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  • 6. Consult your critics

  • 7. Neutralise the opposition

  • Пособие. Учебное пособие по английскому языку уровень с1 Под общей редакцией А. А. Тычинского Издательство мгимоуниверситет


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    НазваниеУчебное пособие по английскому языку уровень с1 Под общей редакцией А. А. Тычинского Издательство мгимоуниверситет
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    5. Sponsor a think tank


    "The think tank route is a very good one," said ex-minister Patricia Hewittto undercover reporters seeking lobbying advice. Some think tanks will provide companies with a lobbying package: a media-friendly report, a Westminster event, ear-time with politicians. "The exact same services that a lobbying agency would provide," says one lobbyist. "They're just more expensive."

    In the mid-noughties, a lobbyist for Standard Life Healthcare, now part of PruHealth, worried about how they could get more people to buy private cover without being seen to undermine the NHS. The solution: "Get some of the thinktanks to say it, so it's not just us calling for reform, it's outside commentators ... it does need others to help us take the debate forward." The insurers did turn to thinktanks, including free-market advocates Reform. This has lobbied for more "insurance-based private funding" in the health service. Prudential, the insurance giant behind PruHealth, was Reform's most generous sponsor in 2012, investing £67,500 in the thinktank.

    The BBC has also come under repeated recent criticism for inviting commentators from the leading neo-liberal thinktank, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), to talk about its opposition to the plain packaging of cigarettes, without disclosing the Institute's tobacco funding. Although the IEA does not disclose who funds it, BAT concedes it has recently paid the IEA £30,000, with more to come this year. Leaked documents from Philip Morris also reveal the thinktank is one of its "media messengers" in its anti- plain-packaging campaign.

    6. Consult your critics


    Companies faced with a development that has drawn the ire of a local community will often engage lobbyists to run a public consultation exercise. Again, not as benign as it sounds. "Businesses have to be able to predict risk and gain intelligence on potential problems," says ex-Tesco lobbyist Bernard Hughes. "The army used to call it reconnaissance; we call it consultation."

    For some in the business, community consultation – anything from running focus groups, exhibitions, planning exercises and public meetings – is a means of flushing out opposition and providing a managed channel through which would-be opponents can voice concerns. Opportunities to influence the outcome, whether it is preventing an out-of-town supermarket or protecting local health services, are almost always nil.

    Residents in Barne Barton in Plymouth were asked in 2011 what they thought about a 95-metre, PFI-financed incinerator being sited in their neighbourhood, just 62 metres from the nearest house. Although more than 5,000 people objected, the waste company's planning applicationwas waved through. That's community consultation.

    7. Neutralise the opposition


    Lobbyists see their battles with opposition activists as "guerilla warfare". They want government to listen to their message, but ignore counter arguments coming from campaigners, such as environmentalists, who have long been the bane of commercial lobbyists. So, they need to deal with the "antis".

    Lobbyists have developed a sliding scale of tactics to neutralise such a threat. Monitoring of opposition groups is common: one lobbyist from agency Edelman talks of the need for "360-degree monitoring" of the internet, complete with online "listening posts ... so they can pick up the first warning signals" of activist activity. "The person making a lot of noise is probably not the influential one, you've got to find the influential one," he says. Rebuttal campaigns are frequently employed: "exhausting, but crucial," says Westbourne.

    Lobbyists have also long employed divide-and-rule tactics. One Shell strategy proposed to "differentiate interest groups into friends and foes", building relationships with the former, while making it "more difficult for hardcore campaigners to sustain their campaigns". Philip Morris's covert 10-year strategy, codenamed Project Sunrise, intended to "drive a wedge between various anti groups" and "position antis as extremists".

    Then there are the more serious activities used primarily when big-money commercial interests are threatened, such as the infiltration of opposition groups, otherwise known as spying. Household names such as Shell, BAE Systems and Nestlé have all been exposed for spying on their critics. Wikileaks' Global Intelligence Files revealed that groups such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International and animal rights organisation Peta were all monitored by global intelligence company Stratfor, once described as a "shadow CIA".

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