Max Atkinson's Blog

What happened when a student demonstrator met a former revolutionary in 1968

Today's student demonstrations have got Twitter and the blogosphere going with people recounting their memories of student demos from bygone days. So here's my two penneth.

Essex, 1968

I was at the Essex University demonstration when some mustard powder was thrown over a visiting scientist and set off a train of events that led to the temporary closure of the university.

After it had opened again, I was also present at a seminar in the sociology department where the visiting speaker was the distinguished sociologist, Professor Amitai Etzioni (above), who was visiting the UK from Columbia University.

Question time

At the end of his talk, one of the students, fresh from the heady days of closing down the university, sought to put Etzioni in has place with such arrogant confidence that both the question and the answer are still with me - more or less verbatim - more than 40 years later:

"Professor Etzoni. One doesn't have to be a theoretical genius to see that your approach is an essentially conservative one. I'd like to ask if you've ever taken a more revolutionary position and, if so, what made you change your mind?"

Unknown to the student (and many others among us at the time), the young Etzioni had been a member of the Palmach, an elite commando group of the Haganah during the years leading to the establishment of the state of Israel.

This is no doubt why he paused for quite a long time before answering:

"I don't normally talk about these things, but as you ask, I will give you my answer. Yes, I was once a revolutionary. But when I was a revolutionary, we didn't occupy university libraries and laboratories. We used bombs and guns and we used to kill people, mainly the British. As for why I gave up being a revolutionary, it was because I saw at first hand what happens to revolutionaries. They end up falling out and killing each other."

His interrogator had no further questions, and the discussion returned to Professor Etzioni's latest book.

The cost of PowerPoint presentations wastes the UK economy even more than I thought

In an attempt to work out out how much boring presentations were costing the UK economy, I came up with the figure of £7.8 billion a year (HERE).

I was aware that this was probably a serious underestimate of the actual wastage, as it was based entirely on the estimated salary cost per hour of audiences listening to such presentations, and took no account of the time spent preparing slides, hiring venues, audience travel costs getting there and back, tea, coffee, meals, accommodation, etc.

But a recent news story highlights yet further costs that I missed in my earler estimate: management consultants McKinsey & Co were paid £500,000 for a report on the Welsh National Health Service described as 'a compilation of slides', an 'appalling waste' and 'the most expensive PowerPoint presentation ever' (at £6,500 per slide) - for more on which, see HERE).

PowerPoint pioneers?
Although I noted in a recent post that I'm beginning to think that the PowerPoint problem is getting worse, with more and more companies and organisations trying to kill more and more birds with one stone (HERE), what intrigued me about this particular story was that the alleged culprits were top management consultants.

Such companies were not only among the first I ever saw using PowerPoint to collapse two key communicational tasks (written detail + spoken summary) into one, but were also completely resistant to any news or advice about how audiences react to such presentations, let alone how they could improve things.

They know best
On one occasion, I did my best to explain all the obvious problems for speakers and listeners during presentations like theirs - and made the equally obvious point that readers find slides made up of shorthand sentences arrayed as bullet points far less readable than conventionally structured written prose.

"It would work much better" I ventured to suggest "if you got one of the recent MBA graduates on your staff to prepare a detailed written (and readable) report for the client, and then give a presentation to them summarising the main findings and recommendations, and doing so in way as to motivate them to read the detailed material for themselves afterwards."

"Oh no" came back the reply. "That would take far too much time."

The real costs
I remember being amazed by the thought that the cost of this alternative approach would be a miniscule fraction of the daily rates the company was charging their clients - and that the gains being missed out on by both parties were potentially immense.

The news that one such company has just inflicted 80 slides on a public sector client at a cost of £6,500 per slide suggests that, 20 years later, little has changed.

It also points to a serious omission from my original calculation of the annual loss to the UK economy from boring presentations as a mere £7.8 billion and points to an important question that I'd failed to take into account:

How much a year are UK companies and organisations wasting on paying other companies and organisations to have their staff bored, baffled and bewildered by slide-dependent presentations?

Further research is clearly needed...

