Rumours, myths, lies and smears have always spread widely in a wide variety of societies throughout history. In Rome graffiti could smear a neighbour or a Senator and quiet chats in the bathhouse could spread them further.

In 18^th C France they provoked riots and helped inspire a revolution. In 20^th C Britain they suppressed opposition to the hanging of Roger Casement although in the latter case the information provided was true – just appalling to the hypocritical moralists of the day.  Liberals spread some pretty disgusting smears about Paul Keating and Julia Gillard probably suffered more from the same sort of stuff than any Australian PM. In recent months the same has happened to Bill Shorten with various people assuring the blog that the ‘shocking facts’ about his past with some girl would bring him down. We now know what the allegations were and, although Shorten has denied it all and the police are taking no action, we can expect more of the same – perhaps even with News tabloids leading the way probably without the self-righteous attitude to disclosure shown over the leaking of their accounts and more the initial insouciance with which they treated phone hacking and payments to Inspector Plod. read more

There is little doubt that the Australian superannuation system is a terrific boon – well at least to banks, superannuation managers, trustees, consultants and just about everyone associated with the system other than the people whose superannuation savings the aforementioned siphon off in fees, charges and other things. read more

For much of the history of western countries the default method of dealing with dissent was repression. While that’s still common outside the West, with usually fatal consequences, Western dissent today is generally controlled more by condescension and clever framing than overt repression.

Marxists see the manufacture of consent, as Chomsky put it, as manifestations of the theory of hegemony but that theory has its limitations in a world in which diverse communication channels make it harder and harder to effectively churn out the propaganda which produces false consciousness in the society. This reality may explain why the Murdoch media is becoming more and more hysterical, particularly about the ABC, and as its belief in freedom of speech for Andrew Bolt is hypocritically contrasted with demands for the sacking of anyone who expresses views with which the group disapproves. Mark Latham’s new book, The Political Bubble, is a good guide to how, and how often, that occurs. read more

‘…and so it begins’ was the subject line of an email from Tony Jaques yesterday, the centenary of the official start of World War I.

In Australia, the WWI commemoration is the world’s most expensive – more than either the British or the French are spending – and a bizarrely bipartisan product for which the planning  started under the Rudd-Gillard governments. read more

One of the problems of predictions and probabilities is that the former tend to be wrong (particularly when made by the famous) and the latter are only probable, not certain and highly susceptible to random events.

The blog was reminded of both realities by some new research on predictions by government analysts and recent Victorian political events which could shift the probabilities of a change of government in the State. The reality about predictive failures were exposed by the 2005 release of a 20 year study by Philip Tetlock (see blogs passim) which showed that the performance of experts making predictions was not much better than chance and that the more famous a pundit the more likely they were to be off the money. read more

One of the curious things about risk is the fact that it is much harder to get people worried about real risks than it is to get them to stop worrying about something which is not really a major concern.

That thought came originally from Peter Sandman, the risk expert the blog referred to a while ago in discussing the paradoxical case of the local gasworks park where the populace was saying it was safe and the official body, the Council, was saying it was not because of contamination from decades ago. read more

Are people sick of politics, sick of the way it is practised, sick of the way it is reported in the media or some combination of all of the above? For the blog it’s mainly media coverage and the obsessive and largely irrelevant speculation and prediction which accompanies it. Indeed, about the only reason for reading most political reportage is to identify who inspired it, why, and whether as a result it is likely to be wrong or right. read more

The distinguished historian, John Poynter, has added another piece to the jigsaw which is Australian PR history with his new biography of L.L. Smith.

The book, The Audacious Adventures of Dr Louis Lawrence Smith, is another example of how mainstream historians are including depictions of how people, regimes, organisations and power are represented through strategies and tactics which Dr Tom Watson has dubbed proto-PR. The Poynter biography is of a remarkable Victorian who was, as Poynter says, “a doctor, an art collector, politician, writer, publisher, speculator, vigneron, farmer, breeder and rider of racehorses, and finally, guiding hand got thirty years of Melbourne’s great exhibition complex.” He was also a gifted publicist whose often brilliant promotions marked every stage of his career. read more

Risk communication may well be the hardest thing most PR practitioners will ever need to do. The complexities of innumeracy, emotion, confusion and deliberate distortion which bedevil most risk communication problems present massive problems for practitioners.

Recently the blog has seen just how difficult it can be, and just how perceptions can change according to the standpoint of the protagonists, sometimes in the most paradoxical ways. The blog’s local council is proposing to remediate a local park and arts centre by removing the park soil and trees; removing underlying  contaminants; putting in a new layer of soil; and, replanting the garden. The park and arts centre were once the site of a Victorian Gas & Fuel operation which was closed with the advent of natural gas and rationalisation of operations and converted into a park. The historic buildings on the site are now a flourishing arts complex which the blog supports. read more

One of the paradoxes of the communications business is that when you are working within organisations everyone has an opinion on what the communication problems are, how they should be fixed and how if they are fixed all the other problems will go away. Yet when it comes to observing politics the blog has found people are far less certain – although politicians themselves do tend to blame communications rather than policy or anything else if they are travelling badly in the polls. read more