The construction industry forecast at a glance

If like me a juicy stat gets you all wide eyed and interested, then you’ll understand how I felt yesterday when the latest construction industry forecast landed on my desk.

Whilst I’m a stickler for good bit of technical detail, I do believe that sometimes it’s just not necessary and this is definitely one of those occasions. I could probably rewrite the entire forecast into a quarter of its current pages and you’d still walk away well informed and a bit depressed at the state of the economy, so hell, let’s go one step further and list it in bullet points!

Here are the bits that I found most interesting. Be warned, it doesn’t make for pleasant
reading.

· Six months ago the UK economy was forecast to increase by 2.5%, but this was revised down to just 0.7% in time for us to see in the New Year – apparently that’s still optimistic

· Unemployment is set to rise by another 2.8million this year which is pretty scary considering household disposable income has fallen for five consecutive quarters already

· The construction industry is set to fall by 5.2% this year and will remain flat throughout 2013. It’s not all bad news though, it’s forecast to grow by 3.8% in 2014 followed by 4.6% in 2015. This will most likely be the start of a healthy year on year increase because 2015 is the year in which 85% of the £4.7 billion pound construction industry ‘boost’ promised by the Coalition Government will become available

· Commercial construction has been propped up by the Olympic development in central London but we’ll see a 5% fall when that ends this year. This sector will also be hit by the administration of Battersea Power Station which will wipe out the planned £4.5 billion regeneration

· Construction in the education sector is likely to fall by 35% before 2014 despite a £1.2 billion investment this year. Half of which will be spent on building 100 free schools

· The construction of healthcare facilities will fall by 40% before 2014

· Private housing construction will increase by 2% in 2012 and a boost of 29% is forecast for between 2013 – 2015

· Rail construction is expected to rise by a whopping 90% between now and 2015 and construction within the energy generation sector will increase threefold

Once my cuppa had gone cold and I’d defaced my copy of the forecast to within an inch of its
life with notes and highlighters, I sat and thought for a moment.

I certainly didn’t feel the suffocation of impending doom like I did a few years ago, but don’t get me wrong, we’re not out of the woods just yet. It looks like we’ve got another two years to get through before things really start to pick up economically.

What’s the answer? Kettle on, heads down and move forward. We’ll get there.

Chill offensive launched on the UK’s supermarkets

For years we have been warned of the growing power of ‘super’-markets and their callous ability to shape the UK’s high street, so it was with a small smile that the retail and leisure team at Willoughby PR learnt of the latest initiative from online giant Amazon.

According to Retail Week last week, after hiring Doug Gurr for his experience in developing an online channel for another leading supermarket brand, Amazon is now planning to sell chill foods and is in the process of testing trial delivery routes... a move that is surely going to send a chill up the spine of our superstores.

Whilst Amazon has neither denied nor confirmed the plans, this latest development would see the UK arm mirroring that of its bigger sister in America, which is already selling and delivering chilled food.

Not against the growing supermarket conglomerates, our initial small smile was merely that of a spectator sitting back awaiting the battle to commence; after all everyone likes a spot of healthy rivalry. Amazon already has the muscle, the online presence, the competitive prices and the next day delivery channels, so a move into chilled foods is surely just another tick in the box for them.

It is also a click in the right direction for consumers. More choice will make online shopping even more competitive and drive prices down for purchasers, which can only be a good thing.

Now that the cat appears to have been let out of the bag, we await with bated breath the imminent announcement from the e-tail giant. However if all goes to plan, it would appear that with Amazon you can now have your cake and eat it!

Coalition Splits: fact or media strategy?

I listened to Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Rachel Reeves, speak at a lunchtime meeting at KPMG in Birmingham on Friday on the state of the British economy (she thinks George, as you would expect, needs a Plan B).

Anyway, amidst some interesting perspectives on the economy and the UK’s relationships with the rest of Europe, she made a very interesting point about the current travails of the Labour Party. “It is” she said “very difficult to get your case heard when all the media talks about is potential splits in the Coalition.”

This got me thinking, because there appears, at the moment, to be very little downside for the Coalition when a split story appears. Firstly, split stories highlight the separate identity of the Liberal Democrats. What’s more these stories play into the hands of the Tory leadership who are able to say to their more radical parliamentary colleagues “look, we’d like to be more radical but the LibDems won’t let us!”

Furthermore, the Westminster lobby loves a good story about rows and tantrum throwing, much more than a story about policy (yawn!). Finally, and most importantly, from a Coalition point of view, talk of potential splits drowns out what the Opposition has to say on any given issue. Why go looking for a contrarian view when a good row is served up to you on a plate!

