Trafigura - thoughts from the day after

I've been mulling over this since yesterday (for background see yesterday's post here) and have come up with 3 thoughts - in increasing "order of importance". So (ahem) here they are:

1. The penalty of Olde Worlde companies "Not Getting It" is increasing, dramatically.

This was a spectacular own goal, brilliantly sent up in the Daily Quail - here is an excerpt:

An industry analyst said: 'It's been a clever job, making great use of viral and self-facilitating media nodes. Brands are starting to realise that to really make a splash you need to go the extra mile, do something big and zany - Carter-Ruck's strategy of assaulting British democracy and raping the very concept of free speech delivered an incredible awareness boost.

However, they couldn't have done it without the Guardian. I think this demonstrates the growing importance of tightly integrated cross-platform actionplanned thoughtleader bacterial germination multi-maven campaigns.'

What is funniest is that Carter-Ruck, the legal eagles here, actually claim to be experts on handling media - from their website:

A large number of our cases attract the attention of the world's media and we are well-used to dealing with the challenges that this presents.

(and.....)

The firm's claimant practice is the largest in the country, being described in Chambers Guide to the Legal Profession as 'unsurpassed'.

Indeed......yesterday was a truly unsurpassed moment in media handling I suspect Carter-Ruck may well be thinking of employing a few "Social Media Experts" today. This episode will, I suspect, be taught in Business Schools as a case study.

2. The Mainstream Media is no longer making the running

Yesterday, the mainstream media was by and large conspicuous by its absence in the morning, the blogosphere did the heavy lifting until Carter-Luck stepped back from the Injunction on the Injunction at midday. Of course, after the event they came in en masse, and today are even harrumphing that those of us on the front line (as it were) yesterday did not do a proper job and are now celebrating prematurely (I love the whiff of sour grapeshots in the morning).

And telling us now that we "didn't get it right" yesterday and that you MSM guys knew about these super injunctions all along makes me think OK, so why the f*ck weren't you guys screaming it from the rafters then?. I read assiduously, watch news analysis programs nearly nightly, and I had never heard of this "super injunction" trend before.

I am also reminded of the days before The Crunch - I (and many other people) could feel it coming*, and I kept on looking in the papers and on TV for people writing about it, but I tell you what - I saw nary a peep about all of that in the mainstream media (most of the hard analysis was being done by people such as the housepricecrash website, Umair Haque and - well, other small cap blogs and websites). Until it happened, of course - and then suddenly the mainstream press were all over it like a rash, writing books and filling the airwaves with (often crap) analysis of barn doors and bolts.

Yesterday to me marks the official moment the MSM handed over the baton to the blogosphere, albeit kicking and screaming. And its not that they don't have the technology - they all have blgging arms now. Its about integrity, and independence. Sure - not all bloggers are independent, not all of them have integrity - but a huge number do, and that is what drove things yesterday.


3. The Mainstream Media and Parliament is too Fail to be Big, The People will have to "Do it Yourself" to maintain their freedoms for a while.

Keeping Parliamentary Freedom is Big Sh*t but pretty much until Carter Luck took away the big stick I saw neither Parliament nor the Press (with a few brave exceptions) going in to bat against them yesterday.

It has taken centuries to get what rights the citizen has today. Successive governments have been whittling away at it over the last few years, the media and Parliament have - with honourable exceptions - stood by and let this happen. In fact, I would suggest that a large proportion of their troubles today has been because of a 20 year "dumbing down" to the point of irrelevance. I can op-ed for Africa, any small cap blogger can do fashion and fluff, this we don't need large, worthy (and expensive) media organisms to do this, and come the digitisation, its no surprise that came the dis-aggregation. Ditto MP's - what value precisely does a party apparatchick who has never worked in the real world and whose place at the trough is party-given give?

And take today - the MSM is chasing down the story of a few tens of thousand pounds of overgardening that MP's may pay back - whereas the big story is the huge bonuses that the Merchant Banks are going to pay themselves this year based on the security of guaranteed taxpayer money that bailed them out from bankruptcy. Goldman Sachs is poised to pay £16bn in the UK alone - double the amount of 2008. To put that in context, £16 billion is half the annual total cost of the UK's entire defence operation - Trident, Afghanistan, men, ships, tanks, planes - the lot. It is 1/5th of the budget of the NHS for a year. Most importantly, dear taxpayer, it is your money as without y'all underwriting a still bankrupt banking system they would all be bust now.

Do you also realise that the entire panoply of George Osborne's proposed budget cuts - which are already causing wails of woe across the land, and the digging in of entrenched vested interests everywhere - only amounted at most to c £7bn. There is strong talk about soaking the taxpayer yet again (being the lender of least self organisation and thus least resistance) to pay for featherbedded public service pensions, never mind the bankers.

So who, we ask, is going to sort this all out and avoid the average (tax-paying) person being reduced to some form of post-feudal serfdom, having paid for the bankers and then paying again for the politicos?

Our Parliament? Our Press?

I don't think so, not on current form anyway. Their economics and incentives are too compromised. They are both necessary, but both need to go through radical reformation.

I suspect "We The People" will have to take matters into their own hands in the interim, or else we will be sold down the river.

The good news is that yesterday we saw what a positive impact social media, used responsibly, can have. I think there is a very big lesson there. Also, there is an election coming up - maybe it is time for the Vox Populi to set the agenda - and maintain an overwatch - rather than supinely "be done unto" in future.

I'm no Utopian - we can't use "people power" sustainably, its a change agent not a way of running things long term in my view. Some form of reformed parliamentary structure will be required, some form of media with ability and time to look into corruption, malpractice etc is essential

This will be hard, and there are a lot of pitfalls but I think we may now just have the tools to do it........ its early days, they are far from perfect and there will be errors (how do we stop "bad" mob rule for example) - but if we can fashion some form of truer democracy out of this mess, then it will be worth while.

The new technology is not the total solution by a long way, but it is part of it.

*Broadstuff is primarily a technology strategy blog, so I didn't blog much about this sort of thing - in hindsight I should have, and looking at yesterday I'm tempted to put more political and economic analysis in)