A competitor for the US landing card as the most ridiculous questionnaire of all time

Back in June, when I asked the question 'Is the US landing card the most ridiculous questionnaire of all time?', I'd seen few serious competitors.

But I hadn't then seen the latest issue of Your Mendip, a magazine distributed free to 45,000 homes (where 'free' = £0.30 per copy 3 x a year) by Mendip District Council, who are trying to get readers to fill in a questionnaire - tempting us by giving us a chance to win £100 of shopping vouchers.

CAPITA, Mendip District Council's 'business support partner', boast that they design and print the magazine. If, as seems likely, they also designed the questionnaire, it looks as though their market researchers could do with a bit of methodological training.

Look no further than Q5 in this set of options and ask yourself how you would be able to insert a tick if you hadn't read it and had already thrown it away.

The only good news is that it rather looks as though Mendip District Council and/or their 'business support partner' are hoping to discover that no one will notice if they stop publishing the magazine, thereby saving us about £40,000 a year in council tax.

Whether they get enough replies to justify such a daring decision will, I suppose, depend on how many people read far enough to put a tick in box 5. Even then, there would be a serious methodological problem - as anyone who puts a tick in the box would obviously be lying on both counts.

Maybe Mendip should now commission their 'business support partner' to do some further research into the matter ....

Would Monty Python's merchant banker have spent £1 on a poppy?

All the poppy-wearing that leads us towards Remembrance Sunday seems to make us rather more conscious of charitable giving than at other times of the year.

A couple of days ago, I found myself blogging about how the Royal British Legion could increase its revenue from poppy sales by the simple device of redesigning its collection boxes (HERE).

Today, Stephen Tall's blog raises a related question - 'How do you get young City execs to give to charity?' - that also reminded me of the Monty Python sketch, in which a charity collector tries to get a merchant banker to donate £1 (still the 'going rate' for a poppy 35 years later) to a worthy cause.

An exaggerated case of miserliness perhaps - but anyone who's ever done any collecting for a charity will know that the correlation between the wealth of donors and the generosity of their donations is, to say the least, rather weak.

You can fault Harman's ginger' jibe, but you can't fault her rhetoric

Whatever you might have thought about hearing the politically correct Harriet Harman referring to Danny Alexander as a 'ginger rodent', the offending sequence was a technically very effective example of how to use the Puzzle-Solution technique to trigger applause (see HERE for a fuller description and more video examples).

It's based on the very simple principle that, if you say something that gets the audience wondering what's coming next, they'll listen more attentively and, if it's a good 'solution', they'll applaud it.

Combining two rhetorical techniques

It can work even better if you use the second part of another rhetorical technique - the contrast - to set up the puzzle.

And that's what happened in this case: the first part of the contrast refers to something they all love - the red squirrel - and the second part contrasts it with something (yet to be named) that they never want to see again.

Setting it up in this way enables the audience to anticipate where it's going early enough to start clapping when she's only half-way through the puzzle - so that she has to deliver the solution against a rising tide of applause:

[A] Many of us in the Labour Party are conservationists and we all love the red squirrel.

[B] [PUZZLE] But there is one ginger rodent that we never want to see again in the Highlands:

[SOLUTION] Danny Alexander.

Or a contrast can provide the solution to a puzzle:

An alternative way of combining these rhetorical techniques is to pose a puzzle and then solve it with a contrast, as in this example from Margaret Thatcher at the start of the 1987 general election:

PUZZLE: From the Labour Party expect the iceberg manifesto.
SOLUTION:
[A] One tenth of its socialism visible.
[B] Nine tenths beneath the surface.

Time to redesign poppy collection boxes to increase donations to the British Legion

The Royal British Legion, like so many charities, issues its collectors with boxes on which the slit in the top is so small that it shouts out "coins", rather than "notes".

Having just returned from doing her rounds, my wife reports that the 'going rate' is a £1 coin - with three notable exceptions. There was one professional miser, who paid 65 pence (£0.65) in small coins before helping himself to three poppies. One old age pensioner donated a £5 note and another (94 year old) handed over a £10 note for one poppy.

