Tag Archives: Northern Ireland

Owen Paterson just talks

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The UK in a changing Europe held a meeting in May 2018, entitled Brexit and the island of Ireland. It included a keynote from the Rt Hon Owen Paterson MP.

For some time I have wanted to look at his speaking on this blog, as he is one of Britain’s more impressive Members of Parliament, noted for the conscientiousness with which he does his homework. And there was another reason.

Since the referendum in June 2016, when the British people instructed parliament to extricate the country from the EU, I have been bemused by the convoluted meal that has been made of it. Very shortly after the vote I read an article by a Swiss professor of international law which stated that we did not need Article 50, we could just leave. I read that Lord Tebbit had stated that leaving needed only, “We’re going. We hope we can still be friends. Bye!“

The latter might be just a tad simplistic; but I have also noticed that those who insisted upon complications were mainly politicians, lawyers and civil servants, all of whom by nature can cut red tape only lengthwise. They need to get out of the way. Ordinary folk just get on with things. And when the matter of the Northern Ireland Border came up, I looked on in disbelief as a non-problem was elevated to ridiculous proportions. Owen Paterson has always struck me as having a more practical mentality than most, and his wide experience with Northern Ireland meant that he could fill in the obvious holes in my knowledge. Here is my chance to learn the problems that have escaped me.

The introduction is by Professor Anand Menon. He looks down at the lectern to tell us that. I think we can safely assume that he has in fact memorised his own name, so there we have evidence to what extent people use the lectern as a security blanket. Ok I’m being a little unkind because he very properly raises his eyes to us for the remainder of the time, except when listing future events, but people do use lecterns as a security blanket. Much of my time is spent in showing people that they don’t need a security blanket.

Paterson begins at 3:40 and ends for Q&A at 16:25. I don’t think he looks at the lectern one single time.

He spends his first couple of minutes on ethos, in which it emerges that his experience with Ireland, Northern and Republic, goes far beyond merely his parliamentary involvement, which in itself is very extensive.

Thereafter he makes it clear that any sort of heavy border is – in his own words – a dotty idea. It is undesirable for both sides, both of whom will want to go on trading as smoothly as possible. It is also unnecessary, as technology has already smoothed out such requirements. The British and Irish people have shown they can cooperate though much bigger issues than this. To suggest otherwise is political mischief.

His approach to public speaking is equally down to earth. He epitomises what I regularly say to my trainees, “It’s just bloody talking!” Yes, he occasionally goes a bit quickly and swallows a few syllables, but he doesn’t pretend to be attempting high oratory. He’s just talking, and everything about the way he does it conveys sincerity.

Ian Paisley with peace in his pockets

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On 12 September – yesterday – the world bid its last goodbye to The Reverend and the Right Honourable The Lord Bannside PC, better known to the world as Ian Paisley. 

If you are looking for an Ian Paisley speech you instinctively reach for ear-plugs, because for years every time he was seen on television speaking to the public we saw something like this …

Yet every obituary in the broadcast media has had people stressing how in private he was a very quiet man. Indeed many years ago, at the height of the Northern Ireland troubles, I saw a TV documentary that strongly made that very point. Therefore I have chosen to reflect on the man with this, his House of Commons farewell speech. It was on 22 March, 2010, while the House of Commons was debating the transfer of policing and justice powers to North Ireland.

 

He is speaking with his hands in his pockets. From my earliest days training people in speaking I often persuaded men that speaking with your hands in your pockets can convey a desirable image of confidence, authority and sincerity, and also underlines that you are speaking without notes. (It doesn’t really work for women, not least because they seldom have pockets.)

Paisley doesn’t need the help of paper to drop a nice little anadiplosis into the first ten seconds; but it isn’t smart-alec figures of speech that mark this delivery. We have already started reading obituaries and tributes to the way he went from tub-thumping, mob-inciting ranting to emollient peacemaking, working with his enemies to bring and keep peace in North Ireland. This is my way of highlighting the emollience.

I can’t resist drawing attention to what he says at 1:27. Standing, as I said, with his hands in his pockets, he urges those with opposing views to keep their hands in their pockets. I like the reflected imagery.

It’s not in itself a brilliant speech. It goes on a little longer than it should: there were several places that he could well have stopped earlier. But it represents far more than it says, and I like to remember him this way.

R.I.P.

Danny Moore – in a few hours I could transform him.

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At the Dublin Web Summit, in October 2011, one of the keynote speakers was Danny Moore. His company, Lough Shore Investments, nurture high-potential start-ups and have a stated goal of bringing ten great companies to exit or IPO by 2025. I have corporate clients in that line of business: his company is not one of them.

Whoever edited and posted this video decided that we should join it shortly after the beginning, replacing Moore’s opening with a slide telling us that his talk was entitled, “Entrepreneurship: seven core pillars“.  Why?  Why did they do this? Was his opening so tedious or garbled that they felt a half-seen slide could do the job better? I don’t know the answer, but I do know that it’s a dismal start to the video. It’s doing no favours at all for Moore nor Lough Shore Investments nor Dublin Web Summit. Whoever stuck this on the web needs his bum kicking.

When we do join him Moore is delivering a very downbeat resume of his education. Would you be able to tell me the name of your school and your hometown without having to look them up?  I thought so. Why then did he need to look at the lectern before naming these things? The answer is hump. At the beginning of a presentation like this, when you are assailed by nerves, there’s a temptation to look anywhere but at the audience. He surrendered to the temptation.  First impressions are very important, and this first impression is dire.

Which is a pity, because we find that Moore has plenty to say.  The trouble is that he has little idea of how to say it.

Many might have trouble with his northern Ireland accent: it is undeniably a robust example. Nevertheless we should remember that his live audience is in Dublin where ears will be easily in tune with it. If I were advising him, and conscious of the wider potential audience from a YouTube posting, I would work with him on clarity of enunciation without losing the essence of his accent.  Part of the problem is that Co. Antrim produces not just distinctive vowel sounds, but a style of intonation that to non-Irish ears implies a monotone.

I am unable to read his slides, but I am fairly certain that he is not regurgitating precisely what they say – which is good. On the other hand they are smothered in verbiage – which is dreadful. Does he want his audience to read his slides or listen to him? If he absolutely had to have any slides at all I’d restrict him to showing only the headline sentences. If I were being really assertive I’d kick all the slides into touch, and the pillars too. My problem with the pillars is that he is straying into the realm of those lame book titles, beloved of the mass self-help industry, “The five errors made by most coracle repairers“. His business surely is with bright revolutionary innovation, yet he’s selling it with the aid of the stalest of cheap cliché.

The closing is simply appalling.  He runs out of time, weakly mentions a reading list and then falls off the end. This is a keynote speech in a flagship tech conference, for heaven’s sake!  What a waste of a fabulous shop-window!

I itch to help.