I Begged A Spin Doctor For A Comment

Back at work after a fortnight off, and one of the first people I speak to is Mike Flower, the ever-cheerful Tory press officer for the West Midlands who looks frighteningly young.

The employment of a dedicated West Midlands spokesman is a fairly new development for the Conservatives, and one of many things the party has done to improve the way it gets its message across under David Cameron.

Much of the conversation revolved around me telling him to post a comment on this blog "so it looks like someone reads it", but he tells me the comment system is buggy.

Is it buggy? Give me your thoughts below . . . oh, wait.

The parties have different set-ups for dealing with the media. As well as Mike in the West Midlands, the Tories have a dedicated person in London for the regional lobby correspondents at Westminster.

Labour have had West Midlands press officers for as long as I have been in journalism, starting in 1997 with Ian Austin, now an MP and one of Gordon Brown's close allies.

Their current spokesperson, Caroline Badley, is heading off to start her own consultancy, apparently alongside a former Downing Street advisor (I'm being cagey because I haven't confirmed it - I'd rather be vague than precise and wrong).

There's nobody representing the Lib Dems in the West Midlands, or not that I know of. If they exist, they can call me on 0207 219 3765 in office hours and say hello.

I should point out that I don't get most of my stories from PR people (or the wire either, thanks).

But is talking to PR people a terrible thing? Nick Davies' book Flat Earth News talks about stories which were "initiated by a PR and/or contained material supplied by PR", or which "carried clear signs of PR activity", as if this was inherently bad.

When the Government launched its White Paper on local government reform last month, I covered it by phoning Government press officers and asking for an interview with the Secretary of State.

After the interview, I wrote these stories. They resulted partly from "PR activity". Is that a bad thing?

PS Mike Flower is no relation to Mike Flowers, or so he claims.

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