Tony Blair's PC is "pretty idle", arch spinner says

ARCH POLITICAL spinner Alistair Campbell said on the wireless today that the only time he used a computer was to write. He never used email and his boss prime minister Tony Blair had a computer screen on his desk, but said Campbell, "it's pretty idle".

Campbell was being interviewed by Andrew Marr on the Radio 4 programme Start the Week.

Campbell said: "I am generally always behind the times when it comes to technology. I am a bit of a technophobe. Tony Blair is definitely a paper and pen person." He said that the public is consuming news in a completely different way to before. "About a third of the younger generation use the Internet as their primary source."

People can use their own nous on the Internet to decide whether the information there is genuine or not. He said people buying British national newspapers knew what agenda they were buying into if they bought the Daily Mail, the Guardian or the Telegraph.

"On the Internet you can become fairly literate quickly about the quality and you can use your own nous," he said.

"Newspapers have to stop thinking about the media in conventional terms. Politicians have got to let go a bit and understand it's a pretty atomised thing and start to understand the young generation is thinking of its political consumption in a completely different way. In many respects, US politicians were way more savvy about the Internet than British politicos.

He said conventional newspapers in the UK are "struggling". Perhaps the fact that Tony Blair's PC is pretty idle explains why we never got a reply when we used the 10 Downing Street website to ask him a simple question about PCs? Market research indicates over 50 per cent of the UK population are online. µ

L'INQ
Radio 4