Monday, January 07, 2008

The Return of Maestro Brogan

Ben Brogan (welcome back!) informs us that Gordon Brown has appointed a new Head of Long Term Decision Making Political Strategy. His name is Stephen Carter. No, I've never heard of him either. His previous job was with Brunswick PR. Can anyone enlighten us with further details about Mr Carter, who having taken on this job I can only imagine is a total masochist. Ben also takes Gordon Brown to task for the vacuous nature of his new year's message.

8 comments:

Machiavelli's Understudy said...

He was the chief exec of OFCOM.

According to the BBC...

Anonymous said...

OFCOM--that would be the body charged with dealing with complaints about Labour bias in the BBC etc.?

Anonymous said...

Stephen Carter used to be CEO of J Walter Thompson, was tipped to become head of ITV but took over as head of Brunswick PR.

Which, is co-owned by Peter Parker - Gordon Brown and Sarah Brown are godparents to his daughter and coincidentally, Sarah Brown used to work for.

Oh, and she still has an office in Brunswick's headquarters.

(Amazing what you can find when you look).

Miss Wagstaff said...

I'm surprised that you have't googled him, Mr Dale. Not that it would enlighten us any further.

Anonymous said...

Stephen Carter was in advertising, then moved to run ntl (the cable company) for a time, which he left relatively quickly to go to be the first Chief Exec of Ofcom.

Anonymous said...

Under Carter's leadership OFCOM were spineless whilst ITV PLC ignored it's public service broadcasting obligations by slashing regional, political and religious programming. Now it all makes sense - the then ITV Chief Exec, who was "negotiating" with OFCOM for a relaxation of the regulations commiting ITV to certain levels of regional news and factual programmes, was Charles Allen. Allen is a Labour supporter. After job losses in regional ITV newsrooms, with more to come as Border TV packs up altogether, and having overseen some cracking business intitiatives such as ITV digital, G-Whizz internet and paying over the odds for Friends Reunited, Allen was able to bolster ITV's falling shareprice by cutting costs, thanks to Mr Carter, and walk away with a £4million payoff.

Anonymous said...

Andy C - I didn't know that Gordon was so close to Spiderman. You mean Alan Parker...

Google is not really *amazing* is it?

Anonymous said...

stephen carter is also the man who introduced "ofcom branded water" to the conference rooms of the converged regulator. perhaps his next act of branding will be to introduce and market Brown Water otherwise known as .....
should we now expect a rebranding of the labour party or a rebranding of gordon brown?