David Scannell (be prepared, I am now exercising my First Amendment Right) is an idiot! Yes, I said idiot. This is the guy, a state representative I might add, who voted to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana on Tuesday of last week. Then went to work for the Manchester School District on Wednesday where he is the school spokesperson and, get this, the head of the safe schools program! What was he thinking? Rather, not thinking? I’m not pandering to the Mayor; in fact during the last two elections for Mayor I supported his opponent with a big sign on my lawn. But Mayor Guinta is right here, Scannell was not thinking clearly.

Moving right along, lets talk about how fast a lawsuit was filed by some Concord Law Firm because Hannaford had a very sophisticated breach of it’s debit and credit card numbers. I concede that nobody wants to have his or her credit or debit card numbers stolen and that computer security is very important. I only ask that you tell me how much the folks who actually have had their numbers stolen been hurt? How many of the false charges are they liable for? I think the answer is zero. So this is just another case of legal greed.

Then my favorite of the week (which also involves lawyers) is the story of the lady who fell trying to get a good seat at an Oprah taping and who is now suing Oprah for not controlling the audience. Give me a break and get a life!

Hey I don’t make this stuff up–it just happens.

I want to visit a topic that came up this year at our annual holiday party. (The social event of the year I might add, here in the Greater Manch-Vegas area.) Several of my peers were there, as well as numerous media sales folks. A bunch of us got into a discussion about clients and the problems we all have. It is not a surprise that we all have similar experiences, but what was somewhat surprising is that all of us mentioned having clients with champagne ideas on a beer budget.

In and of itself this is not a problem. Where the problem does exist is the point when we, the agency, are not told in advance about budget limitations. More often than not we are asked to put our best foot forward, to make recommendations blindly, and then told to start over because we were way over budget! I don’t for a minute want to spend more than the client wants to spend but I can’t possibly imagine the right budget for them. Yes, I can use their industry standard as a guideline and go from there, but most clients have no idea what their industry standard is to begin with!

During the peer conversation I mentioned above, in more than one occasion we all noted we had been led to believe there was more money in the budget then there really was. When presented with the harsh realty of actually paying for what they asked for, far too many clients resort to the “what can we get for half of that” dance.

As you can expect, this scenario causes immediate problems of trust and leads to unrealistic expectations by clients who expect to do just as well with half the budget.

All I ask is one thing–if you are working with an agency don’t keep your budget under lock-and-key. And if you work with the media, tell them the truth about the budget. It may not set you free but it will make all of our jobs easier and you’ll get a better product for it in the long run. Let us be creative with the money you DO have, rather than hack away at the budget you don’t have.

I don’t know about you, but as I look out my window and see 10 feet of snow I wonder what happened to good old global warming. I guess it skipped over us this year! As you can see from this article  it’s not the first time either.

It seems the discussion about global warming always gets more intense during a political season. I guess that’s good–or it’s at least better than Congress wanting to talk to has -been-athletes about steroids.  I have to admit that I forced myself to go see Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and what I found was an inconvenient use of facts subject to various interpretations. Call it denial if you will, but most, if not all of the end of the world scenarios I read about relative to global warming are at the extreme edge of scientific believability.

If as a world we want to cut down on global warming and become more environmentally sound we have to make some difficult choices; choices a lot of folks won’t want to make. Here’s a big one! Why not build more nuclear power plants in this country? It’s not because they are unsafe nor is it because they pollute. It’s because we don’t have the political will that the French do (good heavens it hurts me to say that).

So if global warming is in the eye of the beholder, as I behold the 10 feet of snow outside my door I say I would like to behold a warmer globe.