Dot Gov

The news that Rick Santorum has won the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and Missouri primary has provided another twist in this meandering GOP race. As soon as one candidate gathers momentum they seem to be bested at the next possible occasion. Mitt Romney was frontrunner before the Iowa Caucus and Rick Santorum won. Santorum then gained momentum and then performed poorly in South Carolina and Florida. Newt Gingrich then swung to the fore with Mitt Romney also delivering strong results. They then spent the 2 weeks slugging it out in a series of heavyweight contests and Rick Santorum resurfaces, all of his Google and other problems, seemingly forgotten. This shows one thing clearly: in the eyes of the voters it is an underwhelming field of non-Presidents.

Photo courtesy of wikipedia

Mitt Romney has thrown millions at the race, has brought in heavyweight endorsements from John McCain, Donald Trump and celebrities across the board, but still appears lightweight. His whole campaign appears an effort to divert from a man who is just deep down not a President. Daniel Finkelstein wrote a great piece along a similar line about Ed Miliband. You can have as many pollsters; advisers and communication specialists as you like, but sometimes you just don’t look the part. Miliband doesn’t look like a Prime Minister and Romney doesn’t look like a President. Both are playing at the roles.

Photo courtesy of www.newt.org

Then there is Newt Gingrich, who appeals to the votes through debate performances, but because of his controversial time as Speaker and then a series of allegations about his private life never appears as anything more than a curve ball candidate, who can flare up and win the odd contest, but only as a protest vote at a more serious contender. He doesn’t appear to have the necessary public image or track records to stand as a strong candidate in his own right.

Photo courtesy of www.ricksantorum.com

Finally there is Rick Santorum - the dilemma. An impressive lawyer with a reputation and background that suggests he can get things done in Washington, a great contrast to Barack Obama, but whose religious beliefs and social conservatism means he could never be elected as the leader of the world’s biggest nation. How frustrating Santorum is! Seeing all of his gifts and abilities, which make him personally appealing, but also seeing his singular stubbornness to deviate from his views on abortion and same sex marriage, in fact he actively goes out of his way to put these issues at the centre of his campaign. This gives him a fervent, but small group of core supporters but means he will not be able to win over enough to gain the White House. The world has moved too far on issues like abortion and same sex marriage, his idea to put ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ back in place for the armed forces would be a visible step backwards in championing freedom in the US and is not feasible.

So as Rick Santorum swings back into the limelight with his victories in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado the twists and turns in this race continue and further highlight that the field is made up of candidates who have some of what it takes, but nowhere near enough to be a strong Republican Candidate or President.

Politics combined with Hollywood glamour last night to make a spectacular impression on America’s showcase sporting event. The US may have reached fever pitch as Eli Manning’s underdog New York Giant’s snatched victory from future Hall of Famer, Tom Brady’s New England Patriots, but many will have been more than quietly impressed by Clint Eastwood’s halftime advert for the car giant Chrysler.

Adverts during the Super Bowl are big business. With families around the country, and perhaps around the world, glued to the television, the average cost of a 30 second slot is an enormous $3.5 million. The Eastwood directed ‘Halftime in America’ lasted a full two minutes and deliberately channelled Ronald Reagan’s famous 1984 campaign advert ‘Morning in America’.

The twee, plunky score of Reagan’s original may have been replaced by a darker, more melancholic arrangement but the message was broadly the same. It was about hard times, jobs and economic recovery. Reagan’s message told of an America on the up, it was hopeful and optimistic. Eastwood’s croaking, paternalistic voiceover drew parallels between Detroit’s battle-scarred automobile industry and a plucky underdog football team who, finding themselves down at half time, have the heart and the courage to come out swinging and drag themselves back into the game.

This was an advert which pulled on the heart strings of blue collar America. It’s places like Detroit that are suffering most from the effects of the global economic crisis. Above everything else, the next Presidential election will be won by the candidate who best convinces the electorate that he feels their pain, empathises with their struggle and can lead them back to economic prosperity.

Eastwood is no stranger to politics. He famously registered as a Republican to vote for Dwight Eisenhower in the 1952 Presidential election and has served terms in public office, as Mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea in California and as a member of the California State Park and Recreation Commission. Eastwood’s politics may have occasionally switched between right and left, however he has always been a man with his finger on the pulse of blue-collar America. From Dirty Harry to Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino, Eastwood knows how to tell an underdog tale. The victory by the less fancied Giants provided a suitable parallel.

