spin

Power and spin in China as told by authors Pin Ho and Wenguang Huang

Perhaps the most beneficial and most affordable idea ever presented here: an end to political hackery.

Last week, Stephen Taylor published a behind-the-scenes account of the life and death of Oily the Splot, the now-silenced spokestain for the Conservative Party’s anti-carbon tax campaign. In it, he suggests that the decision to release Oily into the wild was a deliberate attempt to get out ahead of the Liberals – who were still dillydallying over the launch of the plan – by pre-defining Dion’s “green shift” as a “permanent tax on everything” – a simplistic, cartoon-like approach to a substantial policy debate; but one that, they hoped, would poison the waters before the Liberal plan had even been announced:

This one was in my emailbox this morning. If you don’t read French, just note that it’s an 8-year-old column about a 17-year-old incident. The tag at the bottom of the email tells you who sent it.

>L’Actualité, no. Vol: 25 No: 17
1 novembre 2000, p. 27