Posts Tagged ‘BBC

27
Mar
12

Ich bin ein Osbaldwicker (NIMBIs are good)

Just one more tree

Just one more tree

This morning on the BBC Radio 4 Today program Sanchia Berg reported on a building project that took nine years to “work it’s way through the process” and I thought of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi:

“You don’t know what you’ve got ’till it’s gone,
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot”

It seems that the government are about to publish a revised National Planning Policy Framework which will replace 44 existing planning statements numbering over 1,200 pages with a 49-page document.

The Today program reported that in 1999 plans were published to build 540 modern houses near the village of Osbaldwick east of York. Local people objected and, with the help of a local MP and the parish council, were able to delay the project until work finally started in 2011.

An interesting story but what struck me was that the whole stance of the BBC piece was that the objections of the local people were merely an inconvenient obstacle which had delayed a legitimate project. This was epitomised by Nigel Ingram, of the Joseph Rountree Foundation, who was reported as saying that “the planning system was primarily to blame” and the foundation thought that the battle cost it £5 million. Even Osbaldwick Parish Councilor, Wendy. Madocks, confessed that she found it “incredible” that the local people had managed to hold off the developers for ten years.

From this BBC report it seemed that the battle had beeb merely a waste of time and money and an encumbrance to the developers who were considered in the right by default.

It may have been fairer to portray this as a failure of democracy under pressure from a large well funded organisation.

One reason that we we assume that local people’s objections are an obstacle is that we brand them as NIMBIs (Not In My Back Yard). We consider that these people want all the conveniences of modern living such as housing, electricity and sewage without taking their share of the irritations which, in this instance, was to have an area of natural beauty demolished to make way for new houses.

I believe that condemning NIMBIs is short sighted and that, on the contrary, we should cheer NIMBIs in their battles to protect their corner of the natural environment.

Yes, it’s true that we need more housing, power stations and whatnot. However it will always be possible to make the argument that a handful of local people must sacrifice their little bit corner of planet Earth to pay for the necessities of modern life. And if we continually override the objections of NIMBIs then we shall eventually have all areas of natural beauty demolished.

It works like this:

Suppose that the stubborn people of Osbaldwick had won their battle. Suppose that whatever bureaucracy which rules on these things had come down 100% in their favour and the Rountree Foundation had been told, in no uncertain terms, that they could forget the idea of getting approval for the planning application near Osbaldwick. What then?

The pressure for housing would still exist and so the Foundation would have found another site and let us say, for the sake of argument, that the other site they had found was near Middlethorpe. Let us say that the foundation won approval there and the houses were built.

That would not have been the end of it.

The next time that it was necessary to build more houses or a power station or a sewage works then the planners would search around and the excellent site near Middlethorpe would have gone but they would be thinking, “…well, there is always that site up near Osbaldwick”. And this time when the planners came back they would claim the moral high ground. “Consider the honest people of Middlethorpe”, they would argue, “You cannot seriously expect them to put up with more houses when they allowed the development last time. The people of Osbaldwick must take there share of development”.

And even if Osbaldwick fought off this second assault there would be a third and a fourth until the area of natural beauty was eventually demolished.

That is how things work.

England used to be covered in forest but the great and the good always insisted that just a few more trees should be chopped down. Just a few more because the great and good always have enough money to live in the few remaining areas where there are trees.

Yesterday I was looking at my old secondary school from the air on Google Earth and it struck me how, when the school was built in the 1950s or 60s, there had been a great deal of space around the building. Some space for sports but also some just for kids to run around in. The school has changed over the years as the town has expanded and more buildings have sprung up on the green spaces where I used to run around. We all have grown used to living more densely packed.

Last year I went walking in The Peak District. I thought it would be good to get away from the city and walk around in the wilderness. Hah! Walking around in the hills I occasionally stopped to peer around and I observed scores of other bastards also standing on their fucking hind legs like bloody meerkats also looking around and trying to enjoy the wilderness. The English “wilderness” is crawling with tourists and it will nto be long before they install sandwich dispensing machines.

England is too crowded and there is pressure for more housing and I guess it must be built but if we continue like this we will all be living in shoe boxes. Already I can see that my parents lived in a smaller home than my grand parents and I live in a smaller home than my parents.

Just a few more houses, just a few more. Just one more terminal at Heathrow Airport. Then, once it is built, just on more runway at Heathrow Airport. The argument for the Heathrow Airport is that England must maintain it’s position as a global hub but for who’s benefit? If our environment is gradually eroded by development then in who’s benefit is this development?  Just when are we going to stop hankering after more and more stuff and start valuing the stuff we have?