Tom Brady’s last gasp Hail Mary may have missed its intended target but Eastwood’s Chrysler advert should have scored a direct hit with working class families in America.

The PAC to elect Clint starts here!

In an article for this week’s New Statesman, David Miliband authored what the Guardian yesterday termed: a ‘scathing attack’ on two of his brother’s key political allies, Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley. In the article Miliband outlined a 7 Point Plan to get Labour back on track and resist the temptation of lurching towards a “reassuring” position on the left.

The article was written in response to Hattersley’s own clarion call for the party to win back the trust of the electorate by re-embracing its social democratic credentials. Whatever its intention, it is extremely difficult to read the article as anything other than an attack on his brother’s leadership. Miliband is a shrewd media operator and in this article he has given the feverish hordes exactly what they want, a return to a favourite post-Brown narrative: fratricide in the Labour party.

If Miliband’s intention was to re-assert his claim as Labour’s leader in waiting, then his timing couldn’t have been better. After a difficult Christmas and New Year period, for analysis see Red Ed or Dead Ed (24 January), Ed Miliband has shown signs of recovery in recent weeks with two highly accomplished performances at PMQs and clear conviction and moral leadership on pay and bonuses in the banking sector. The timing of David’s 7 Point Plan could easily be seen as an attempt to derail any momentum in Ed’s nascent recovery and restart his own Labour leadership challenge.

So, what did the article say? What is the 7 Point Plan? The answer holds, unsurprisingly, very little in terms of vision or detail.

Miliband is in favour of reforming the state, promoting localism, defining equality, driving growth, championing internationalism, modernising the Labour Party and defending Labour’s record in Government. So far so good, but little to distinguish him from his brother or anyone else in a party which is still suffering from a serious crisis of identity. Is this the Labour Party, New Labour, ‘old’ Labour, ‘Blue’ Labour or ‘Purple’ Labour? Are they the party of the left, the ‘progressive’ left or the left of centre? The Miliband manifesto fails to answer these key issues and offers very little to encourage party members or potential members alike.

If one can be identified, the central plank of the Miliband’s manifesto seems to be public service reform, in particular shrinking its size and prioritising choice over quality of provision. At a time when public sector workers are losing their jobs; a further fiscal stimulus may be needed to kick start the economy; the Government is a majority shareholder in major financial services institutions; and the welfare state will be severely tested by public and private sector job losses, the state has a huge role to play in economic recovery. A commitment to cutting it in size and decentralising authority might appear an afterthought to many when there are more pressing economic concerns.

Miliband’s cautioning against retreating to a position of comfort on the left may play well with former Blairite colleagues, with traditional Liberal Democrat supporters disenchanted with the coalition and floating moderate voters. It also implies that he is confident of attracting strong support in the electorate for a relaunch of a New Labour-esque project. Whether there is an appetite for such a lurch to the right amongst the Labour faithful is less apparent. Having lost swathes of core support in Scotland and with support among public sector workers and union members dwindling, Labour faces as significant a challenge in energising its traditional base as it does in attracting the kind of metropolitan, middle-class professionals that would help them to steal the centre ground from their opponents.

The political resurrection of David Miliband has only just begun. He has powerful supporters in the party and well placed friends in the media. 2012 may yet be the year that Cain and Abel return to the nation’s political front pages.

So what exactly is Public Affairs and how can it be beneficial to your business?

Image courtesy of robertsharp’s Photostream, Flickr

Parliamentary Affairs, Stakeholder Management, Government Relations, Lobbying, Government Affairs, Political Consulting - Public Affairs is a highly specialised field which operates under a number of different names.

To put it simply, Public Affairs is about the effective management of an organisation’s most important relationships. We all know that managing relationships is an important part of life. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our professional lives. In fact, it’s become such an important part of our daily routine that technology firms are endlessly competing to design new and innovative ways of connecting us with our friends, our family and our business contacts. In this respect, the daily life of a business operates in much the same way.

At various stages in their development, businesses and other organisations may need to mount a campaign or manage relationships with the media, with the political world or with a wide range of stakeholders. Often the thing that most distinguishes a successful business from its competitors or defines a successful campaign is how effectively these more specialist relationships are managed.

For those who don’t have extensive experience of dealing with the political arena or with the media, managing these relationships can be an extremely daunting prospect. Even for those with some level of experience, a fresh approach can breathe new life into a company’s business prospects or into a flagging campaign.