So, I ask the question, are these splits factual or are they part of an overall media strategy? I’m beginning to err on the side of the latter. Last week the Deputy Prime Minister basked in good headlines for his championing of the abolition of the £10,000 tax band, which provoked much ‘analysis’ from Westminster commentators suggesting that the Chancellor would not be best pleased. By Friday, it turned out that the Treasury had approved the Deputy Prime Minister’s speech in advance.

I’ll let you decide for yourself!

PS: a quick take on Stephen Hester’s bonus. The big political issue here is not whether Stephen deserves it or whether he feels sufficiently incentivised by his £1.2 million base salary. No, the big issue is that the Prime Minister talked of ‘moral markets’ and giving power back to shareholders over remuneration whilst allowing Stephen to pocket a £963,000 bonus whilst in charge of a nationalised bank. That is a credibility gap!

Another day another Facebook privacy issue, but this time have they gone too far?

Until now, Facebook’s Timeline has been voluntary, but Mark Zuckerberg has announced that in the next seven days the feature will become compulsory and users will have seven days to delete any unwanted content before it’s laid bare for all to see. 

 The social media giant’s Timeline was first rolled out last year , and users have been given the chance to have a play with the new features before committing, but recent movements have sparked concern about privacy on the network, with many users unhappy that their every move is being put in a virtual museum.

Zuckerberg announced the changes during last September’s f8 Conference and insisted that people wanted to ‘share their entire lives’ and have ‘total control’ over how users’ content appeared.  His argument was that people are now documenting their entire lives on Facebook, but once the information falls off the current profile page, memories are getting lost; hence the invention of Timeline.

It can’t be denied that people are investing an awful lot in Facebook in terms of conversations, photos, videos, etc, (which is one of the reasons I think Facebook will be around for a long time to come) but is part of that appeal the fact everyone is exposed to your movements? Or is it simply because you and a chosen few can access it, on the occasions you need to? Some comments being bandied around are very black and white – if you want privacy, don’t have a Facebook account. But now that people do have this sentimental investment in the platform, it’s not that easy to just deactivate your account. I’m sure most of the 800 million users enjoy their Facebook account, but they don’t necessarily want to share every single element of their lives with the world.

I jumped on the Timeline bandwagon fairly early (and I admit it took me a while to get used to) but none of my Facebook friends seemed to follow suit, and still now there are only a handful that have embraced the new look, which suggest most remain cautious.

Privacy issues aside, my fear is that some users will try and ignore the imminent change and in seven days time will have a profile full of information they’d rather have kept hidden. Another concern is that the Timeline feature is radically different to the existing layout - previous changes have riled many users, but they haven’t actually forced huge changes. I’m not sure every Facebook user is going to fancy getting to grips with something so different.

For me the jury is still out, and only time will tell if this latest move will be a success, or whether this time Facebook has gone a step too far.

Jordan and Snickers UK Twitter stunt – a PR success or #Fail?

As celebrities fearlessly spout forth from the digital roundtable of life, it is expected that amongst the publicity-vetted blandness of the regular tweet, there will be on occasion, a 140 character gem.

If you are one of @MissKatiePrice’s, aka Jordan’s, 1.5m followers, this will no doubt have been the case on Sunday. I don’t believe I was alone in dropping my cup of tea as @MissKatiePrice informed me that “Large scale quantitative easing in 2012 could distort liquidity of Govt. bond market. #justsaying.” The economic aphorisms and astute comments continued throughout the day, making for an altogether rather refreshing break from the usual inane musings on horse-riding, celebrity big brother, sugar, spice and all things nice (…or pink!).

By the time Jordan had commented on the Chinese GDP I think most people had presumed some sort of twitter-jacking or account hacking had occurred – but who knew it was actually a PR stunt by Mars owned chocolate bar, Snickers.

@MissKatiePrice then tweeted the following:

“You’re not you when you’re hungry @SnickersUK #hungry #spon http://lockerz.com/s/176796815”

So far, big brands only seem to be pouring investments into promoted tweets to generate ‘buzz,’ so I for one found the whole thing quite refreshing and imaginative. Clearly, based on the consequent reverberations across the social web, the success of the stunt on the whole (which apparently also includes @AmirKingKhan, @BeefyBotham, @RioFerdy5 and @Cherlloyd) is still up for debate, if not already deemed a #fail.

According to most interpretations, the stunt suggests that not only does a Snickers bar restore you to normality; it also relieves you of serious, worthwhile opinions, inducing somewhat more vacuous cultural observations – i.e. underwear and celebs. It's also worth noting that fellow celebrity tweeter @Cherlloyd had her fans 'Snickers in a twist' by tweeting her discovery of Russian Literature but was post Snicker consumption, restored to her regular 'swagger jagger' like antics ...

