Jack Thurston

Category: politics

Email still the key to online campaigning

Last week I ruffled a few feathers with a post about the sorry state of Labour and the internet. One of my main points was that Labour seemed to be drawn into a battle of the blogs and was neglecting investment in a responsive email campaign. Thomas Gensemer, founder of Blue State Digital, the firm [...]

The sorry state of Labour on the internet

It’s taken thirty-six years but last week it finally happened. I found myself - however I might wish for it to be otherwise - agreeing with an article in the Daily Mail. It was a stingingly accurate critique of the Labourlist group blog which has been online for a while now but was ‘launched’ last [...]

One in four US Presidents have been assassinated or survived attempts on their lives

Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States. Four of his predecessors have been killed while in office and there have been near-miss assasination attempts on six others. There have been abortive or ham-fisted attempts on their lives of a further five Presidents. President Obama has, by my reckoning, at least a one [...]

Mayor’s question time in foggy London town

Each month the Mayor of London faces a grilling from the London Assembly, a kind of Mayor’s Question Time. It lasts up to a few hours and there is a webcast of it. But the image quality is spectacularly bad:

I suppose this is what people mean when they talk about ‘faceless officialdom’. It’s only recognisable [...]

The new age of Gordon Brown

Make no mistake, I thought Gordon Brown’s speech today at the Labour Party Conference was his best for a decade. With all the pressure on him from the economic downturn, flatlining opinion polls and the machinations of rebel Labour MPs, he did a great job of balancing the essential elements of a good Leader’s speech: [...]

So you think you understand the credit crunch?

Credit crunch, sub-prime mortgage, collateralised debt obligations… Obscure terms that now feature in everyday pub chatter, even more so after this week’s spectacular events involving the collapse of investment banks, unprecedented interventions by governments and a looming global economic downturn. But can you, hand on heart, say that you understand what the credit crunch really [...]

The first black American with an eye on the White House?

The confirmation of Barack Obama as the presumptive Democratic Party candidate for the 2008 presidential election is a historic moment in the history of black America. Previously I’ve posted audio recordings of Bobby Kennedy’s campaign in 1968 and Spiro Agnew’s vice-presidency. Now seems like a good time to turn to the record collection to remember [...]

Obama: Get out my life, woman…

Is this what he’s thinking?

Reminds me of a song I know…
[audio:get_out.mp3]

The man who put the vice into Vice President

Last year I posted a recording of an interview with Senator Robert ‘Bobby’ Kennedy, conducted by David Frost, just a short while before Kennedy was assassinated. There is every chance that had he not been slain, he would have secured the Democratic Party nomination for the 1968 presidential election and beaten Richard Nixon, the Republican [...]

London: 3 May 2008

Either you’ll get it or you won’t.