The human race could be extinct by Christmas

You have to watch the weasel words!

How likely is 'could'?

Britain is on nuclear alert at the moment, did you know that?

Well, of course it is! The Defence Council, the RAF, Royal Navy and the British Army are on constant alert. The 'four minute warning' and all that. But are they on any more alert than normal? Not as far as we know.

But you see how saying it in a particular way can create an impression in your mind?

Let's take an example closer to home. Suppose you introduce your partner as 'my current boyfriend' or 'my first wife'. Word up - be prepared to spend the night on the couch!

Words can convey a message as much by what they say as by what they don't say.

Point 1 - watch out for weasel words.

How else can you check?

Point 2 - Do your homework. Pick apart the argument. Look for the facts. Listen for the justification.

Now do you know why MICA is important? To spot trends. To look at correlation (and to distinguish it from causation). To insist on metrics. To quantify the nature of the problem. To get at the whole picture.

Be aware that facts can be deceptive when deprived of context. That's why MSBC is not just Pestle, Swot and Porter - it's about context - putting the 'facts' in perspective.

Balloon

This is taken from "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays, written in 1928. The whole book is free online and makes for fascinating reading. Bernays was the nephew of Sigmnud Freud and used some of his ideas to establish the field of Public Relations. You can find the whole book here:

http://reactor-core.org/bernays-propaganda.html#SECTION6

This is from chapter 6 and gives an indication of what Lord Mandelson might be doing (I have emboldened the relevant text):

"The public actions of America's chief executive are, if one chooses to put it that way, stage-managed. But they are chosen to represent and dramatize the man in his function as representative of the people. A political practice which has its roots in the tendency of the popular leader to follow oftener than he leads is the technique of the trial balloon which he uses in order to maintain, as he believes, his contact with the public. The politician, of course, has his ear to the ground. It might be called the clinical ear. It touches the ground and hears the disturbances of the political universe.

But he often does not know what the disturbances mean, whether they are superficial, or fundamental. So he sends up his balloon. He may send out an anonymous interview through the press. He then waits for reverberations to come from the public—a public which expresses itself in mass meetings, or resolutions, or telegrams, or even such obvious manifestations as editorials in the partisan or nonpartisan press. On the basis of these repercussions he then publicly adopts his original tentative policy, or rejects it, or modifies it to conform to the sum of public opinion which has reached him. This method is modeled on the peace feelers which were used during the war to sound out the disposition of the enemy to make peace or to test any one of a dozen other popular tendencies. It is the method commonly used by a politician before committing himself to legislation of any kind, and by a government before committing itself on foreign or domestic policies.

It is a method which has little justification. If a politician is a real leader he will be able, by the skillful use of propaganda, to lead the people, instead of following the people by means of the clumsy instrument of trial and error.

The propagandist's approach is the exact opposite of that of the politician just described. The whole basis of successful propaganda is to have an objective and then to endeavor to arrive at it through an exact knowledge of the public and modifying circumstances to manipulate and sway that public. . .

. . . Only through the wise use of propaganda will our government, considered as the continuous administrative organ of the people, be able to maintain that intimate relationship with the public which is necessary in a democracy."

This is a test to see if I can upload some material. I already have it stored on my computer and I want to make it available to a wider audience. Here goes:

I got these from a BBC website. It was a story about the different education standards in China and the UK. As is indicated, the first is a maths question for Chinese students. It is for PRE-University students.

Now here is a question for UK students for first year undergraduates:

Welcome to the blog

Hi Everyone!

Thanks for looking at this blog.

I will try to put additional details on this site and I welcome your input too. Any diagrams that you have or articles that you want to include on here, either upload or send to me and I will do it for you. It will be a fairly eclectic mix of stuff, obviously related to the course and syllabus, but maybe some other stuff you will find interesting or useful, or both.

Let's see how it goes.

Take care.


Les.