Sunday, 21 August 2011
A genius for publicity
I missed it; Emma Harrison was on Radio 5 Live this morning. "This week, David Cameron's said he's going to fastrack the scheme to help 120,000 'broken families'. Double Take speaks to Emma Harrison who runs the project." And it's not available on iplayer. But the publicity machine rolls on. According to a papers review on BBC News 24, Harrison is proposing that government ministers each take on the mentoring of a "troubled family". I can't find the newspaper article, but the female journalist who brought it up (I didn't catch her name) described Harrison as "inspirational". She certainly has a genius for keeping her name in the public eye - and for making contacts with government. And no one says, "Hang on a minute. Why have the results been so bad on the contracts you've had?"
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I was unfortunate enough to catch the Emma Harrison interview on Doubletake this morning. As much the woman makes me seethe with every syllable she utters she actually managed to look incredibly stupid through a conversation with the interviewer - went a little something like this:
ReplyDelete5LiveJourno : "Ok, so lets say I've just been made redundant. What do I do?"
Emma Harrisson : "Right, so you work for the BBC"
5LJ : "Erm, yes"
EH : "Ok, so that magazine that comes around every week with appointments in it - why don't you look in that"
5LJ : "The BBC are cutting back at the moment, there's no external appointments taking place"
EH : "So you mean to tell me that there's nothing at all on offer at the BBC then?"
5LJ : "Yes"
EH : "Erm, right, ok, erm, maybe, erm, do you have shops at the end of your street? You could walk down there and apply"
Brilliant job hunting tips there from an individual who makes a mint from taxpayers money. Maybe if I had such banal observations to make I could be that rich.
See the Links stories in the news (top right)"Family champion plan a gimmick".
ReplyDeleteThe Express quotes Ms Harrison, whose company manages £300 million of government training contracts, denied the scheme was a gimmick
My advice to Ms Harrison would be never believe your own publicity. She may well find the press turning against her when some decent competent journalists do some serious investigation of her and A4e.
I accidentally deleted the following comment from West Coast:
ReplyDelete"Anita Anand did a very good job in interviewing Emma Harrison, and wasn’t the usual fluffy, no hard questions please interview, that she usually gets away with.
She was pressed quite vigorously on some of the aspects of the scheme, but as usual she side-stepped the question, and proceeded to tell the wonderful and heart-warming stories of what she has done to ‘help’ the less unfortunate. Even relaying the story of how one person she helped stopped taking drugs that very night after she had helped their family.
One aspect of her interview that did catch my attention was when she expressed to Ms. Anand, that she is not ‘political’. Even though we know that her company has paid politicians in their capacity as ‘advisors’ to her company. And that her company does attend political party conferences, to canvass support for her latest ‘get-rich-quick’ scheme, all in aid of helping the less well-fortunate of course.
Ms. Anand did get some grief on the text messages, for daring to question the merits of Emma Harrison’s latest scheme. It’s not the time after the riots to try and defend the ‘workshy’ and ‘feckless’, they deserve everything they have coming to them, in this case Emma Harrison, David Cameron’s Golden Girl.
The interview is on the iplayer. Here’s the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b013n4tq "
Bravo for this blog.
ReplyDeleteI went to a charity garden party at her house and was shocked and completely taken aback by the amount of money she has spent on the garden and a swimming pool you have never seen the likes of! She bragged that it took a year to build on a sweet little note posted on the window - but all this sweet little note did was annoy me as I know where the money came from that built it!
I doubt the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire have spent as much on Chatsworth House and what is galling is that it all comes from contracts with no clear outputs and success rates.
I know someone who went for an interview with them - and they were only interested in one thing - who he knew with access to pots of public money. That about summed the organisation up to me.