I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life

There's nothing I like better than sloppy PR - it gives me a warm feeling when people try to sneak in something under the radar to no avail.




Take Friday's late night announcement by that wonderful institution, NZX. They let the market know at 5.45pm on a Friday that they were going to have write off $20 million from the value of their TZ1 carbon registry which they sold for a stack of cash. No harm in that I suppose, but you'd expect a little more transparency from the bourse regulator about a fairly material impact on its balance sheet.



It wasn't the first time the NZX has put something out late on Friday, but the result was much more satisfying - investors weren't too keen on the announcement, and 8.9% was slashed from the share price, taking it close to a 10-month low.



That's not necessarily a good thing, as the NZX is a very well run company (if somewhat toothless regulator), but it is satisfying when something that looks like a stupid PR ploy backfires.



I can only hope our Labour Minister isn't trying something similar - she put out a fairly innocuous looking document today calling for submissions on a discussion document on Part 6A of the Employment Relations Act. Ms Wilkinson's statement says the law is required to be reviewed after three years, and "affects industries such as cleaning, food and laundry services, where work is often contracted and the change of a contract can create a restructuring or redundancy situation."



What this means, I have no idea as I can't quite draw myself to wade through the document at this stage, but a bit more clarification in the minister's release would've been nice.......



Maybe it'll be some weekend reading.....



PB.

Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste

It was only a matter of time.

And in this case, time is the essential item.

I can already hear my socialist friends chanting "slash and burn, slash and burn", because the man with the manifesto to slash red tape in the health bureaucracy has now begun his role as Minister of State Services.

Sitting at my school PC (that's what baby reporters do), I noted a scoop e-mail alert titled "Government Shared Network to be discontinued" pop through at 5.13pm.

The fact that the State Services Minister Tony Ryall is cutting the GSN ("a secure network linking government agencies with high-speed Internet and telecommunications services) is not, in and of itself, overly surprising.

Nor is the fact that the "[p]articipating government agencies will be moved to a new provider in the private sector."

The thing's losing money, and has done since its inception in 2007 (don't ask me why it was supposed to make money), so it was obviously going to be a candidate for slashing under our auspicious minister.

But 5.13pm for the press release?!? After the layout of most morning papers have been drawn up and TV's putting on the finishing touches to its 6pm bulletin?!? Hoping against hope that it gets lost in the avalanche of press releases accompanying the return of the politicians?!?

Puh-leeze - that's just plain stupid.

It looks suspicious and it draws attention to the move when it could have been sneaked through earlier in the day while all the media focus was on the RMA changes.

This is a senior minister with experienced PR professionals in his office, and it's not something that they saw at 3.30pm this afternoon, decided upon at 4.45pm, and wrote up a press release at 5.12pm.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Will the media fall for it and ignore a potential follow-up for something that looks, sounds, and smells like scuttling public sector jobs? Probably.

But it shouldn't - and touch wood, someone will pick it up and ask Mr Ryall what else is on the agenda for the slash and burn treatment.

This baby journalist would, but afterschool care's closing up, and I've got a ton of stuff to do.

Maybe I'll leave it to the professionals.... maybe...

PB.

When first we practise to deceive

I shouldn't really pass judgement on the purveyors of public relations as I spent a considerable amount of time trying to enter their hallowed ranks (only to be rebuffed at every turn), but perhaps one of our larger spinsters should wipe their fingerprints from certain releases they issue.

Network PR, a trans-Tasman comms company, is no novice. They know what they're doing, and they tend to do it very well.

Which makes me wonder why they didn't wipe their name from a press release for Tritec Manfacturing which announced the sacking of 25 workers two weeks out from Christmas.

Sure, they slipped in "Attempts have been made to minimise the impact by reducing costs", but I note Tritec didn't deem it necessary to let their public relations consultants go.

I wonder how many staff members could have kept their job if the manufacturer had penned its own press releases?

As it stands, we don't even know how much redundancy the workers will get - it looks like negotiations with the union have stalled and the workers will only get four weeks.

And to think I wouldn't have batted an eyelid at another round of lay-offs if I hadn't seen Network PR's handiwork.

Gee, I wonder what Network's rate card is looking like right now...

PB.

Blood, most certainly, is thicker than water

I like to think that I can be a productive kind of guy, but honestly, I don't know how some people are able to maintain a viable social life, keep on top of work, and keep a blog that's interesting and relevant. Mine most certainly hasn't been for quite some time.

Check out what I've been up to at NewsWire and Scoop - I've got a reason for being a tardy blogger... honestly. (Actually I don't - I'm just lazy - which you would be aware of had you delved back many many months.)

Since this is an effort to ease myself into the fine art of blogging, I wanted go to my favourite lobby group... Family First.

Today they put out this press release on the BSA ruling upholding a complaint about a gay sex scene on Shorters.

I'm going to leave the actual issue to far better minds than mine in explaining the problems with both of these pieces of literature.

I have but one problem facing me that one could possibly construe as a Monday night rant.

Go up to the Family First press release, scroll down to the fifth paragraph and read this stupid, stupid line:

"Television viewing is an integral part of family life"

There is something tragically wrong when an organisation that proclaims itself as putting the family before anything else, makes a statement like this.

It's reminiscent of Newmarket Business Association GM Cameron Brewer's wonderful phrase: "shopping these days is a favourite family leisure activity."

Bob McCroskie and Mr Brewer are not unintelligent people - why they believe such drivel will be bought by a media savvy public I do not know. Perhaps that's why they're earning the dark dollars of public relations, and I'm pursuing the relative hardship of journalism...

Anyways, when a lobbyist can convince me that watching television or exchanging currency for goods or services (most likely goods) makes an integral family leisure activity, please inform my nearest and dearest that they may need to have me committed.

If you can drag them away from the telly or the mall that is...

PB.