it all really just an April Fools?

Today's news that unitary authorities, opposed by many who work in local government at the minute, are being rolled out across the UK should be seen as an April fools.

Full details here

Targeting predominantly Conservative Councils, our Labour government really are plucking at straws to distract from another recent bout of bad news.

But targeting Conservative councils? That's just cheap.

Also in Rutland News was the potential loss of full-time firefighters in the area: details found here

It can already take Police just under 2 hours to respond to an emergency call; do we really need a slow/non existent fire service? 

Oakham & Stamford police effectively work 9 till 5, with calls then being shifted to Leicester Police. If the same were to happen to our fire service, Raddlemen would be lost for words.

We can only hope that this is all just an April fool, for those not just in the new unitary authorities, but also to all Raddlemen.

We, the people....

...produce a video advertising the 'Tax day tea party', which has the right message, but delivers it in a wholly wrong way.



I like: The idea and the message: Boston tea party as a sense of revolution/protest. Some of the banners too. 'Repeal the pork or your bacon is cooked' and 'tcot report dot com' (of which The Rutland Correspondent is a member: SnudgeB). The child holding the 'I read as much of the Stimulus bill as my congress did' is also a classic.

I don't like: The music, it's a homage to Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, but still, a tad inappropriate. The constant 'we the people' flying across the screen, 'Speak now or forever hold your peace' as a final slogan, and the slightly haunting picture it dubs. The Windows PowerPoint backgrounds at the start

Hello, Afternoon, Morning. I mean, what time is it?

Boris at his best. And a bit of bread and butter PR at the same time.

Viva la Conservatives....

Shooting, Conservatives, Palin and The Rock?

This month's The Field Magazine has a couple of interesting items I can thoroughly recommend reading. The opening story is of how the Olympic shooting team was snubbed by Cherie Blair when they received the opportunity to meet dignitaries at Number 10. The article goes further into how the Olympic Budget has seen shooting's slice slashed by 80%. A temporary shooting ground (quite indicative of the current administration) is to be erected at a cost of £25 million to the tax payer at Woolwich. This comes as Bisley still maintains it's world-renown status following the 2002 Commonwealth games.

The second item comes from the letter's page, where a lady wrote in to inform The Field of friend of the author hitting a right and left at a woodcock ( a very difficult manoeuvre to pull off in shooting). The end of the letter ends as such:

'...the more ladies we can encourage into shooting the more support we can expect from the public at large'

Being a typical PR student, I pondered this end statement. Normally a celebrity spokesperson may add weight to a cause, but more women in a oft-mistaken male-orientated sport? A most interesting idea....

Let's look stateside for some answers. The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) of WWE fame, and a Correspondent recommended auto-bigoraphy, once spoke at the Republican National Convention (much like Conservative Conference Season). A known Republican, he could be seen as a brand champion: 

O. Burns Celebrity Endorsement Formula

'Keen & Clean' celebrity spokesman + product/belief + media channel(s) = air time

air time ÷ new/renewed interest in product/belief = % positively changed public opinion

Perhaps this idea might help our shooting cause. What if someone like The Rock could become a brand champion for one of Great Britain's most traditional of past times. Would that celebrity be willing to take the regular flak from the often left-wing (and possibly there biggest fan base) argument that it is the sport of the rich killing the defenseless for pleasure? I might conclude not. 

What if our brand champion wasn't quite as big as The Rock. What if that brand champion wasn't just one person? Perhaps the author does have the right idea of getting a group of people (in this case, UK women of 18+) to start taking up the sport and championing it's cause....

Then again, would we get a Palin effect? Great ideas, great image, great to start off with, but will it just wither out over time very rapidly? Would our brand champion/champions fit the 'Keen & Clean' part of our equation? Again, I may argue not.

We might find, therefore, that brand champions for shooting are a no-no. Perhaps having pictures of women holding guns is the way forward for the sport. Political Parties may be the stopping point for celebrities to publicly endorse without too much flak. 

One thing is for certain: for the great sport to survive the next ten years, it needs to get more supporters. How to do that without celebrity endorsement?: another blogpost for another day.

NTARCbook, MyNTARC, NTARCster, NTARCtube?!

The US' National Terror Alert Response Center has launched it's own networking site, akin to Facebook, MySpace etc.

NTARC

It's interesting to see how it's 'Prepared Communities' policy is taking shape, and using the internet as it was designed for: information and communication.

I can also recommend viewing the videos hosted by the network. Particularly of interest is the 33 minutes video, posted here. Whilst I normally find these mini documentaries interesting, it can be said this is using a few scare tactics. Can anyone imagine a UK version of the video?

Campaign for Honest Food

Here's one for the books......