That Way Madness Lies

I read in the Mail that the law is to ban the traditional taking of photos of newlyweds signing the register. I've only got their word for it of course as the story only seems to appear on the web in their slightly more rabid sister paper the Evening Standard, but then you can't imagine them making it up. Can you? I mean, they don't have an agenda do they?

Anyway, if true, it's all to with data protection apparently. If we had that photo at really high-res, we could use Photoshop to zoom in and read the details and use them to steal an identity. Er.. right. The same details then that are posted in public view in the register office open to anyone with a notepad and pen and nefarious intent.

The second excuse is that the photographed couple might make a mistake or splodge the register with an ill-aimed fountain pen while concentrating on the snapper. Yeah, right. How often has this happened?

By far and away the worst excuse though:

"Taking a photograph could be construed as a copy of the entry and a breach of the Crown Copyright. There are four entries to a double page so the details of another marriage could also be photographed."

Of a public record? One I could buy for £7 by filling in a simple form? Give me strength. If any story typifies our 'can't do' society, this one does.

Bite the Hand that Feeds...

And doesn't it feel good! Best PR of the year must go to Emma Clarke, the Voice of the Tube, having a go at London for the crap place it really is. I had planned on sharing some of her wit and wisdom, but her site has gone down under the sheer weight of traffic following the publicity today.

I do remember "We'd like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loudly." She does a decent blog too.

Mc-Bloody-Dermott

I think I must have been born with a faulty thermostat. Nothing makes my blood boil too much, apart from crap science, crap logic and crazy conspiracy theories. But I do try to avoid Tonight With Trevor Mc-bloody-Dermott as it inevitably inflicts on me a severe case of bile and dispepsia.

The programme invariably ticks the boxes above and I won't even grace it with a link. It typifies all that is wrong with journalism today. It is populist, superficial and fails to prompt reasoned discussion about issues that really matter to people,

I had to watch tonight as it was about changes in health services. Sorry, "so-called reconfiguration" as the reporter damned it without the slightest hint of praise. At the heart of the report was the fact that some A+E departments were being "downgraded" to "so-called" urgent care centres and that this was a bad thing. That people with life-threatening conditions would have to travel further before being treated.

Complete and utterly blood-boiling bollocks! (Painful)

The core argument of the programme was that if you don't have an A+E department at the end of the street then the extra travel time will put your life at risk and that there are only 51% paramedics to ambulance technicians to get you there in one piece.

Sorry? One in two are paramedics? Two crew per ambulance suggests that the odds are stacked in your favour that one of them will be well-trained while the other will do the driving.

And travelling further? Why would they? The disparaged "s0-called" urgent care centres would deal with 85% of the cases they deal with now in exactly the same way -- stabilise and pass on.

I have personal family experience of this. My sister lives in Rochdale (one of the A+Es "under threat") and when her son was ill she took him to the infirmary. Without going into details, they didn't have a clue as to what was the problem was and he was transferred to RMCH which sorted him out almost immediately.

No-one questioned that it was a long way away. No-one questioned that he was taken to his local hospital first. No-one questioned that they were flummoxed by his condition. And no-one questioned that he was successfully treated and is now enjoying life.

Which makes me cross with T McD. I know some of the people were made to look bad tonight. People who are actually doing their best for the rest of us. It is crap journalism of the worst order, and we should be complaining it. What we want is informed debate, not the sort of journalism that starts with the story and works its way back to justify it.

And my blood is still boiling and this post is a bit of an antacid tablet to get it out of my system.

Taking the Mic

This comment piece by Jeff Randall what is really wrong with the BBC:

In the case of Standard Life, it had taken calls from the BBC's business unit, several shows at Five Live and Radio Four, regional radio outlets, BBC Scotland (lots from there), BBC Online, Breakfast TV, the One O'clock News, the Six O'clock News and the Ten O'Clock News. Oh yes, and News 24.

I've experienced it many times - the big story breaks and the phone rings off the hook, mostly from the different bits that make up the BBC. One interview isn't enough, each programme wants its own take on events, its own exclusive interview and if the story breaks in the morning, drive time want to move it along even if it hasn't.

