Pravda on the rates

There is a beautifully camp scene in an old 1960s episode of Doctor Who, where Patrick Troughton, locked in a cave full of cybermen, is confronted with the treachery of two human logicians, who have deliberately sabotaged their comrades' spaceship in order to give them time to build an alliance with the ice-cold creatures of steel. Why on earth do you believe the cybermen will form an alliance with you? asks the Doctor, in bemused horror. Because we're logicians, and because such an alliance makes sense, they reply: everything yields to logic, doc-torrrr.

I was quite powerfully moved by that scene as a child, and it probably had more to do with my ultimate choice of career as a statistician as anything else. Secretly, shamefully, I rather empathised with the logical humans. It's taken many years of therapy (aka "life") for me to discover that love is somewhat more important than critical thinking. However, I do retain a sincere belief that evidence, measured numerically, can tell us something real about the hidden motivations of politicians. Please don't quote Disraeli at me: even he wasn't right about everything.

So I'd like to use my first Centre-Right contribution to point you towards a really interesting piece of statistical analysis, which reveals something we may have suspected about the motivations of leftwing politicians. Ben Locker, writer and blogger of this parish, has analysed the relationship between per capita spending on Borough Council "free"sheets and the political colour of the councils involved. In light of Mayor Johnson's decision to scrap the Londoner, that Pravda-esque disquisition on the joys of socialism as applied to council services, what are we to make of Ben's finding that, surprise surprise, Labour councils spend more per head on their propaganda sheets than do Tory ones? (About £1.77 per head in Labour councils v 70p in Tory areas). Rejoice, of course; celebrate Mayor Johnson's decision as a confirmation of our correctly-held prejudice, that Tory councils and mayors will waste less taxpayer money on vainglorious projects than do their Labour counterparts.

But what of Ben's other finding: that the propaganda is effective? Labour councils which spend more of our money on these newspapers are more effective at keeping their vote up and retaining control of their boroughs. The "incumbency effect" isn't just psychological: the increased spending of taxpayer money on political propaganda has a measurable effect on the outcome of elections. Take a look at the expression of concern on the face of Hackney Labour mayor Jules Pipe, on the front page of Hackney Toady Today, using ratepayers' money to tell us how hard he's fighting to keep the local post office open. That's a post office his government elected to close, a decision our Labour MP supported - though you wouldn't know that from the "news"paper.

What should we do? Should it be illegal to propagandise on the rates? This hardly sits well with a localist agenda. Local associations in constituencies suffering the blight of a Labour council, though, should check out the figures for their area, make the obvious pledge to scrap the newspaper concerned, and relentlessly highlight this fact on every piece of literature disseminated to their voters.

Comments

[Prentiz]

At first glance that Hackney sheet looks in breach of the local authority publicity code to me - publications can't have persuasive effect - particularly not on controversial issues. I would think someone from that borough might like to report them to the District Auditor... The Government is having a "review" of the publicity code at the minute - I wouldn't be surprised if they liberalised the restrictions on council communications to allow more promotion of policy, but perhaps the sea of blue in local councils will dissuade them...

[Peter Golds]

Tower Hamlets Council publishes a weekly (yes weekly, this is not a typo)freesheet called East End Life. They then employ an army of deliverers to clog up letterboxes every weekend (yes, every weekend)

It was the brainchild of teh former Hackney officer who invented the legendary phrase, "you cannot polich a turd"

The problem is where does information stop and political PR start?

We need to answer that

[Mark Wallace]

This is an interesting study, and it is shocking the amount of money councils spend on propaganda sheets. It's unfortunate the detailed figures are only available so far for London Boroughs - we've got the total figure for publicity spending for the vast majority of councils across the country here: http://tpa.typepad.com/home/files/council_spending_uncovered_1_publicity.pdf

[Phil Taylor]

Graeme,

In a way this is not problem in local authorities because good old Nicholas Ridley gave us the 1986 Local Government Act. Under the terms of Section (5)1 of the Local Government Act 1986 (Part II) local authorities are required to keep a separate account of expenditure on publicity.

This makes the whole thing pretty transparent and it really is up to voters and local politicians to debate this issue and decide what is a sensible level of expenditure. In Ealing where I am a councillor we have kept on the previous Labour administration's monthly publication because it really is a good way of disseminating stuff like holiday changes to rubbish collections, consultations, summer events, you name it. The officers keep us pretty straight in terms of ensuring we don't overstep the line into the area of political propaganda. You can make these things pretty much wash their face if you control costs and pull in some advertising. Do not underestimate the public's ability to spot propaganda on the rates and punish you for it.

One of the problems with the old London Mayor and his "GLA family" was that they were not bound by this legislation and especially TfL was totally out of control in its advertising spending.

Lying Livingstone published a "voluntary" Section 5 statement for the GLA last year showing they spent £2.9 million in total. This is about the same as the total cost of the Londoner. What the old Mayor did not tell you is that he taxed TfL £1.5 million, the LDA £500K and the Met £250K for their ineffective ads in the Londoner. Notably the Fire Brigade were sufficiently independent of the Mayor to tell him to bog off. Anyway you can add £2.25 million to the Mayor's number straight away. You might add the £3 million spent on advertising the Tour de France, etc. A few years ago TfL pretended to publish a "voluntary" Section 5 number only it was a total lie which was about an order of magnitude less than the real number. The LDA will tell you what they spend centrally but will not include programme related spending.

Overall the old Mayor spent about £100 million on advertising last year. What a creep?

[Ben Locker]

Thanks for mentioning my post, Graeme.

I take Phil Taylor's point that borough publications can be a handy way of keeping in touch with residents. That said, here in Hackney we get additional leaflets in the post to inform us about bin/recycling collections, whilst details of important consultations are sometimes buried in the pages of Hackney Today. Last year I went to a public meeting in which over 100 residents were up in arms because they'd not heard about a planning consultation, and because it was too late to comment on it.

Ealing, by my figures, was spending a reasonable £1 per head on the council newspaper back in 2005. That's far divorced from the disgraceful £6.50 per head spent by Greenwich and the £4.42 per head spent by Newham. And as Prentiz points out above, does Tower Hamlets really need to dish out its freesheet on a weekly basis?

I don't think it's really a council's role to spend money on giving us events listings we can get elsewhere. There is also - amazingly - very real confusion in some residents' minds about who produces the freesheets.

Personally, I'd rather everyone was sent a double sided page of A4 every couple of months or so, containing important dates, rubbish collections, councillors' surgeries, consultations etc. At least that would have as much chance of being pinned on a noticeboard or stuck to a fridge, rather than chucked out with the recycling.

But if freesheets must continue, I'd rather see them funded by advertising. That way the cost to the taxpayer becomes nil, and the publication also supports local businesses.