Nicholas Jones, 22 May 2008 

Gordon Brown’s formative years as a politician were spent in opposition fighting the Conservatives. Once Labour were in power and he became Chancellor, Brown was in effect in “opposition” again, promoting himself at the expense of Tony Blair. For the first time the Prime Minister has found himself continually on the defensive. In a speech at Coventry University (22.5.2008), Nicholas Jones argued that the only way Brown can deal with an avalanche of negative publicity is to face up to the news media head on and adopt a far more open and transparent communications strategy.

David Miller, 21 May 2008

Dotted up and down the coastal lochs and around the islands of Scotland are thousands of circular or rectangular pens.  Each contains thousands of farmed fish, predominantly salmon. 

They are a visible reminder of the economic reality of the Scottish highlands and islands, areas in which the main form of work is in tourism, fishing, farming and in some places the military or nuclear power. Yet, most of the pens, shifting gently with the swell, are not owned by locals and do not always bring great financial rewards to the area.  Instead most are owned by fish farming companies such as Marine Harvest, Skretting, Norsk Hydro or AKVA Smart.  

The companies themselves are not local, but are almost all part of a transnational industry which is as likely to rear fish off the coast of Norway, Canada or Chile as Scotland.   

Sam Gardiner, 19 May 2008

The White House pattern is well established.  When they are working to control a message, they do so with both content and volume.  I’ve found it useful to understand the direction of policy by watching the message volume.

My methodology is not particularly sophisticated.  Every morning, I Google on the issue I’m following and record the number of English language article that are hit.

During the run up to the 2004 presidential election in the United States, it felt as if the White House were trying to create fear to support the argument that George Bush should be reelected.  That intuition was measurable.

19 May 2008

Tesco's Lucy Neville-Rolfe

Tom Griffin, 15 May 2008 

Dean Godson, a research director for Policy Exchange and former chief leader writer for the Daily Telegraph is one of the best-connected neoconservatives in Britain.

He has been a prominent advocate of ‘political warfare’ against Islamist movements and those who engage with them, and a persistent critic of peace processes in Ireland, the Middle East and around the world.

His involvement in the controversial report, The Hijacking of British Islam, could be considered an example of political warfare.

Sam Gardiner, 13 May 2008 

Con Coughlin writes a Friday column each week for the UK's Telegraph.  On Friday he wrote about Afghanistan : "Another week, another British fatality - and yet more evidence of Iran's lethal meddling on the battlefields of the war on terror."

He goes on to say the hand of Iran in the death of the  British soldier may never be proven, but in an attempt to justify his  assertion, he goes on to suggest it is because "the Revolutionary  Guards have become highly adept at covering their tracks."

His "evidence" that the Iranians are behind explosive devices in  Afghanistan goes beyond anything being suggested by even the most  anti-Iranian officials in either the US or British Government. One would think he would be at least a little self conscious about talking about evidence.

Tom Griffin, 9 May 2008 

Douglas Murray could justly be described as the enfant terrible of British neoconservatism.  He has been a prominent advocate of the application of neoconservative ideas to Europe.

Influenced by the authoritarian philosophy of Leo Strauss, and the concept of ‘dhimmitude’ put forward by Baat Ye’or, Murray has argued that the ‘innate flaws of liberal democracy’ leave Europe vulnerable to domination by Muslim immigrants.

As head of the Centre for Social Cohesion, he has been a central figure in a wider neoconservative propaganda offensive against Islamist movements in Britain.  He claims to have influenced Government policy, and his ideas have been influential in some NATO circles.

Andy Rowell, 8 May 2008 

There is something obscenely ironic that whilst the poor starve and struggle over soaring food prices, the rich convert food into fuel so they can carry on driving in their large gas-guzzling vehicles.

The rich world is rushing to invest in biofuels as one of the solutions to climate change. Fuels made from corn, sugar, or maize are seen as producing less carbon dioxide than conventional fuels from oil.  As Western nations belatedly struggle to come to grips with the daunting challenge of radical reductions in climate changing gases, biofuels offer a theoretical solution.

What biofuels conveniently mean for America and Europe is that they can carry on driving and flying, thinking they have a clean conscience over climate change. Such is their appeal that last year the US Congress mandated a fivefold increase in their use. Europe, too, is committed to raising the share of biofuels in transport from current levels of around 2% to at least 10% by 2020.

Sam Gardiner*, 6 May 2008

Yesterday's New York Times contains an article by Michael Gordon in which he reveals information from "an American official" that Hezbollah has been training Iraqi militia fighters in a camp near Tehran.  UGH!  This is so deja vu that it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Remember Salman Pak?  That was the terrorist training camp in Iraq that was used over and over again to justify the invasion.  The parallels to this new story are striking.

First of all, it feels like the story is part of a strategic communications plan.  It is not something that happened last week.  The individuals who revealed this information were captured between September and December of last year.  A key piece of information came from a Hezbollah commander who was captured in March 2007.  He is just now talking according to the article.