Yes, @SnickersUK have now become the bête noir for many a disapproving tweeter – the brand insulted Katie Price’s intelligence (hmmmm) and further insinuated that eating a Snickers bar makes you unintelligent and inane (a bit harsh, @MissKatiePrice does have 1.5m followers who quite enjoy her regular micro-blogging activity and as far as I see it, she is quite commercially savvy in her own right).

I say kudos to Miss Price for her good humour in all of this and well done to Snickers UK for getting everyone talking – including a piece in The Sun. The message may be up for debate but I have a sneaky feeling Snickers UK don’t mind that at all. But, what do you think?

2012 – The year of the Tweeting Twit

Let’s all be honest, when celebrities first got on Twitter, fearlessly spouting forth from the round table of life, it was quite satisfying to see the occasional fall from grace in the form of an all too honest tweet. Twitter, quite expertly liberalised us from the age of publicity-vetted blandness - note @RupertMurdoch’s most recent tirade against Obama and Google recently blogged about here. However, it would appear that politicians too are falling victim to stupidity’s tendency to go viral! 

Yes, it’s been a bit of a false start to the Olympic year for some of Britain’s more politically motivated Twitterati! There’s been a triple entente of 140 character social media faux pas’ already, ending in nationwide trending hash tags - effectively a mass digital sniggering from the online populace.

So strike one: Diane Abbot (@HackneyAbbott) tweets, “'White people love playing 'divide & rule. We should not play their game #tacticasoldascolonialism.” With racial tension resurfacing amidst the Stephen Lawrence murder trial, it’s safe to say @HackneyAbbott was justifiably the first tweeting twit of the year.

Strike two: You’d think the calls for Abbott to resign after her 140 character fail would have resulted in slightly more diligent proofreading. At the very least the party leader would make sure the messages he pushed through the channel were fitting. Well, no. Ed Miliband (or someone in his digital team) let loose a rather inconvenient Freudian slip in a tweeted tribute to Bob Holness. Safe to say, Bob won’t be fondly remembered for ‘Blackbusters.’ Tweeting twit number two.

Strike three: MP Tom Harris, the Labour party’s ‘social media guru’ or ‘Twitter tsar’ (these titles are already open to debate after strike’s one and two) tweets a Downfall parody of SNP leader Alex Salmond and is forced to resign. If there is a no go area in UK politics it is Mein Führer. You’d think a social guru would have been aware of the parameters within which to operate such digital prowess. At least we found the source of the problem - tweeting wit number three.

Fact of the matter is, these are all fairly regular, minor gaffes (bar the Hitler one from MP Tom Harris, that was plain idiotic), but with quite large repercussions online. Quite simply, when you’re something of a someone on social media the key is to remember that age old adage and ‘think before you tweet.’

Rupert doesn’t get the internet, but it doesn’t stop him hating it!

Good to see Rupert Murdoch in the news again, tweeting away with a careless abandon that must be giving News Corporation’s communications people a nervous tic every time another little missive pops up.

Rupert’s latest 140 character musing involves his current bête noir, namely Google, who have previously been described by Rupert and his lieutenants as "leeches", "pirates", “bloodsuckers”, you get the drift!

A few days ago Rupert tweeted the following, “Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying.”

Now Rupert is a little bit confused here as Google obviously does not pirate or serve pirated content and certainly doesn't sell advertising on it. All Google does is help you find the content, pirated or not.

However, never one to let facts get in the way of a good story (a little Leveson allusion there readers!) Rupert ploughs on. “Just been to Google search for mission impossible. Wow, several sites offering free links. I rest my case.”

Oh dear, memo to Wendi: You really do need to wrestle that keyboard off him!

Now I’m not in the habit of making fun of octogenarians but there is a wider point here. Currently going through the US Congress is a Piracy Bill which is going to attempt to put all sorts of restrictions on the web and filesharing (you may have noticed Wikipedia and other sites blacked out yesterday in protest). The main drivers of this bill are big business, namely News Corporation, the music industry etal who are being hammered by “free” information on the web.

The suspicion is that these corporations however are trying to protect increasingly bankrupt business models, such as buying a CD or reading a newspaper, when new models are being called for. In the same way that the flying shuttle tore up the rules and ushered in the Industrial Revolution, the internet is creating a new era of information sharing.

Rupert however, clings to the past and a world where the only source of information is News Corporation. His ideal customer is someone who reads The Times, watches Sky News and 20th Century Fox movies, listens to a Murdoch radio station and reads a book published by Harper Collins - possibly not even aware that these media are all owned by the same company. And, crucially, Rupert uses all these different media to cross-reference and link to each other.

The internet is breaking up this cosy little world and one suspects there is no going back unless Congress cannot see through the motives of big business.