Posts Tagged ‘budget’

It may be stating the bleeding obvious, but we all know the media is changing rapidly – every few months, something comes along that fractures the old order more and more. The latest is the iPad, one more thing in a long line of technological advances that are making it easier for brand and public to connect without the need of the old certainties.

So what will shape the future? And who will shape it? The screaming headline in PR Week warning of ad agencies encroaching on PR territory misses the point a little, I feel. A good PR agency is stronger than people think.

“Ad agencies have always been a threat,” a friend in PR admitted the other day. “WPP et al have been buying PR agencies for decades. What matters is contacts, culture, energy, creativity, bullshit and bollocks. And, of course, your last piece of coverage. And that means scum-sucking, news-junky, urban cosmopolite ambidextrous grasshoppers like us.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Treasury team stepped out into the sunshine to announce George Osborne’s raft of cuts which aim to make recovery a sure thing – a wise move, as it’s always easier to disguise bad news in good weather.

There was a fair bit of tough news to swallow all round, but what intrigued me was the way that Osborne deferred to Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury, David Laws, when it came to handing out the truly hard-to-swallow news.

This is where the coaltion comes into its own for the Tories; they have more seats and more cabinet members than the Lib Dems, but they get to share the pain equally. Should these cuts in spending create a double dip recession, as Labour predicted, the Tories will work hard to offload the worst of it onto the shoulders of their coalition colleagues, as they did today.