Thus far an no further! Ich bin ein Osbaldwicker and all that.

Star House

Star House

17
Nov
11

Contrived argument over kissing and jumpers

How advertising used to be

How advertising used to be

I decided not to buy products by Benetton several year ago because I thought that their advertising campaigns insult our intelligence. This was in 1991 when they plastered posters of a new born baby covered in blood all over London. Firstly, this was not something I wanted to see before breakfast, and secondly this was a wonderful personal moment, crassly exploited to sell jumpers.

Since then hyper-commercialisation has become acceptable and politicians and artists have no shame about selling their kudos and integrity to flog stuff. Tony Blair works for massive banks and Madonna was sponsored by a Vodka company. Fair enough but when they take the money they  also surrender any credibility or right to have their opinions taken seriously. They forgo leadership for the role of a hired hand.

Commercialisation is now built into the DNA of the Anglo-Saxon world and, while it may have made us richer, it has also eroded our self respect and sense of community.

I recall hearing a younger friend discussing the renovation work going on at London’s St. Pancras station and he said: “..and that’s before the shops go in…” Before the shops go in! It has now become normal that every department in every organisation everywhere in the UK must be a profit centre and sell stuff to the public all the time. Forget punctuality sell ‘em another coffee.

I saw some bloke on Dragon’s Den a few months ago trying to flog his invention. He had invented a modification to the little pole and rope barriers used to encourage queuing at cinemas, airports and stations. His idea was that advertising should be hung beneath the ropes – ugh! In a hundred years time every inch of “public” space will have been sold off for advertising. The walls, the floors and the ceilings will all be showing video advertising 24 X 7. Forget freedom or speech it will be freedom of though that we need to worry about.

I placed a comment in a similar vein to this on The Huffington post and received a reply that enterprise was the way of the Western world and that using catchy, funny and positive ideas to sell products was good.

Leaving aside whether this tripe is catchy, funny and positive I don’t deny the right of organisations and individuals to advertise their products and services. I do object to the ubiquity of advertising especially when the vast majority of it is controlled by a handful of corporations. I also despair at our press who collude in this fake controversy because it is a cheap and easy story to cover.

Many people consider that we should not object to this sort of thing because that would lead to social engineering. This is perverse. We have social engineering. The marketeers who work for corporations to create these campaigns are social engineers. That is their job.

BBC Radio 4 has a series of programs recently in what it terms its Brain Season. One example of psychological research is something known as anchoring. The idea is that you show a couple of numbers to experimental subjects and then ask them a question such as “what percentage of countries in the UN come from Africa?”. It terms out that their answers will be significantly weighed toward the numbers shown.

Interesting stuff. But who do you think is using this? Are you using it in your every day life? Are your mates at the gym or down the pub using it? No, the people who use this stuff are marketeers working for large multinationals who are trying to lure you into buying more and more useless stuff.  They have even developed an Orwellian term for it: Behavioural Economics. This is what’s behind BP changing it’s corporate colours to green or Shell changing the name of their petrol to “FuelSave Regular Unleaded”. While they talk green they act mean.

So now the marketing execs at the jumper company are at it again. They claim they are promoting peace by displaying pictures of famous people snogging but we all know that their real goal is to pick away at a bunch of people who, rightly or wrongly, will take offence. The company are hypocrites because their goal is not the promotion of peace. Their goal is controversy. They want the Catholic church to take offence.

Whether you like their campaign or you loath it you are being used to promote a bunch of fucking jumpers. In 1962 controversy meant socialism or democracy. Fifty years later it means a contrived argument about kissing in adverts for a jumper company. I can only imply that the vacuity of the advertising campaign reflects the vacuity of the company and its owners.

In Western democracies in the 21st century the individual has very little power. One of the few powers we still have is to refuse to buy stuff.

If you like this companies shenanigans then by all means buy their jumpers. If you don’t then for God sake have some self respect and resolve not to buy their products in future.

05
Oct
11

Tories given easy ride at conference

No make that "help" the unemployed

No make that "help" the unemployed

I dislike the way that the news media have been reporting the future as it represents collusion between the politicians and the media. The politicians want their message on morning news programs and the news programs want to report it so a draft of the speech is handed over. Some may think that the difference of a few hours makes no odds but it can have odd repercussions.

The Tories had their conference  up in Manchester this week and this morning BBC Radio 4 reported that Prime Minister David Cameron “will say” that we should all pay off our credit card debt. I remember thinking that this did not sound like a good idea as it would reduce demand even further.

