Downing Street Press Secretary Mike Ellam is threatening to crack down on blogging by parliamentary lobby journalists after allegations that it is leading to bogus 'scoops' which undermine the Number 10 spin operation.
What on earth does that mean? Perhaps my lobby journalist friends might care to enlighten me. On the usual terms of course. Meet behind the bike sheds. Knock three times and ask for Rosemary.
12 comments:
Good grief. It's all about news management rather than content.
It should help you tho in that it's pretty easy to pass off a scoop to a network of dudes or dudettes.
Slightly OT but I think it is definately time to seriously consider changing the upper tiers of the civil service when administration changes. They're too complicit in the mistakes.
Who the hell does Mike Ellam think he is? Some sort of public servant, by any chance? Are we paying his wages or is he some sort of Labour Party employee?
These people are despicable scum. No morals, no integrity, nor even any commonsense. Does he not realise that this move simply underlines what we all know, that Downing Street is never interested in Truth, Honesty and Openness - that 'Downing Street' is shorthand for deliberate deception? What a clown.
The Downing Street Version, eh? Who'd believe that?
How bizarre.
Mr B Dog is clearly getting his pencil sharpener out with this little tidbit.
I really do wonder if Mr Brown's self-delusion is rubbing off on everyone else in there.
Douglas Alexander has just told the BBC that he's still pretty optimistic about the GE - hahhahhaa comedy moment
Just more evidence that the party and the state are becoming indivisible. Dick is right, and the Labour party is attempting to make the country ungovernable by a Conservative government by packing the civil service with its placemen.
Mike Ellam (i hope) has just terminally damaged his civil service career with this nonsense. Like Dick, I think it is necessary for the civil service to be cleansed of this type of partisan at the beginning of the next parliament.
@unsworth: hoi, less of the clown abuse if you don't mind!
Cameron will have to be as ruthless with the Civil Service as Blair was. He must have his own people ready to head each department-with trusted lieutenants- and ensure that a root and branch reform of each Ministry/Department be made.
There must be a tremendous scope for pruning and making efficiency savings.
Personally I would see what private companies could take over. They have taken over a few things, with success, I am sure there is great opportunities ahead for the private sector.
A rule of thumb I would have is that anyone who has the words'common purpose' on his/her private papers be removed to the Graffiti Removal Department!
Labour's problem has been that it is reliant on creating a illusion.
That worked when you could control and threaten the careers of journalists, or appeal to their inner leftie.
The problem is that reality is just getting too hard to spin around, just at the same time that the internet has made single channels of communication a thing of the past.
Labour ( and especially Ball's ) problem is the truth, and the truth is setting us free.
@ Obnoxio
Oops.
I should Coco!
Oh, dear. Stuck on the spin cycle, I see.
Poor Mike Ellam...
He used to be a serious player with a mind as sharp as a razor.
So sharp in fact, he used to be a key player in the British Embassy in China and is a fluent Mandarin speaker (a handy skill, as I discovered over a Chinese meal he hosted in Whitehall once, where he engaged the astonished waiter in his native tongue and asked if the Chef could rustle him up something which wasn't on the menu).
Sadly however, as time has passed, he has degenerated into just another run-of-the-mill apparatchik - a tragic waste of talent and potential...
WG
i suspect it has something to do with blogs being used to break embargoes - by pretending that a source has revealed something when in fact the journalist is simply going early on a story.
Even (local) newspapers break embargoes.
To my irritation recently in my 'day job' I stuck rigidly to a noon embargo, only to find that a rival publication had run with the story an hour early.
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