Keep it Simple Stupid!

Government press releases are getting longer and longer and more and more boring.  A distinction must be drawn, however, between press releases by a government that are intended to be informative and those that are issued at a party political level whose objective are to convince the voting public.  This distinction does not apply to politicians or political parties that do not form part of the governing party.  Their mission must be exclusively to convince the voting public to change the government at the next election.  This is not achieved best by long, argumentative and uninteresting press releases.

By way of example, the Chronic of the 14th April 2010 carried a piece, following a press release by the Hon Joseph Garcia, under the headline "Govt Aviation Policy 'in tatters' Says Garcia".  In essence all that this press release said was: flights to Madrid started by GB Airways, Iberia and Air Andalus have all falied, so the GSD Goverment was spending too much on an air terminal and the GSD Government was misspending our money of which they are our custodians or trustees. 

Why could he have not just said this?  No, instead readers had to wade through more than 18 column inches (approx 45 cms for those who prefer metric) to get the message!  When will our politicians understand that what they should do is get their message across to the voting public as clearly as possible and using the least number of words possible?  Public opinion is not changed by long winded arguments made in press releases nor is the public's attention gained in this manner. 

To use a military cliche "KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID!".

In fairness it must be said that for those who got through all the Oppositions column inches, the PDP had done exactly that ... keep the same message short and simple.  The unfairness to the PDP is that the Chronic chose to publish the PDP's criticism of the GSD Government at the very end of the inordinate number of column inches given to the GSLP/Liberal Opposition, so how many readers got that far?

This blog carried essentially the same message, as that given by the GSLP/Liberals and the PDP in the press releases referred to, before any of the politicians (see "When Politics and Business don't Mix", 2nd April 2010). Perhaps, at that time, all our politicians were on their Easter Holidays ... I wonder where!


In order not to fall foul of my own advice to others I shall stop and myself ... KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID!