NEWS FROM THE CELTIC LEAGUE
Well given the sudden demand for politicians to be squeaky clean and open about their source material we can expect a different start to a big event next week.
All day Manx Radio ironically riding on the coat-tails of an item first flagged up on social media has been giving Onchan MHK Zac Hall the equivalent of the medieval village ducking-stool treatment.
To give the station its due it did flag up lack of originality and owned up to doing a ‘piggy-back’ job on the item referring to reports on social media (link):
https://www.manxradio.com/…/did-mhk-copy-speech-against-gay…/
Later on in the day poor old Zac got the equivalent of Manx Radio VIP treatment when they were back with a follow up and the source material had switched from some obscure religious journal in Ireland to a House of Commons speech by Conservative MP Tim Loughton. Just to demonstrate their technical prowess they overlaid both speeches. It sounded like gobbledegook to me but I’m assured they have a lot in common (make your own mind up);
https://www.manxradio.com/…/is…/did-mhk-copy-tory-mps-speech/
Poor old Zac Hall we were told was not available as he was ill. I’m not surprised he had been going in and out of that ‘media pond’ on the ducking-stool all day.
Still, back to next week, given this new propensity to demand full accountability to source from our politicians I will be waiting for Treasury Minister Eddie Teare MHK to open his budget speech by saying:
“I would first like to acknowledge that most of what I am going to say to you now was prepared by my Chief Financial Officer and her colleagues and not by me because I don’t really understand it.”
Additionally when cross referencing changes made here to the UK or elsewhere he will of course acknowledge source. It may protract the budget speech but you have to keep up standards and no one will want the Hall treatment.
Although every cloud has a silver lining because when questioned by reporters later he will be able to say ‘well I don’t know I didn’t write it’!
In coming months it will be interesting as well as all Ministers including some who have difficulty stringing a sentence together coherently will have to acknowledge which CEO or Civil Servant prepared their reply.
Is Manx Radio honestly saying that all these years they have been listening to and broadcasting Ministers stammering and stuttering over the ‘big words’ in a questions reply they think they wrote it themselves the night before – pull the other one!
I tell you who is going to be mightily peed-off with this new turn of events Allan Bell the Chief Minister. Allan likes to sound Prime Ministerial at question time. It’s going to cramp his style unmercifully to have to say:
‘I would just like to record first that this next reply was put together by Will Greenhow and the Cabinet Office team because I was taking a break and anyway I don’t know what its all about’
It will be much better to be open and honest though.
Mind you I don’t know what we are going to do about all those Hansard records from years ago which were tidied up by the transcribers to make some of the members sound semi-literate I suppose the original tapes are all gone now so we will just have to live with that distortion of history!
Photo: Manx Radio ‘piggy-backed’ the Hall story from social media so I thought I would find a suitable illustration of the genre as Zac is an airline pilot! (Shorts Mayo composite 1938).
BERNARD MOFFATT
Issued by: The Celtic News
11/02/16
THE CELTIC LEAGUE INFORMATION SERVICE.
The Celtic League established in 1961 has branches in the six Celtic Countries. It promotes cooperation between the countries and campaigns on a range of political, cultural and environmental matters. It highlights human rights abuse, military activity and socio-economic issues