This evening Channel 4 main news was that David Cameron had not said that we should all pay off our credit card debt – he’d changed his speech. Big news? Well, I guess the original statement was poor judgement on Mr. Cameron’s part but you can hardly blame him for changing it when it received a negative reaction. What do we expect if we are going to use the medai as a proof reading service for politicians speeches? It should be obvious that reporting drafts merely gives politicians the ability to correct poor judgement.

Also this week we had the supposed “clash” between Secretary of State for Justice Kenneth Clarke and the Home Secretary Theresa May. Theresa pointed out that a court ruling relating to immigration referenced the defendants ownership of a cat and Clarke expressed scepticism that this was a decisive factor. Was this really the biggest news so far at the Conservative conference? If it was then the big news should really have been that there was nothing happening at the conference.

I guess it was bigger than yesterdays story which was that David Cameron appeared to be accompanied by a different female escort each time he was seen at the conference and I was amused to hear on the radio that Boris Johnston is always escorted around at conference to try to keep him out of trouble.

Seems that the Tories have got an easy ride due to a poor performance by the media.

02
Oct
11

OP Hotel & Trattorias

OP Hotel

OP Hotel

First impressions of the OP Hotel on Viale Oceano Pacifico in Rome were good. Clean open entrance. Polite efficient reception staff. The bathroom was clean and modern with a bidet, a stylish square wash basin, fantastically large shower head and tiny soap bars in tiny plastic wrappers which are all but impossible to remove without a bit of stabbing from the nearest metal object which, in this case, was my front door key.

The floor in the main room impressed me too as it was made from some kind of matting material which was both solid underfoot without the feet slapping, suction capabilities of polished tiles.

In German and British hotels I have noted that the windows never open more than an inch and I expect that this is because at some date in the remote past someone either jumped or fell. Since that day the health and safety medleocrats have insisted that we live behind glass, protected from ourselves like butterflies nailed to a display case. One may as well outlaw balconies and, for all I know, they have.

By contrast the Italians couldn’t give a stuff if you want to jump out a window and so I swung the window wide and let in the warm September air.

There was, of course, the usual palaver with finding a light switch. Unlike all other buildings, hotels the world over have wall lights activated by switches placed at random throughout the room. The OP Hotel is no exceptions; on either side of the bed were a row of six switches which I slid and pushed in vain because most of them were mere blanks where the rocker switch should be. When I did discover a switch which moved it appeared to do nothing or perhaps a light illuminated on the other side of the room. Annoying as this was, one can’t mark them down for this as it is common to every hotel in the world.

Switching on the TV I played around with the remote control for a while. In the UK we are given the impression that the BBC is something special, renown throughout the world yet more and more I see TV channels from far and wide in foreign hotels. CNN of course but now Russian English language TV with their blatant and repetitive propaganda. Indeed their only program seemed to be about the ill treatment of Russians who’s families had emigrated to Estonia in the days of the Soviet Union.

Unable to find any switch to extinguish the remaining light I pulled the plug out of the wall and went to bed.

Girasole

Girasole

The next day I had lunch at a Trattoria named Girasole on Via dei Minatori. My colleagues informed me that a Trattoria is an inexpensive causal restaurant. An excellent idea. The Girasole provides a limited menu of good Italian food at a fair price. It reminded me of The Trevi on Highbury Corner where I used to eat when contracting up in London and if I recall rightly that is run by Italians.

In the evening  I discovered the hotel restaurant. Small and functional but more to feed the occasional business traveller than to entertain. The area around the hotel offers very little and the area is obviously still under development. However, a short walk brings one to a large shopping mall. The décor of Euroma 2 may be somewhat gaudy to the Anglo Saxon eye but it has numerous shops and restaurants and free wifi at Re Basilico restaurant. Euroma 2 is listed as being on Via Cristoforo Colombo but there is no need to walk all the way around as a new road cuts directly through to the main entrance.

In twenty minutes to half an hour it is possible to walk to the EUR Palasport metro station which is only a few stops and one Euro from the Coliseum. I took a taxi to EUR Palasport and had dinner in town then got the metro back and walked from the station. It was extremely warm and as I wondered through a small unlit park I noticed people lounging around. Being English I expected these were reprobates but as I approached one greeted me with “Buonasera” and further on I realised that these were mainly couples enjoying the evening. Not just youngsters; a more seasoned gentlemen approaching my own age sat with his legs up chatting with his senorita.

Approaching the OP Hotel I was interested to see various young ladies standing by the roadside on their own or in couples. Enjoying the night air I expect.