It's the curse of 24 hour news, talk radio and a profusion of tv and radio channels. Oh, and DAB. My rule of thumb is to invite one BBC tv and radio and another for ITV and commercial radio, but only on the understanding that they share with their colleagues. Otherwise some poor sod ends up doing interview after interview, sometimes for the best part of 24 hours. Believe me, I've seen it happen.

But it isn't just news where the Beeb overdoes things. Five Live, for example has two commentators at each football match who do 22½ minutes per half, plus a summariser who has to go on for the whole 90 minutes, no substitutes. Why? Surely one commentator would be enough.

And there's the cricket. There is a whole Test Match Special Team of what seems like eight commentators and summarisers and yet Five Live feels it also has to send its own cricket correspondent to foreign climes? Surely Jonathan Agnew or whoever fill-in with the occasional report.

And why do we have a regional weather forecast and a national one? Wouldn't just one do, one that tells you what is happening where you live with a bit tagged on about what is happening elsewhere?

Don't get me wrong, I think the BBC is great and, unlike the Jeff Randall critique, I don't think the problem is that it is over-managed. Taking account of the above, it is that it is under-managed. No-one is taking a strategic overview and rationalising the personnel.

Perhaps the commercial companies are equally profligate of on-air talent, though somehow I doubt it. I remember a few years ago calling a commercial radio station and asking for the news desk: "Sorry love, can you call back? He's reading the news."

Lemony Fool

Don't you just love it when the media get taken in by the most unlikely stories because they want to believe it's true. I came across one today on the Telegragh webite, the tale of a group of parents who have set up the Happy Endings Foundation dedicated to doing away with children's books that have a sad denouement because kids can't take an unhappy ending.

The aims of the are:

• To eradicate sad thoughts from all literature
• To make people smile a little more often
• To encourage authors to write more uplifting books for children
• To highlight the dangers of reading sad books
• To unite parents of a similar thinking and create a force with which to be reckoned
• To protect the next generation of readers.
• And, above all, to ensure the longevity of HAPPY ENDINGS (that means "to make sure happy endings are around for a long time")

The chief culpit of misery was Lemony Snicket, author of the A Series of Unfortunate Events books which and they parents to take them into the garden and have a Nazi-style book-burning. You'd think at this point that a bell would have been ringing in the journalist's ear, but the good old Mail took it seriously (as did the readers in their comments) as did the Guardian book blog.

Of coarse it turned out to be a hoax to promote Lemony S. And it worked, but as Ceri Radford says:

"...as Gordon Brown himself knows, spin can backfire. The Happy Endings campaign may have scored a few glorious column inches today, but it will have stored up a stack of animosity towards Lemony Snicket and Egmont Books for tomorrow: nobody likes to be made to look a fool."

What's a Meta For?

"Mark my words, we're living in a fools paradise at the moment and, unfortunately, when the chickens come home to roost, Gordon Brown will be out of No 11, and some other poor soul will be left holding the baby."

Talk about mixing your metaphors. From a letter to the Mail on Thursday, typical of the genre.

Inconvenienced

I know not much happens in Cumbria to feed the media and that's why you get stories like this.

“But there is no way we can persuade the North West Development Agency (the body which provides the grants for the MTI) that keeping toilets open is an economic initiative, although I agree with you and I think it is.”

You have to laugh

Whether Zara Phillips should or shouldn't have won the Sports Personality of the Year Award (or should it have been the horse?) is debatable, but no such doubts over Matt being named Cartoonist and Pocket Cartoonist of the Year.

The man's a genius and at only 42 there is lots more fun to come.

Tall or Fishy Tale?

The world's tallest man saves dolphins in China thanks to his rather long arms. Makes David Archer, vet Alistair and the recently departed Sam look rather sadly underendowed in the upper limb department. (If you're unacquainted with The Archers, or All Creatures Grunt and Smell, and the business end of a calving heifer, then the last comment will be somewhat meaningless.)