How the British fell back in love with the NHS
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in campaign, NHS, Gordon Brown, Twitter, government on
It’s a very British thing to complain, and of things to complain about the NHS is often quite high on the list.
Dirty hospitals, long queues, poor pay for nurses, big money spent on computer systems that don’t work - the NHS usually gets a good kicking.
But when we complain about something, it’s us who complain - we have a mentality where we really don’t like outsiders suggesting that something is wrong with our country.
This seems to have been what has happened with the sudden popularity of the NHS on Twitter and social networks, with even figures like Gordon Brown and David Cameron joining in to defend and praise it.
The background
It really all started when the nationals reported on how some Americans (particularly the Republican party) were waging a campaign against President Obama’s moves to transform their healthcare system.
There’s opposition to the plan - fair enough - it’s a big change and the Americans should decide for themselves.
However, the British started to pay attention when it was found that the Republicans were using the NHS as an example of a ’socialist’ system with waiting lists and treatment rationing.
Among the ‘failures’ of the NHS included an ‘Orwellian’ financial cap on the value of human life, and of leaving elderly people untreated.
The British fight back
Understandably, the British weren’t happy about this. In the Guardian story that I first read about the Republican campaign it reads 916 comments and still counting. Most indeed were saying that they wouldn’t swap the NHS for an American system of private healthcare.
However, it was Twitter that was really the catalyst for a concerted NHS PR campaign that really did work - money could not buy the type of good publicity that the NHS has been getting.
The Twitter NHS campaign
The ‘welovetheNHS’ tag has been one of the top trending topics in the last few days, with it seems thousands of people giving their support to the NHS system and praising it - including government leaders
Dennis publication The First Post said that one of the prime movers behind the campaign was Graham Linehan, comedy writer behind Father Ted and the IT Crowd.
The Republicans may have bitten themselves on the ass with this one as the debate has now penetrated the blogosphere - people are talking about it, people are trying to figure it out - people are trying to make their own judgements.
Instead of trying to reply against the propaganda with expensive advertisements, it is by the means of a social network where the NHS has been defended in a way nobody could have expected
It also shows how powerful something like Twitter is becoming as a tool to motivate the masses - it wasn’t that long ago that Twitter was a big factor in creating a movement against the Iran elections.
Rated: 60% (2 votes)
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Gordon Brown trying to communicate digitally = FAIL
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in Digital Britain, Gordon Brown, Twitter on
Normally for speeches like Gordon Brown’s talk about Digital Britain today I would like to actually be there, but it is becoming more common for the press to view these talks on video.
I managed successfully to watch Salesforce.com’s keynote speech on the web a week ago, and I was encouraged by the possibilities of this. Perhaps I would never need to go to a big speech ever again!
So the Digital Britain summit arrived, and the organisers decided that it would be a good idea to showcase the government’s digital credentials by streaming it live on the Digital Britain forum website.
Unfortunately it didn’t work. Technical hitches meant I wasn’t able to listen to anything without it cutting out, and Gordon Brown was just a flicker on my MacBook screen.
Not good, but unfortunately it wasn’t as if I didn’t expect it. If Microsoft or Cisco were trying to set me up a video feed I would be shocked if there was any problems with it, but public sector wise I didn’t really have much of an expectation.
It is a bit worrying that the Digital Britain team, based in the Department for Business and the Department for Culture, couldn’t even get a simple video feed right.
Also had a problem with the Digital Britain Twitter feed. It was all well and good to be trendy as it is the new hip technological thing, but there was absolutely no point in many of the tweets with the owner of the feed spouting random messages.
The only way that Twitter can really work in speeches and talks like this is if there is the provision for links with more information, such as the material on their actual Digital Britain blog. Otherwise it’s just a selection of random messages anybody could do - even if they weren’t actually at the event. The live blogging was a nice touch though - that seemed to be the only thing that worked well.
Oh and next time guys - the joy of putting things on video means that you can record and post things for people to play at our pleasure. There were a lot of speakers I was interested in hearing (such as Stephen Fry) but couldn’t spend all day in front of the computer waiting for it to come up.
Do what kids do. Stick the individual speeches and talks up on YouTube. You might get a whole lot more of the internet generation actually understanding what the government is trying to do.
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