OP Hotel
Viale Oceano Pacifico, 165
00144 – Rome

Ristorante Pizzeria Girasole
Via dei Minatori, 23 (EUR)
00143 Roma

Trevi Restaurant
16-18 Highbury Corner,
Highbury,
London,
N5 1RD

11
Sep
11

Don’t Follow Leaders

Gorgeous?

Gorgeous?

I have long admired Shami Chakrabati. Mainly because of her determined, intelligent and reasoned support for human rights but also because she’s short, dark and gorgeous. So when I heard her speak on Any Questions on Friday I felt my opinions were being well represented. Even on the subject of the NHS, where she admitted was a layman, she made some good points.

Then Simon Jenkins, chairman of the National Trust, said that he thought that health services in the world which appeared to work best are those where the county council pays but delivery is handled by private companies and he highlighted Scandinavia as exponents of this style of health care. Ms. Chakrabati then had a hissy fit and derided the idea that “rare cancers” and “heart surgery” should be handed by “parish councils”. Amazing! Ms. Chakrabati, of whom I expect intelligent and honest debate, had drifted off into the tactics of New Labour and was deriding an argument that had not been made.

In a democracy it is right that there is debate over ownership of industry and public services but what I find objectionable about “the left” is their automatic assumption that they have the moral high ground. They don’t. It is perfectly moral to argue that private companies are, overall, more competent than large state run organisations. Any debate should be over technical aspects such as quality of delivery and costs.

I am old enough to remember the monolithic nationalised industries which were the norm in the 60s and 70s and I well recall their arrogant disregard for their customers. I dislike the hyper-commercialism of the 21st century but would not welcome a return to the days when public services were run for the benefit of their workers and British Leyland thought that innovation meant square steering wheels.

The lesson here is that, while Ms. Chakrabati is an absolute heroine on the topic of human rights, we should resist the urge to idealise her. Idealising leaders must be some kind of natural human drive as we tend to do it quite a lot. These days pop stars seem to gain most from this phenomena though why we should consider that singers are any more intelligent or moral than the rest of us I don’t know. I remember seeing Madonna in a documentary and was gob smacked by the shallow drivel which she spouted. (Telling her father she couldn’t tone down her act because it would be “….compromising my artistic integrity….” – Yeh, OK, just zip yourself up and sing your song ay love!.)

Like many people I was impressed by Barack Obama when he became president. His speeches seem moral and reasoned. However, one of his first acts, on gaining office, was to address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and declare that Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel handing the Israelis a victory and betraying the Palestinians without even understanding what he had done. One might also wonder why the President thought his first action should be to address AIPAC at all. To be fair to him I think this was probably an honest mistake on his part but it does show once again that our leaders have feet of clay.

Men are not Gods and should not be worshiped. Some opinions of some leaders will concur with our own, but many will not.

Bob Dylan said it best: “Don’t follow leaders”. What a guy, he’s my hero….D’oh!!!

11
Mar
11

BBC reporting the bleeding obvious

but do they have GCSE English?

but do they have GCSE English?

Today the BBC carried a story  by their Home Affairs correspondent, Danny Shaw, about a document which they had obtained from the Metropolitan Police with a Freedom of Information Request. The document was the plan which the police had prepared for the tuition fee protests which took place in London some months ago and which got out of hand.

The BBC article serves only to ridicule the author of the report for poor grammar and spelling and for having the temerity to include some mild levity in the text. The article sneers at misspelling and phrases such as “cunning plan”, “embussed” as well as vague witticisms such as the sentence “Ideally we want to be able to use our carriers (vans) again in the future”.

The United Kingdom has submerged itself in corporate newspeak over the past decade with management consultants charging over the odds to write documents which are perfect when judged for spelling, grammar, syntax, formatting, colour coding and branding but which say nothing and serve no purpose.

Well done BBC, I fully expect that the author of this plan will be reprimanded and stopped from writing documents “going forward”. Instead we can expect that, at great expense, the Met will employ some twit in a suit to write a plan full of perfect platitudes and the sum total of human happiness will have been knocked down a couple of notches.

It is OK to make spelling mistakes. The written word came before the dullards who collated the rules. It is OK to bend and distort grammar on occasions. It is OK to include a bit of levity and to use some inventive terminology. Even if one disagrees with all of this, it is definitively OK for a person employed for his policing abilities to have a sense of humour and not be a grammatical pedant.

On the morning when we woke up to a Tsunami in the Pacific and civil war in Libya the BBC reported that some plod was using poor spelling and grammar. Here’s a better story: The BBC are reporting the bleeding obvious as news!

07
Feb
11

Outcasts – Stop shouting and have a cup of tea?

Outcasts - where did we pack the tea?

Outcasts - where did we pack the tea?

