Everyone is outraged by the mindless violence and destruction that has been taking place in English cities. And, because we can’t comprehend how anyone could behave in this way, most of us are at a loss to know what should be done to ensure that nothing like it ever happens again.

Furthermore, my feelings of despondency have been augmented by the lack of any sign of economic recovery (I suspect I’m not alone here). While I welcome David Cameron’s hardline rhetoric in relation to the rioters and George Osborne’s determined adherence to his austerity plan, neither are enough. We need a clear vision of the kind of Britain that the Government wants to create.

Osborne has superb political savvy and Cameron is an excellent communicator, but they are just not getting their messages across. Most of us still can’t get a handle on the Big Society and we struggle to see how it can prevent the ugly scenes we have just witnessed.

Likewise, if we are to endure declining living standards for another year or more, we need to know it will be worth it in the end. This is not just about good PR, the Government’s future actually depends on it winning and retaining our support. We understand that there is a global economic crisis and that Britain is in a worse position that she should be because of Labour’s criminal mismanagement the economy. But we don’t all believe that spending cuts alone will solve the problem. I, for one, want to understand how we are going to restart growth, given that many of the traditional levers are no longer available.

So please David and George, give us something tangible to look forward to. Remember the old proverb: without vision, the people perish.

More than enough has already been written about Rupert Murdoch and his empire. But, since most of it has been unbalanced vitriol, I’m going to add my two ha’pence worth anyway. I am proud to have worked for Murdoch in Sydney as a senior sub-editor on his flagship national daily, The Australian. This paper was – and still is – a quality publication by any yardstick and is, arguably, the best newspaper in Australia. Its quality is undoubtedly due to the succession of first class editors it has had as well as the journalists it employs, but credit must also go to Rupert Murdoch who launched it back in the 1960s and has supported it financially ever since, even though I don’t think it has ever made a penny profit.

Which brings me to his track record in the UK. As other commentators – notably James Delingpole and William Shawcross in The Spectator - have already observed, Murdoch has had a hugely beneficial impact on the British media: He saved The Sun, broke the stranglehold of the print unions, has subsidised The Times and patiently invested millions of pounds in BSkyB before it started making profits.

So why is he so loathed by the BBC, the Guardianistas and other holier-than-thou liberals? I think the answer must be because he and his publications oppose virtually everything they hold dear: the EU, regulation, immigration, multiculturalism, big government et al. That doesn’t make Murdoch right but his titles have been highly effective at articulating an alternative view to that of what Delingpole calls the “smug, metropolitan bien-pensants who run the BBC”. And I think smug is exactly the right word – particularly with regard The Guardian. While it has been throwing up its hands in horror at the illegal hacking of voicemails, how does it think it got hold of the Wikileaks material? Quite simply the paper was handling stolen goods. And then it put people’s lives at risk by publishing it.

I am not trying to exonerate the News of the World journalists who indulged in hacking. They broke the law and deserve to be punished. But I think it is fair to ask why everyone has decided to make a fuss about it now. Certain journalists have been obtaining information illegally for decades and probably much longer. And it’s been common knowledge. We all knew that the Squidgy tapes were obtained illicitly and that private detectives were paid to rummage through people’s dustbins in search of information. But I don’t recall MPs demanding an inquiry then. So what’s changed – apart from Rupert Murdoch deciding to ditch Gordon Brown and support Cameron?

There is a powerful stench of hypocrisy pervading this whole witch hunt. It is completely beside the point to argue that Murdoch was too powerful and needed to be brought to heel or that his tabloids were/are trash. It was Blair, Mandelson and Alistair Campbell who fed the illusion of News International being the Westminster power broker, by courting Murdoch and his editors. But the truth is that newspapers do not influence significantly the results of elections – Murdoch’s skill has been to identify the way the wind is blowing and then support the winning side. Thus in 2010, the Sun supported Cameron in London but in Scotland it supported Labour.

Rupert Murdoch has never claimed to be a nice man (although many of those who have worked closely with him like him enormously and his PA has been with him for 50 years), but he is running a business empire not standing for parliament. Thankfully, MPs are off on holiday on Thursday. Hopefully, there will be something really worth debating when they return in the autumn

Dickinson Dees’ announcement that its is moving its Yorkshire business from York to Leeds is eminently sensible.    Leeds is, after all, acknowledged as the premier professional services centre in the North-East and, arguably, the whole of the North of England.

I always thought it was rather odd that Dickinson Dees should have opted to stay in York for as long as it has, while other Newcastle firms, such as Ward Hadaway, have been in Leeds for several years. 

Something similar happened about 20 years ago when Nabarro Nathanson took over the legal department of the National Coal Board and opened an office in Doncaster.  It then spent some time looking for a way to move into Leeds but eventually gave up and set up shop in Sheffield.

