The price of spin

Writing in the current issue of the Journalist (house magazine of the NUJ), Paul Ilett warns the wider media of the dangers of criticising public spending on "press officers" ['Don't bite the hand"; p31; Journalist, August 2008].

Ilett is a press officer with the NHS and is worried about a recent Freedom of Information (FOI) request by his local paper, which wants to know how much of the local NHS budget is spent on 'spin'.

He rightly points out to the NUJ audience (many of them, local hacks) that local newspapers would struggle to fill their pages without the work of his team.

"I spent six years as Head of Comms at MORI. MORI's local government research showed that councils that invest in good communications have much better approval ratings than those that do not. The truth is that people like to know what is going on," writes Ilett.

Quite right; and that goes for national politics too. Party political spin doctors have given government communications officers a bad name they don't deserve. The Opposition might think they can add information officers to their hit list for 'cost cutting' measures, but who'll be left to publicise the (pifling) amount of public money they saved along the way?

Did I really say that?

New Scientist's 'Last Word' feature last week had a question about why people can be so aggressive in on-line forums. It's a question that's of great interest to me and my fellow editors.

It's not just that the polite world of SfEPline* can occasionally degenerated into a free-for-all slanging match; communicating via email can be problematic too.

For example, I still can't get used to writing emails to my mother or mother-in-law; their replies don't 'sound' like them, whereas I'm pretty sure my emails 'sound' like me - but do they?

Work-related communication is even more fraught with potential difficulties. I once clattered out an urgent work-related message and fired it off into the ether - apparently without carefully checking whether I'd added enough caveats and requisite 'chit chat'; for the the virtually instant response said my message was 'curt'.

Oh dear! Having built up a rapport with an e-correspondent you would think it's not always necessary to go through the "how are you; thanks for your last message; have a nice day" rigmarole, but apparently not.

(Or is it just that I'm 'curt' in real life too? …Don't answer that, thanks.)

Anyway, I hope that the New Scientist article and the link I gave to a research paper on "email sociability" in the NS blog will get picked up by researchers somewhere. At the very least, business email users could benefit from general guidance as to what is and is not deemed acceptable e-speak.

* SfEPline is a Yahoo group used by members of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (of which I'm an Advanced member).

Fighting flab at 40 - a 'waist' of time?

No need to worry about fighting the flab when you hit your 40s. An exchange of letters in last week's New Scientist (19 July 2008, p73) suggests that putting on a few pounds as you get older is perfectly natural and, in fact, because it's an evolutionary development, trying to buck the trend is probably a waste of time.

The question on the magazine's 'Last Word' page was: "Why, as we age, do we find it easier to gain body fat and … why is it so much more difficult to get rid of?"

Apparently, our bodies become more efficient at storing fat as we get older. One respondent (from University of California) put the age-related fat issue down to evolution, saying that, in primitive societies older people wouldn't get priority for scarce food, so it's in their interest to develop a 'store' for lean times.