These are exactly the kind of scenarios where specialist Public Affairs advice can help. Public Affairs can help your organisation with reputation management, political and media liaison, detailed policy research and event management. We can help with campaigning, crisis management, coalition building, overcoming regulatory issues and a whole host of other communications challenges.

Where Public Affairs advice really comes into its own is in managing relations with the labyrinthine world of politics. Effective communication with MPs, Peers, MEPs and local officials all require a thorough understanding of political processes and institutions. It also requires a detailed understanding of the pressures faced by elected officials, civil servants and local authorities. Public Affairs expertise can help businesses to design and implement effective strategies for managing these relations and develop messaging which makes an impact with their target audiences.

Whether it’s mapping and analysing stakeholders, helping charities to raise awareness of a cause or helping a business to bring innovative products to new markets, Public Affairs can be a vital tool in an organisations arsenal.

Often it’s about having the right conversations with the right people at the right time.

In the present economic climate, with finance being squeezed in both the public and the private sectors, can your business afford to miss these conversations?

There are a number of electoral battles taking place across the globe which should be noted in every keen political enthusiast’s diary. Internationally, elections will be held in Russia, France and the United States to determine the Presidency whilst domestically, we have the London Mayoral election. The results of these elections will determine the political landscape for the next few years, possibly even longer. It is not just a matter of who wins but also who doesn’t.

All eyes will be on Moscow in early March as the Russian Presidential elections take place. The focus will be on whether the elections are fair following reports by Council of Europe electoral monitors of a lack of level playing field for political parties in the parliamentary elections of December 2011. Some time ago, one may have concluded that Vladimir Putin, former President and current Prime Minister would easily receive over 50% of the vote – the amount needed to avoid a second round of voting. Recent polling however has put Putin on between 45-52% with his main challenge coming from Zyuganov of the Communist Party. Even if one does entertain the idea that Putin’s popularity is in decline, it would be foolish to believe that he will not win the Presidency as he still enjoys significantly more support than his closest rival, Gennady Zyuganov of the Communist Party. The battle for the Kremlin will be interesting for three reasons. Firstly, the percentage of vote Putin wins and whether he is forced into a second round of voting. Secondly, what conclusions the electoral observers from the OSCE and Council of Europe draw from the election. Thirdly and of most interest to the international community – what Putin intends to do once elected, as the President serves a six year term and is able to serve two consecutive terms, Putin could realistically be the President of Russia until 2024.

Moving into April and we turn our attention to Paris as the French Presidential election first round is due to take place, which could potentially end the political career of Nicolas Sarkozy who has said that should he fail in his bid for re-election he will quit political life. Sarkozy, the (currently unofficial) Union for a Popular Movement candidate for Presidency is currently trailing in the polls to François Hollande, the official candidate for the Socialist Party and renowned ‘disappearing man of French politics’ (he is known to fade into the background). According to the latest polling, in the first round of voting, Hollande would lead with 30%, Sarkozy would follow with 23.5% and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front is in third place with 17%. It is of great importance to the UK who is elected President because of the ongoing eurozone crisis. One of the interesting aspects of the election will be to see how much support the National Front receives and therefore whether Marine Le Pen has managed to change the public’s perception of the National Front to make it a challenger for Presidency in France in future elections. Similar centre right parties exist throughout Europe which stand on a similar platform and which have all increased in popularity in recent years. A successful result in France could well act as a catalyst in other national elections taking place throughout Europe.

Much closer to home, the London Mayoral elections take place in May. Boris enjoyed a lead of 7% in June 2011 and an 8% lead in November 2011, however the New Year has seen Ken wipe this out completely and he now commands a 2% lead over Boris. The fact that both candidates have so much to lose means that this election will be hard fought and exciting. Boris is desperate to create a legacy. He wants to be the London Mayor for the Olympics and his Boris Island airport dream could well become a reality. Both of these would be instrumental to any future political ambitions he may have (specifically if he intends to one day return to Parliament and become the leader of the Conservative Party). Ken clearly misses the job he lost four years ago and knows that if he loses the 2012 election, it will almost certainly spell the end of any serious role in frontline politics. Expect a very messy campaign from both sides.