Time to redesign the box

Given the design of the coin box, this doesn't surprise me at all - not only because the meagre slit so obviously encourages meagre donations, but also because it takes determination and a degree of manual dexterity to get a note to go in at all.

With the fiver, our smallest note (both in size and denomination), you either have to fold it long-ways before threading it through the slot, or, if you fold it sideways, you have to fold it again before it will fit into the slit. By the time you've done that, it becomes so fat that it takes yet more effort to push it down into the container.

Two new collection box design features

1. A wider and thicker slit

To urge donors to give notes rather than coins, all that's needed is a slit that's considerably wider and thicker than the present one. I've checked this out, and there's quite enough space on the top of the existing collecting boxes to make the hole long enough to accommodate a £20 note (inserted long-ways from one end).

2 A transparent lid or sides

The pressure on people to hand over a note rather than a £1 coin could be increased by issuing collectors with a float of a few £5 and £10 notes that would be clearly visible to prospective donors through the top and/or sides of the box.

The cost of such a redesign would surely be negligible, but the gains from persuading more people to give notes rather than coins could be very considerable indeed. After all, when our lowest denomination note is 5 times greater than the £1 coin, you only need to collect a few more of them to see a dramatic increase in total revenue.

P.S. 25 October 2011

I wrote to the British Legion about this last year, but received no reply. Collection boxes identical to those used last year have now arrived on our doorstep. So I'll have to try again in the hopes that they'll redesign it in time for next year's poppy appeal.

P.P.S. 24 October 2012
Last year's efforts, alas, failed again and the British Legion is still insisting on issuing these useless collection boxes. At a local meeting of the Legion a couple of weeks ago, I complained that they never replied to a suggestion that seems to have widespread support. The explanation (from a former officer) was that the organisation is run by NCOs who don't have much of a clue about things like - er - fund-raising...

P.P.P.S. 25 October 2012
Publicity via Twitter has prompted some emails that support the view that all may not be well at British Legion HQ. One said:

'Sadly the Legion is somewhere in the dark ages as to commercial acumen and sense. As always in monolithic organisations, there is strong resistance to change.

'It is clear that there is a marketing department somewhere in its bowels. but they appear to be more concerned with the glitzy bits like getting celebs to do launches and tacky goods like brollys.'

Another says that the official launch in London was a bit short on poppy sellers:

'I was at Trafalgar Square just after the launch yesterday. Hordes of folk about, quite a few wounded veterans, press, celebs, stewards, etc. but only ONE poppy seller... yet another opportunity missed.'

And one defends my position (for which thanks):

'Shameful on three grounds:

Patently obvious simple common sense.
Appalling lack of commercial nous by British Legion management.
Unforgivable lack of courtesy by management's failure to reply - even if they [wrongly] disagreed.'

Free tips for speakers from behind the Murdoch paywall

Having bought a hard copy of The Times earlier today, I'd already read the leaked tips to Labour leader Ed Miliband about how he should handle Prime Minister's Question Time and the various ploys that David Cameron was most likely to use in 'replying' to 'questions'.

But when I saw this Sky News report on PMQ, I began to wonder why I'd bothered to buy it.

I also thought there was something vaguely odd about one Murdoch outlet (Sky News) telling viewers what they could have read had they paid for it by buying another (The Times) and/or by paying to go behind their paywall to read the story online.

Apart from the amusement of seeing David Cameron reading out extracts from The Times, the high spot for me was hearing Ed Miliband (yet again) using one of his favourite youthful lines when he said that the PM just "doesn't get it" (31 seconds in) - unlike Mr Miliband himself, who "got it" no less than six times in quick succession during his Labour Party leadership acceptance speech (HERE).

The tips leaked to The Times had no warnings about overdoing lines that sound as if he's trying to endear himself to younger voters. Nor did they suggest that he should make more effort to pronounce his 't's and cut down on glo'al stops that are unlikely to appeal to anyone but speakers of 'Estuary English'.

For what they're worth, these are the (free) tips that I'd be urging on him in the weeks and months ahead...

Recent Miliband posts:

Recent Cameron posts: