1,815 press officers and other public relations staff work in British government departments. John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, has three press officers, despite no longer having a department. A further 1,444 are employed by a bewildering array of more than 200 quangos and agencies that are paid for out of the public purse, bringing the total number of press officers to 3,259.
When Labour came to power in 1997, just over 300 fully-fledged press officers were working in Whitehall, although that figure excluded a small number of other public relations staff.
The amount being spent on Government advertising, marketing and public relations has risen three-fold since Mr Blair entered No 10.
All very well, but where is the cost/benefit of the increased PR drive? I guess you can't tabulate the bad news and scandals that didn't get out. But considering the negative stories dogging Blair's government the defence pack don't seem to be performing well.
I though the last terror arrest episode showed that these people don't play as a team, and the confused performance nearly wrecked a carefully prepared snow job (or should that be Rove job?)
The attacking squad don't seem to be fairing much better. I suggest the US approach, relying on a much smaller and targed team is far more effective. I'm not sure where Tony gets his Rove, but he could put Prescott (his underworked number 2) to work straight away on the dirty tricks campaign. That is if Prescott can stop tripping over his shoelaces.
But however you spin it PR will never replace sound policy implementation, it just serves to fool most of the people for a little longer before the house of cards crashes.
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