Tony McNulty presents 'All Watched Over by Media of Loving Grace'
Politics, press and public policy processes
Location: Suffolk New College
Date: 21 February 2012
Time: 5.30pm - 7.30pm
The issue in both Richard Brautigan’s poem, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace and Adam Curtis’s TV documentary series of the same name is that the relationship between human beings and machines defines our modernity. For Brautigan, the relationship is benign and beneficial to the human race, whilst Curtis argues that machines/computers have failed to liberate us and add to our common failings and dysfunctions.
In this lecture, Tony McNulty will look at the relationship between the worlds of politics and the media. Using real-life examples from recent politics, he will analyse both the antagonistic element of such a relationship when short-term needs diverge and how sometimes there is a realisation of shared needs and a mutualisation of the relationship.
Profile
Tony McNulty
Tony McNulty is London born and bred and a Visiting Professor of Public Policy at UCS. He attended university in Liverpool and Virginia in the USA. From 1983 to 1997, he taught at various polytechnics and universities in London. He was a Principal Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at the University of North London and has published numerous articles on inter alia whitecollar professionalisation; the erosion of a public service ethos; and training needs and barriers to change in small and medium sized enterprises. His interests extend to the politics of people in organisations as well as British, US and Irish politics.
He was a Labour Councillor in Harrow from 1986 until 1997 when he became the Labour MP for Harrow East. He served as a Government Whip from 1998 until 2001. He then became Minister for Housing, Regeneration, Planning and London in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. In 2002, he moved to the Department for Transport and spent two years working with Alistair Darling mainly on aviation, railways and London transport.
After the 2005 election, he spent the next three and a half years working as a Minister of State in the Home Office, firstly in immigration and then policing, security and counter-terrorism. In 2008, he went on to become the Minister for Employment, as well as the Minister for London and, in this role, he attended Cabinet. Since the last election he has been writing, broadcasting and reflecting on politics and is also an avid blogger and tweeter.