Looking ahead, it seems inevitable that Leeds will grow in prominence as a legal hub while other Yorkshire cities – including Sheffield – will continue to decline.

Many media commentators are faithfully trotting out the official EU line that Greece has avoided bankruptcy by agreeing to implement its latest austerity programme.  This is totally wrong.  Greece is already bankrupt.  As Sir Mervyn King put it: Greece has a solvency – not a liquidity -  problem.    The new EU/IMF bailout will simply defer Greece’s inevitable default on its debts.   When you can’t repay your debts, borrowing more money just compounds the problem.   Hopefully, the British Government has prepared a gameplan to handle this eventuality.

What is interesting are the contortions that the eurozone power brokers are conducting to protect the single currency, thereby confirming what we in the No campaign have always maintained – that the project has been political rather than economic all along.  I, therefore, predict that the result of the Greek/euro crisis will be the eventual departure of Greece (and, probably, Portugal and Ireland) from the eurozone and the establishment of much closer fiscal ties between the remaining eurzone members.  A consensus is already emerging that the euro needs a common fiscal policy as well as a common monetary policy. 

These developments are probably two to five years away.  Back in the present, the major obstacles to the Greek austerity package-plus-bailout actually happening are the (very angry) Greek people and the German taxpayers.  Either (or both) of these groups could easily scupper what has been agreed in the past two days.

Michael Ancram, aka Lord Lothian, made some very pertinent points last night about House of Lords reform. Speaking at a private function, his advice can best be summed up as “don’t!”   He admits the upper house is not perfect, but argues that it’s not broken either, so doesn’t need fixing. 

Comparing the Lords with the Commons, Lord L said the big difference was in the quality of debate.  In the Lords, speakers were usually experts in the subject under debate and this expertise would be lost if the house were replaced by an elected senate.

I will leave it to better qualified commentators to explain the intricacies of such an arcane issue as constitutional reform but most people I meet couldn’t care tuppence about the subject or, indeed,  how the House of Lords operates.  And that’s just my point.  The matter is just not that important at a time when the country is in the middle of the worst economic downturn for a generation.

By and large the public understands that there is a serious problem with the economy and that cuts have to made.  This is because the Coalition Government has communicated the issues effectively.  What the public doesn’t understand is why ministers should be spending so much time and effort trying to fix a problem (the House of Lords) which doesn’t exist outside the Liberal Democrat consciousness.

So can all concerned now stop playing with their shiny trainsets and concentrate on getting our economy growing again?  Please?

Margaret Thatcher’s comment that the facts of life are conservative has been demonstrated by the AV referendum result.  The reality is that most people are instinctively suspicious of change – especially unnecessary change – so they will naturally opt for the status quo, unless someone can convince them otherwise. 

It was always going to be difficult to persuade a majority of voters to back something as complicated as the Alternative Vote (if John Humphreys didn’t understand how it worked, what chance the average punter?) And that was before the public decided that they didn’t much like the Lib-Dems anyway.   As a matter of interest – whose bright idea was it to recruit Eddie Izzard and Stephen Fry to campaign on behalf of the Yes campaign?  It would be hard to find two people with less in common with the average man in the street.

The result of the referendum has efectively killed off reform of the voting system for a generation and, with it, the much of the raison d’etre of the Liberal Democrats.  However, Alex Salmond should study these results before being too gung-ho for a referendum on Scottish independence.

Opinion polls all suggest that the majority of Scots are currently opposed to independence by about two-to-one  and, while Smart Alex will be counting on changing this over the next three or four years, he will still face  the problem that he is seeking to change the status quo.  And if he loses this vote, where will that leave the SNP?

Having said that, it would be folly for those who support the union to assume the battle will be easy.  They need to start work now on reinforcing their arguments because Salmond is already at work, seeking to capitalise on the SNP’s historic election victory and convert that popularity into votes for independence.

How times change.  Two Yorkshire building societies – the Leeds & Holbeck and The Yorkshire – are now advertising for new chief executives.  In fact, the Yorkshire has even engaged headhunters.  In the not-so-distant past it was different.   Until the Building Societies Act 1986 relaxed the regulatory regime – and introduced greater competition – new chief executives were usually recruited internally, having been groomed for succession by the outgoing CEO (or General Manager as he was commonly styled).

Indeed, mergers between societies usually took place only when one society was losing a chief executive and another was looking for a new chairman.  A situation that passed for synergy in those days.  But life then was a lot less demanding.  Societies took in savings and lent the money for house purchases (not personal loans).  You had to be a member to get a loan and the amount lent was usually no more than 2.5 times the income of the main breadwinner plus possibly once the salary of the spouse. 

