I have been giving some thought to how quickly Iain Dalecroft is burning through Lord Michael Ashcroft’s money with his glossy new ego-project “Total Ashcroft“.
After some snuffling around sources, I have come across various rumours;
1. Lord Cashcroft is not willing to piss away more than £600,000 on this venture.
2. 30,000+ people are being sent free copies with full price sales at a negligible level.
3. The business model is predicated on convincing advertisers that those 30,000 people are actually reading about where a young man in politics might purchase his suits rather than wiping their arses on it.
4. The magazine is unlikely to have any articles criticising multimillionaires with non-domicile tax status.
Recess Monkey wants your views on these questions;
a) What issue number do you think will be the last for this run of Total Politics?
b) After Shakespeare’s bank-rolling of 18 Doughty Street and Ashcroft’s Total Politics investment, which multimillionaire Tory donor will be Iain Dale’s next sugar-daddy?
c) Wouldn’t Ashcroft’s £600k be more effectively spent buying billboard posters with Iain’s face on them?
editor[at]recessmonkey.com
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Isn’t this type of stealth photography, intruding as it does into private grief, just the sort of stuff that Iain’s mate desperate Dave is so bravely campaigning about somewhere up north?
Brian Hughes said this on July 9th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Recess, you’re just jealous! How about blogging something actually interesting like Harriet Harperson’s stealth leadership campaign?
Mr Angry said this on July 9th, 2008 at 11:11 am
I had a flick through this tome in Smiths recently and thought it should be renamed “Total Bollocks”. To say it was light was an insult to more genuinely intellectual and challenging publications such as Bunty nad Hello.
Doug said this on July 14th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Ouch !!!!
As someone who has tried to leave various postings about Michael ‘Lord’ Ashcroft of Belize on Iain Dale’s site over the years, and been shocked at the immediate explosive outpouring of vituperation, bile and invective, I did have to laugh at your posting, Recess…
The idea of ‘giving away’ a magazine, and then expecting paying punters to subsidise its delivery to the landed gentry seems, er, rather an odd one - and not destined for great success in the age of the internet.
It is rather similar to ‘trade journals’ whose cover price is miraculously not unadjacent to one twelfth of the annual subscription to the said organisation - no one pretends that the magazine is worth £2.50 or £3.75 or whatever - just that one may take it a bit more seriously than if it were branded a ‘free magazine’.
They need to build sales very quickly indeed to punch past the ‘launch costs’ obstacle and it will be very tempting to want to throw money after the ’sunk cost’ of getting the first issues to press.
I think it will survive 10 issues - but be canned before the first anniversary..
As for the next ‘multi-millionaire’ Tory donor - well I can’t speak for his bank account, but I have feeling that Alan Duncan has a man-boob just waiting to be suckled..
Don’t know about the billboard posters - perhaps printing some of those ‘masks’ they dish out to people at football matches, or even an ‘Iain Dale’ green screen campaign !!
Sorry, total anonymity required.. said this on July 14th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
[…] Burn Rate (4) […]
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