All Politics is Local

At home for lunch here in Ottawa and I can't help notice that in the last four weeks there have been at least seven local newspaper articles in the Co. Meath area on GM crops (see picture example over).
County Meath is where BASF have purposed to hold their GM spuds trials. As anyone who has experienced Irish politics will tell you the old adage that “all politics is local” is certainly true. This saying was made famous by Tip O’Neill, the Irish American politician, it is something that the US corporate folks have clearly missed in the past on GM crops and now it seems that German based BASF has it missed too.

Some of these local media outlets (newspapers and radio) have often up to 70% lisenership/readership in these local areas. Ask any senior Irish politician and they will tell you that political campaigns/elections have been won and lost on the basis of local media in Ireland.

With the above in mind the BASF errors to date are:
• Only publishing one newspaper advert to announce the experimental trials……yes this sufficed legally but was hardly good for engaging the Irish public.
• From a quick review of the media in the last two months they have had limited presence. Whether you agree with them or not this is clearly not good practice in the Irish political arena.
• Not many like the rough and tumble of Irish politics (I do, but then again I’m married to an Israeli!) but if you leave the podium empty don’t be surprised to have the vacuum filed by those who oppose you.
• Victor Cohn’s (a once senior columnist with the Washington Post) quote that "Scientists are to journalists what rats are to scientists" should be remembered by the BASF Plant science folks.

As an aside, I had some interesting info passed to me over the weekend regarding GM Watch…..see http://gmwatchbullshtt.blogspot.com/. It is comical at this point!