As a result, societies were boring but reliable.  They rarely if ever got into trouble, unless the chief executive was dipping his hand into the till (as happened with the Gravesend).  When that occurred, the regulator quickly lined up a larger society to take over the troubled one.  Situations like Northern Rock or Bradford & Bingley, where the Government had to rescue the businesses, were just unthinkable.  Indeed, when Geoff Lister took over as chief executive of the B&B in the early 80s, the society was so conservative that Geoff was not even a member of the Board of Directors.

In those days, there were more than 120 building societies in the UK – compared with 48 today - with the biggest concentration being in Yorkshire.  Their sizes ranged from the giant Halifax to one-office minnows such as the Barnsley, the Beverley and the Keighley-based Ecology.  The Beverley and the Ecology are still trading in much the same way as they have always done.  Which is more than can be said for the Halifax.  

No-one is suggesting that we turn the clock back but maybe the stolid Victorian burghers who established the original building societies that operated so successfully for so long knew what they were doing.  Boring is not necessarily bad.

The humble news release is the basic tool for communicating with the media.  But an awful lot of organisations – including a great many inhouse marketing teams – don’t know how to produce them properly, so here are ten useful tips:

1. Ask yourself: does your story have real news interest? Think of the reader and think of the editor. Don’t waste their time with irrelevant information.
2.  Know the medium you are targeting, understand their style and content and make sure the story is appropriate for them. Tailor the release accordingly.
3. Answer the questions Who? What? Where? When? Why? And how? (and, if appropriate, How much?)
4. Use plain English, avoid jargon and stick to short sentences.
5. Say what you are going to say three times- once in the headline, again in the introductory paragraph and in more detail in the rest of the release.
6. Be concise. Keep the release no more than two sides of A4. Supply background information (e.g. a survey) either separately or as ‘Notes to Editors’.
7. Check your grammar and spelling thoroughly – badly written, poorly presented news releases will get binned after the first sentence if they are full of mistakes.
8. Include a quote from one of the parties mentioned in the release if possible – this provides some immediacy to the news item.
9.  Do your research – identify the correct correspondents/reporters to whom the release will be sent.  Telephone them after the release has been sent to see if they need more detail or would like to arrange an interview.
10.  Make certain that your own contact details are clearly shown on the release – email, telephone, mobile etc.

According to the CPI, inflation is up to 4% – the highest for two years and double the official 2% target.  The rate is even higher if you use the old-money RPI.   The Bank of England and the Treasury argue that the rise is due to one-offs such as the January VAT increase and the soaring price of oil.  Maybe, but inflation has been rising for months and every increase has been blamed on one-offs outside the control of the Bank.

While I accept that increasing commodity prices and other global influences are inevitably playing a part in the rise of inflation, my gut feeling is that the stonking great boost to the money supply (aka quantitive easing) must also be having a significant effect.  If I’m right, then – before very long - inflation will climb further and interest rates will, ultimately, have to rise higher and faster.

At first glance, David Cameron and Hosni Mubarak have little in common.  But one thing they both share is a failure to manage expectations adequately.  This failure can totally undermine a government’s communications strategy.

The roar that emanated from the Cairo crowd when Mubarak said he was staying put to oversee the transition to democracy said it all.  They had been expecting him to announce his resignation and nothing less would do.  And within 24 hours he had indeed left office.  

Cameron’s situation is clearly somewhat less dramatic but he’s nevertheless got a problem selling his Big Society concept.  The communications strategy has worked brilliantly to the extent that everyone is talking about it.  The difficulty stems from the fact that few people have any idea of what they should expect from the concept. 

Philosophically it is about replacing the socialist doctrine of Big Government with the liberating notion of Big Society.  It is analgous to John F Kennedy telling Americans not to ask what the country could do for them but to ask what they could do for their country.  But we Brits don’t do philosophy; we have difficulty grappling with abstracts.  After decades of being told that the Government will sort it (whatever it may be), we can’t quite get our heads round the idea that we should sort things out for ourselves.  No wonder Andy Coulson wasn’t keen on selling the idea; it just doesn’t click with tabloid readers.

But the Government can’t just drop it and walk away. Cameron has personally identified himself with the idea, so somehow they have got to find a way in which readers of the Sun can relate to Big Society.  In the meantime, Labour is trying to conflate the concept with Budget cuts, which is not too surprising, given that Big Government is embedded in the party’s DNA.  

For what it’s worth, my advice to Cameron and his ministers is to concentrate on communicating a picture of what we can expect Britain to look like and feel like once the Big Society is in place.  Perhaps a slogan equivalent to Obama’s ‘Yes we can’ might help.

Update (20/2/11):   Jeremy Clarkson has hit the nail on the head in the Sunday Times.  He sums up the Big Society message as “ask not what the state can do for you but what you can do for yourself.”  Downing Street please note and circulate.