This evening saw the first episode of Outcasts, a new Science Fiction series on BBC1 starring Hermione Norris.

The concept is good, an apparently empty planet named Carpathia awaits a ship from Earth bringing escapes from a nuclear holocaust – We haven’t had a post holocaust escapade in a while have we?

The ship is the last to escape and is having problems landing. Meanwhile on Carpathia the obligatory angry tosser insist on carrying a gun and going around shouting at everyone. Yes, the script relied on the usual blend of contrived aggression and shouting.

There is brief mention of sinister others who have been eradicated to make way for the human arrivals though we are led to believe that some may have survived and this probably lays the groundwork for future episodes.

Mainly the action takes place outside amongst some fantastic scenery though there is the usual control centre replete with numerous computer screens and silly slidey doors.
The program ended with the deserved death of shouty man on the planet’s surface and the ship breaking up as it re-enters the planet’s atmosphere. Amongst the final shots was a one of shouty man in some kind of escape capsule. Is this a flashback or did this obstruction to an intelligent series survive?

The program has promise though I do hope they can all calm down and consider the wonder and potential of their situation.

Worst line so far: “Do you want to get out of here and go somewhere else?”

02
Feb
11

Democracy in the Arab world – Everyone’s a winner

She wont vote for militant Islam

She wont vote for militant Islam

This evening BBC Radio 4′s Moral Maze is discussing the unrest in Egypt. I usually find this program to irritating to listen to. The panelist seem to consider that it is their soul objective to be obnoxious and insulting to the “witnesses”.

In describing tonight’s program the BBC web site asks: “Is it morally justifiable to tolerate or support unpleasant, authoritarian, undemocratic regimes because we feel the likely alternatives might prove worse for the citizens of Egypt.”

My answer is simple: NO! No because it is wrong to support unpleasant, authoritarian, undemocratic regimes. NO because we cannot know what the alternative will be. And NO because we have experience of what happens when revolution finally breaks out in countries where the West has connived to suppress democracy. i.e. the people despise the West along with the dictator which they have just thrown off.

The classic example of this is Iran. In 1953 the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup d’état instigated by the United States and the United Kingdom. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was installed as Shāh and propped up by the United States until the revolution in 1977.

From what I have read the revolution was initially backed by a secular movement but militant Islamists used the chance to grab power. Secular Iranians tried to resist but were crushed by the new regime of Ayatollah Khomeini. They could have received help from the West but having been responsible for 20 years of their repression we were not trusted and there followed a caustic division between Iran and the West that lasts ’till this day. That is an example of what happens when we support unpleasant, authoritarian, undemocratic regimes because we feel the likely alternatives might prove worse.

We should support the people of Egypt in ejecting their dictator. If they then elect an authoritarian Islamist government then more fool them. At least the responsibility will not be ours and when they are finally in a position to reject authoritarianism we will be in a position to help.

More optimistically I believe that Egyptians will have learned from the experiences of Iran and Afghanistan and will reject outright Islamist rule though Islamists may have some role in a coalition. It is possible that Egypt could finally break the curse that has afflicted the Arab world for decades and start to modernise.

Imagine a middle east of modern democratic countries right on the border of the largest trading block in the world. I am talking of the European Union. While the world obsesses over whether China will supplant America as the largest economy in the world they overlook the fact that the EU has an economy larger than both. With the Arab world modernising trade would take off and this would be great news for Arabs and Europeans.

The financial crisis has caused market uncertainty and companies have been nervous about initiating capital projects. Investors are also unenthusiastic as many assets appear overpriced; there is even talk of a Chinese asset bubble. Consequently some sectors, such as insurance, are awash with capital.

If democracy were to blossom then this capital could find it’s way to infrastructure projects in the Arab world. There was speculation in The Economist in 2009 of solar powered electricity generation in the Sahara with the electricity transported to Europe across the Mediterranean. That is not going to happen while the region is ruled by unstable dictators.

Lastly consider the effect on the Arab / Israeli conflict. Today the subtext of much of Israel’s argument is that the Palestinians are just Arabs who are used to being oppressed and the Palestinians are no worse off than citizens of other Arab countries.

Imagine if Israel were surrounded by thriving democracies. Israel would be forced to confront it’s oppressive and racist policies toward the Palestinians. Could The United States continue to support the siege of Gaza or the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians? Shame on them if they did.




Enter email address to receive notifications of new posts.

Join 77 other followers

Jonesxxx on Twitter

Images

Roof

Billiards

Sunset

Traffic

Dusk

Pizza to go

Chat

Roof

Roof

The Look

More Photos

 

June 2012
M T W T F S S
« May    
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 77 other followers