November and as the weather cools, the election season hots up as the much talked about United States Presidential election takes place. The (over)hyped lead up to this started in the middle of 2011 and if you are bored now, prepare yourself as this will only get worse as we approach the poll. The Republican candidate has yet to be decided and it is not a foregone conclusion who it will be. At the end of 2011, Mitt Romney looked to be a safe bet for the Grand Old Party (GOP) candidacy. After Rick Santorum won an important victory in Iowa and Newt Gingrich in South Carolina, it is now not clear who will win. Despite a less than successful first term, Obama leads in current opinion polls against all three Republican frontrunners. Romney fares better than the other two candidates in the polls against Obama and therefore appears to be the best chance for the GOP. He also has time on his side as a lot can go wrong for Obama before the November election. If the Republicans fail to win this election, it will not be because Obama is a worthy winner. It will be because of the failure of the GOP to have a credible challenger. A likely scenario and one the GOP may have to settle for is an Obama win in 2012 and the GOP going away and looking to 2016 when they will (assuming Obama continues along his current path) win the Presidency with a more promising candidate such as Marco Rubio or Chris Christie.

The year 2012 is almost certainly not going to be the year the Communist Party seize the Presidency from Putin, nor the year the National Front beat Sarkozy and Hollande at the ballot box. It would probably be a good guess to say that Boris will win a second term, Romney will be selected as GOP nominee and will lose to Obama. Each election will however be eventful in its own right and by looking carefully into these events and not just simply at which candidate or political party win but also behind the main headlines (at the increase and decrease in the vote for other political parties for example) we can get an idea of how the future more long term political landscape will take shape. Ruder Finn UK will be blogging on each of these elections in more detail throughout the year.

What price independence?

When the SNP won the election in Scotland in 2011, independence was a central policy platform which led to a spectacular win.

So, carry out a referendum and implement the result (or not). If only it was that simple. Unfortunately for the SNP, Salmond found himself in a bit of a quandary - there is no doubt whatsoever about the mandate – that is clear enough and beyond peradventure but the pesky Scots, while happy enough to vote his party in, refused to support his central policy. In June 2011, the polls showed 37% favouring independence in a potential referendum, with 45% against and 18% not sure.

Faced with the likelihood of defeat in an early poll, Salmond had little option but to play the long game and the long game has consisted of two elements, drum up support and pride for Scotland itself and help to present the Scots as being unfairly treated and unite the country against the English, making support for independence more likely.

Whatever anyone thinks of Alex Salmond he is an experienced and wiley politician and his tactics appear to be working. There is increasing antagonism against the perceived unwillingness of the English to allow the Scottish nation to carry out its central policy (but let’s not quibble about the legality of the referendum at the moment). The second stage fell into his lap. The anniversary of Bannockburn, so simple, yet so galvanising, coupled with the Commonwealth Games and a grand gathering of the clans - how can he lose?

As things stand, his strategy appears to be working. Despite the clear necessity to pass legislation and the clear willingness of the Westminster government to pass it as quickly as possible, this is, to the SNP, clear evidence of English interference and opposition to the will of the Scottish people.

In a recent poll, those pesky Scots seemed to agree. Support for independence overtook opposition for the first time since 2008, with 39% support, 38% opposed and the remainder undecided or refusing to say. So far, so good.

However, David Cameron, the coalition government and the Labour Party do not owe the SNP any favours and Alex Salmond may yet be effectively silenced on the timing of the legislation as the coalition government has given every indication that they will introduce it as soon as possible. To compound this, English backbench MPs may feel inclined to seek to introduce amendments to the Bill (no doubt with the coalition’s encouragement) to include a specific date (not of the SNP’s choosing) and specifying the question for the referendum. All of which would need someone with extraordinary political skills to counter…unless the modern day Bruce can persuade the Scottish people to really start supporting the central policy.

Voltaire famously stated: “injustice in the end produces independence”. The question is can Salmond drum up enough injustice to carry the day? Only time will tell if it is a price worth paying.

The Leader of the Opposition has had a tough 2012 so far. Photo courtesy of EdMiliband's Flickr photostream.

Ed Miliband has had a Christmas to forget. A series of gaffes have fermented pre-Christmas critical rumblings into a particularly distasteful cocktail of dissent. Several unions, one unruly peer, two racial slip-ups and a distinctly average set of public performances have conspired to cause him undue woe. And a great deal of it is due to a seemingly confused communications strategy. Fishing in the dark has never been more relevant. If a PR agency had committed and presided over the sort of gaffes that have taken place since Christmas Day then you’d expect a swift termination of contract to be followed by PR Week advertising for accomplished crisis management agencies to send their credentials ASAP to The Rt Hon. Ed Miliband, House of Commons, SW1A 0AA.

Before Christmas he was holding it together, just about. It is well documented that he lacks certain presentation skills, but he does have strengths, which he was playing to: he comes across as impassioned and caring with a strong handle on policy. He may not appear a natural leader at times, but by accident or design this has actually troubled David Cameron. In the cauldron of PMQs David Cameron’s polished put downs have given rise to accusations of a bullying and angry style, which is not Prime Ministerial.

