It takes quite a lot to get me wound up. Well that’s what I think. So there.
But a story on BBC’s website slipped, very easily, straight beneath my skin and pushed my ‘React’ button.
And here’s why. And this might surprise you.
The Taxpayers Alliance are getting their knickers in a knot about local authorities and their spending on ‘publicity’.
The Taxpayers Alliance have got a little information from just a few local authorities and have extrapolated that across every local authority in the country, in a ‘mean average’ kind of way.
So it’s not exactly accurate data and that’s an important point to make.
The second, far more important point is the definition of ‘publicity’, and we need to examine this – we really do, it’s bloody important!
Under local authority accounting regulations as laid down by the Audit Commission (prop: Her Majesty’s Government), financial outlay on ‘publicity’ is defined as, and I quote from the Local Government Handbook (1993 – it’s the only copy I could get hold of at such short notice – thank goodness the library had a copy!):
“any communication, in whatever form (that is) addressed to the public at large or to a section of the public”.
So that’s mail-outs to tell people about changes in service whether upwards or downwards, or communicating variations in office hours or venues or letters to school pupils or youth centre newsletters and – wait for it – all public-facing web-developments.
The Taxpayers Alliance doesn’t come right out and say that they don’t want local authorities to communicate to the public, but they are ‘… incredibly disappointed…’ at the figures.
Arseholes.
The third, and most important fact to give anyone who picks up the story is that in a list of spending on anything it is very likely that Birmingham City Council will always come top.
This is because Birmingham City Council is the largest local authority in the United Kingdom.
Yeah, it really is.
The housing department of Birmingham City Council deals with more people than the entire number of people that the London Borough of Camden has on their books.
So when you’re talking about Birmingham, get used to reading really big numbers. And, at the same time take some comfort in economies of scale.
I hate bad journalism. This piece from the BBC is just a faithful hashup of the Taxpayers Alliance press release, and contains the most half-hearted attempt at explanation of ‘spend by category’ and absolutely no attempt to explain size of spend.
Lazy journalists = lazy journalism.
B.
“The Taxpayer’s Alliance have got a little information from just a few local authorities and have extrapolated that across every local authority in the country, in a ‘mean average’ kind of way.”
Have you read the report? If you do, you will find that we have got information from 445 councils – that’s 95% of all councils in the UK. The figure is not an extrapolation at all – we could have extrapolated for the 5% of councils who haven’t published their accounts yet but we chose not to.
OK Mark, I’m never too big to admit I got a minor detail wrong, I was clearly mistaken when I said ‘a few’. However as you haven’t extracted the data from all local authorities, you either need to make exceedingly clear that your figures do not apply to all local authorities or you need to put the word ‘extrapolation’ in.
And how about admitting my point regarding lazy BBC journalism in making no attempt to explain the size/spend ratio?
And how about your organisation making a public declaration on whether local authorities should spend on communicating with their service users or not?
My beef, to underscore my point, is not with your organisation – though the concept of local authorities not communicating with the public is deeply concerning (and I suspect such an event would concern your organisation too!). My beef is entirely with exceedingly sloppy journalism by the BBC who (as a news organisation) has made absolutely no attempt to explain the detail – why some local authorities would have spent more than others.
Lazy, sloppy journalism.
Bad journalism is tragic and simply reduces public faith in the information they receive.
Guess it’s just easier for Pravda to push out the report with no conscious thought or explanation – and get a tasty headline that drives more traffic – than actually do the job.
Good spot and well challenged Sir.
D
again, there is no extrapolation involved whatsoever. as for taking the size of authority into account, we do that, too. by the entry for each authority is their ranking by population and by publicity spend. they are coloured green if they are lower on the spending ranking than their population would suggest, and red if they are higher than population would dictate. on top of that we have assessed good/bad performance by percetage change on last year’s total. on the issue of is publicity a bad thing altogether, no- some is clearly needed but plenty is frivolous and should be reduced (hence the fact that 218 councils managed to reduce spending year on year). on the lazy journalism front, every council has an opportunity to respond to the report and hundreds have done – they have quite well funded comms departments!
Mark, you seem to have some bizarre notion that it is the job of some other organisation to do the BBC’s journalism for them.
Peculiar.
And also, no accounting for trend spending and process improvement spending – i.e. a big capital spend on a web development in year zero will bring the benefit of reduced revenue spend in years 1, 2 and 3.
As someone who deals professionally with information in the public and private domains I have to say that the lack of transparency around this presentation is very, very shoddy. This is Daily Mail fodder, anyone with a brain can see that.
But I really expected better from the BBC, though with their continual dumbing down I’m not sure why I’m surprised after all.
The Taxpayers’ Alliance is generally known as a bunch of right wingnuts disguising themselves as some sort of grassroots, man-in-the street organisation:
They’re so laughably unrepresentative of opinion among the general public that outrage against their nonsensical outbursts has spawned an alternative taxpayers’ alliance:
Did someone mention transparency?