The reaction to Number 10’s Clarkson video is an interesting example of the no-win situation for Governments in trying to vary the ways in which they interact with people.

For those who hadn’t seen it, there was a petition on the Downing Street site to ‘make Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister’. This was, as you can tell, a joke petition (or put forward by someone without much knowledge of the British constitution).

So Number 10 put forward a joke response on YouTube - nothing extravagant, just some stock footage banged together in iMovie or something similar. It’s not going to win the Golden Rose of Montreux, but it’s a jokey response to a jokey petition. Fair enough for a slow August, you might think.

But what is the media story? An attack on the Government by the opposition, for ‘wasting public money’ on producing the response.

No wonder Governments get nervy and defensive about new methods of communications.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Current affairs, Media, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.