Playing to these strengths, putting in a solid lent term of public performances and solidifying his Cabinet and policy direction seemed like the natural order of business for 2012. Consolidate and build.

But, Team Miliband had an ‘edgy’ moment around Christmas. Rather than regrouping under the radar and picking holes in the Cameron machine, responding to a packed and difficult news calendar for the Government in Q1 2012, they decided to play David Cameron at his own game in the New Year. They wanted to artificially create an equivalent of Cameron’s ‘Conference moment’ to dispel any doubts about Ed.

The Miliband media team put out the news that the Leader of the Opposition was gearing up for a major speech (or relaunch) in the New Year and a string of public performances. They then prepped the media, told the Government to listen up and turned the spotlight over to Ed.

And sadly there has been no way back. Problems began when the much-vaulted major speech was delayed, lacked originality and the set up highlighted Ed’s oratorial weakness. Bit of a non-event, not helped by the BBC calling him David Miliband.

Oh dear, and now there was no way to turn off the spotlight. Shortly afterwards one of his own Peers called him c**p and Diane Abbot began a race row on Twitter. In an ironic twist Ed then mistweeted at exactly the wrong time, ushering in Blackbustersgate.

Ed Miliband's ill-fated tweet. Taken from his Twitter Account.

Now the media were on the hunt for blood, Miliband was weak, And the organised publicity just made things worse, he was ill-prepared for a Today Programme interview with John Humphries; asked an ill-advised question at PMQs, which backfired embarrassingly and he then decided to start a fight with the unions, who are feeling more militant than ever.

All of this at a time when the Government’s Health and Welfare Bills are struggling, one of their MPs was caught in a very public and embarrassing stag do controversy and Europe is on the brink. David Cameron may well still be chuckling. Miliband seems one slip-up away from finishing his act early and letting the final curtain fall.

If only Ed could go back a month. But sadly he has found out that 24 hours is a long time in politics and a month can be transformational.

And I don’t blame Ed. At a time when Nick Clegg alone has 7 special advisers each on £68,000 you feel that the Labour party should be able to turn out a stronger policy, strategy and communications team than they have. This team have made basic mistakes on all fronts: mistweeting; poorly researching questions for Prime Minister’s Questions; organising big set-piece public speeches, when Ed’s strengths lie elsewhere and choosing his nadir as the right time to attack the organisations who paid for his leadership campaign, helped him best his brother and have spent all autumn spoiling for a fight.

It is a sorry state of affairs and one that could surely be used as a ‘what not to do’ case study for many agencies. Ed Miliband, who by all accounts make a big impression when people meet him face-to-face needs some emergency communications help because If they thought he was in a hole before Christmas then 2012 has delivered a crater.

In honour of tomorrow being the 100th International Women’s Day, I have compiled a (hopefully interesting, if not useful) list of 25  facts about Women.  I have linked to/ quoted the source where possible.

In addition to first world problems of gender inequality, pay discrepancies, increase in female cancers etc. women in the developing world often face an insurmountable battle for basics such as birthing and raising children, surviving childbirth or education. Even in my own industry, the discrepancy between the percentage of women in PR and % at the top of their career is a genuine concern and in our own government, women are still woefully under-represented.

I’ll be talking to women in business over the coming weeks to see what they think needs to change in the UK to support working women and how they are approaching careers and family life but for now, here are some stats about Women across the globe.

