Paul Dacre in Pistol-Packed Confession

March 24, 2011
Eady_Eady_New_Face_Of_Miami-front-large

Hot on the heels of The Mirror’s spread on photographer Bob Gruen’s work – which depicts Paul Dacre, the legendary foe of Mr Justice Eady and Daily Mail editor-in-chief, casting a withering glare at Mr Sid Vicious, the famous Sex Pistol – we learn of a startling confession.

While The Guardian suggests that Dacre’s left-leaning views swung to the right following the same visit to the US during which he met Mr Vicious, we know otherwise, for here is a transcript of a conversation Dacre had with a Mr Swamp of Lousiana:

Dacre: You know, my good man Swamp, I admire that Vicious chap. He wears what he wants, whenever he wants, wherever he wants. Not for him the constraints of middle England, the endless ennui of our convention-bound existence. I wish I could be like him. Between you and I, I asked him if I could join his band. I couldn’t help myself, for through it I saw a different future, one in which I would be free and anarchic, a songbird flitting from branch to branch without a care in the world. I would sing my song of freedom, of a life lived without the likes of that privacy-law mad lawyer I met in Chancery Lane, a young barrister, what was his name? Eady. Eager Eady, the barrister who says we should all live our lives behind closed doors. For me, this is wrong. We should live like Mr Vicious, unafraid, unabashed, out there, down with the kids.

Swamp: Sounds good y’all. Why doncha strum on, bro, and join the Pistols?

Dacre: Vicious said he had to do it his way. If we did it my way, he would have too many regrets. So, er, that was that.

Swamp: That’s a cryin’ shame y’all.

Mr Justice Eady (for it is he): It certainly was.

Pictured courtesy of www.datpiff.com: Eady, the new face of Miami. It is not known whether Paul Dacre wants to join his band.

 

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If you’re Joey Barton, attack is not the best form of defence

May 17, 2012

Interesting times, these, in the life of Joey Barton.

If the violence displayed by the QPR captain at Manchester City last Sunday was remarkable, his subsequent conduct on Twitter has been astonishing. Barton appears to have radically reinterpreted the notion that attack is the best form of defence, lashing out at all and sundry via a series of tweets whose ultimate effect is entirely self-destructive.

In the past 24 hours, Barton has accepted one charge of violent conduct at the Etihad Stadium but denied another. The FA seems set to throw the book at him, and his club has declared that it will deal with the matter after the result of the FA investigation. Conspiracy theorists might conclude that QPR’s management team and board hope that the FA ban Barton for so long a period (four months and more) that their reported desire to rip up his contract can only be bolstered.

What, then, should Barton do? Should he:

(a) Keep his head down and say nothing, or

(b) Issue a sensible statement in which he acknowledges that both his conduct at the Etihad and subsequent tweets have brought QPR into disrepute, and

(c) Add an apology to said statement, or

(d) Go to Portugal, log onto Twitter and tweet that the world is against him but that he doesn’t care because everyone is a moron and he’s worked really hard to get where he is and if anyone is nasty to him again he is going to expose their secrets.

The answer is not (d).

The moral of the story is that if you’re a loose cannon, when you turn attack into defence there is a danger that you will blow yourself up.

Gunning foglessly for clarity

May 15, 2012

A fine piece, this, on Winston Churchill’s gift for language and the obscurantism that goes with so much corporate communication.

But wait, what’s this? Could this injunction have been phrased rather more successfully:

Be concrete, not abstract. Use metaphors to get your message across.

Metaphors are, by definition, not exactly concrete. But be that as it may: there is a lot of sound advice in Clare Lynch’s piece and a revelation, too. We had never heard of the Gunning Fog Index.  But it exists, and reveals the age at which someone would have to leave full-time education to understand given text.

We’re pleased to display our own Gunning Fog rating for the above words. That of the Churchill speech cited by Ms Lynch was 9.698.

The Gunning Fog index is 9.585

Spin at the Leveson Inquiry

May 9, 2012
Leveson witch hunt

The idea that Lord Justice Leveson and his Inquiry’s QC, Robert Jay, are in need of PR advice is intriguing.

Surely their respective tasks ought to be immune from spin? Then again, perhaps the way in which they execute them is deserving of some communications advice. Either way, times have changed. A similar inquiry from yesteryear (and such do exist) would surely not have been accompanied, albeit informally, by communications advice.

Pictured courtesy of this Flickr user: a portrait of the Leveson Inquiry.