1. International Women’s Day is held each year on March 8. The annual event was first observed worldwide in 1909
2. Women in the world’s least developed countries are 300 times more likely to die during childbirth or because of their pregnancy than those in the UK and other similarly developed countries (Guardian.co.uk)
3. The Old English wifman meant “female human”……this was later coalesced to create the modern form “woman”.  The initial element, which meant “female,” underwent semantic narrowing to the sense of a married woman (”wife”) (wikipedia)
4. The symbol for the planet Venus is the sign also used in biology for the female sex. It is a stylized representation of the goddess Venus’s hand mirror or an abstract symbol for the goddess: a circle with a small equilateral cross underneath (Unicode: ♀). The Venus symbol also represented femininity, and in ancient alchemy stood for copper. Alchemists constructed the symbol from a circle (representing spirit) above an equilateral cross (representing matter). (wikipedia)
5. 16% of Fortune 500 companies have women on their board of directors in 2008, up from 11.2% in 1998. At this rate, they figure, it will take 40 years for there to be equal women to men represented on boards in the US. (Catalyst)
6. In the US,  female-run start-ups more than doubled male-run from 1997-2005
7. In the past, mortality rates for females in child-bearing age groups were higher than for males at the same age. This is no longer the case, and female human life expectancy is considerably higher than those of men
8. In mid-2007 there were 31.0 million women compared with 29.9 million men in the UK population. (NSO)
9. Men are ten times more likely than women to be employed in skilled trades (19 per cent compared with 2 per cent) and are also more likely to be managers and senior officials. A fifth of women in employment do administrative or secretarial work compared with 4 per cent of men. (NSO)
10. In Great Britain, men are more likely than women to exceed the recommended daily limits for consumption of alcohol. (NSO)
11. Among young adults (aged 16-19) more women (26 per cent) smoke than men (23 per cent) (NSO)
12. More than two thirds of working-age women with dependent children (68 per cent) were in employment in 2008. (NSO)
13. The first computer programmer was a woman (1842: Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), analyst of Charles Babbage’s analytical engine and described as the “first computer programmer”)
14. The world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji, was published in Japan around A.D. 1000 by female author Murasaki Shikibu (random history)
15. The UK has the lowest number of female engineers in Europe - only 9 per cent of UK engineering professionals are women compared to 18 per cent in Spain, 26 per cent in Sweden and 20 per cent in Italy. (EngineeringUK)
16. The first country to grant women the right to vote in the modern era was New Zealand in 1893 (random history)
17. 22 per cent of seats in the Commons are held by women, and the Home Secretary has to combine her demanding job with that of Minister for Women and Equalities (Janet Street Porter, Mail)
18. 700,000 people will experience domestic violence in the UK, and 90% of them are white British females (Guardian)
19. only 12% of the UK’s boardroom seats (as compared to Norway’s 32%) are occupied by women (Guardian)
20. Gender-based violence causes more deaths and disabilities among women aged 15 to 44 than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war (Guardian)
21. Two-thirds of children denied school are girls, 64% of the world’s illiterate adults are women, 41m girls are still denied a primary education (Guardian)
22. 75% of civilians killed in war are women and children, causing Major-General Patrick Cammaert, the former UN peacekeeping commander in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to declare in 2008: “It is now more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in modern conflict.” (Guardian)
23. Headhunters could lose business if they fail to sign up to a code of conduct aimed at raising the number of women on company boards.  (FT)

And finally, a couple of stats from my own industry (public relations):

24. Men are almost twice as likely to be earning a salary in excess of £50,000 than women in the PR industry ( PR Week)

25. 70% of people in PR are women (2006), yet of PR Week’s ‘Top 25 PR personalities’ only five of the 25 were women and of the 2010 PowerBook of 100 top PR people, only 24 were women

Cross posted with my personal blog

This Sunday is World Malaria Day. A day to celebrate all of the positive action that has been made towards the reduction and eradication of this disease (which still infects around 250m people per year), and a day to concentrate efforts towards further progress to the ambitious global targets. Visit the World Malaria Day website to find out more and show your support this weekend http://www.worldmalariaday.org/home_en.cfm

According to Andrew Jack in today’s FT special report on “Combating Malaria”, this year will mark the most hopeful World Malaria Day to date.

Why?

Well, for one Ray Chambers (the UN special envoy for malaria) is apparently confident that efforts are on track towards an ambitious mosquito net distribution programme which will complete during 2010.  He quotes “today we know we can achieve the goal of universal coverage of nets by the end of this year and near zero deaths from the disease by 2015.”

Evidence also supports the fact that far more effective tools for prevention and treatment have become available and distribution methods have been improved. In addition, the pipeline of technologies is growing with more effective medicines, improved diagnostic tests and possible vaccines emerging.

However, on top of this it is undoubtedly sophisticated and wide-spread advocacy and communications programmes which have really helped shape this positive environment. Comic Relief for example put a huge emphasis on malaria, dedicating the money raised by the 2009 celebrity Kilimanjaro climbers to the disease and investing in on the ground expertise (through Malaria Consortium and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria). In addition, this year we have the mighty football world cup in South Africa supporting the cause which will provide a truly global platform.

While there is certainly still far to go, it is exciting that World Malaria Day will this year be celebrated by the malaria community with such positivity and confidence. Visit the World Malaria Day website to find out more and show your support this weekend http://www.worldmalariaday.org/home_en.cfm