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THE PRINCE OF INTERVIEW

When you interview Peter Mandelson, could we have a split-screen 'decode' of the significance of those softly spoken sequences? Example: 'Mr Sarkosy knows me well' (Sarko hates my guts but I will get him).

I am waiting for the killer question, you know the one that involves the troublesome Irish along with his own compatriots, the French and what about the Dutch. The question is pretty straightforward and it involves the European people not wanting anything to do with this treaty. Just watch the body language. If he squirms he will say that we will have to look at this again, they all say that. What they do not understand is that the French, Irish and Dutch have all said NO and they were the lucky ones...the ones with a vote that is.

SMOKING WITHOUT FIRE

Is it not abundantly obvious that successive governments have carried out a rearguard action for tobacco? Every step taken was designed to look like concern while minimising impact on sales. That we still sell from food outlets, an addictive poison that would require pages of Health and Safety data, if sold industrially, says much of hypocritical governance. Tobacco should have been classified as a 'dangerous drug' long ago, put on 'notice to quit', and suppresed by the very same cunning advertising that promotes it. Instead, it still features in TV drama, and shelves for packets 'just happen' to mask most of the death warnings. You wanna define 'British' Gordon? Take a look behind the checkout. (It's where you pay when you go - oh forget it.)

I'm bitterly disappointed, not to say sick and tired of seeing "Newsnight" ignore the news of the day, and pad the programme out with non-hard items such as elitist chit-chat ("Sarko... and we're hoping to be joined live by Peter Mandelson",) and non-urgent studio set-pieces and 'Reports' (last night's and tonight's NHS pieces) and whimsy ("Our Culture Correspondent " being "asked" to look at the year since the introduction of the smoking ban.") Topped off with a plug for the Review's coverage of the Booker Prize.
I try to compliment the programme-makers on their successes as do many others, but for me 'NewsN' is in danger of becoming at times, a parody of news coverage. Many times your posters high-light far stronger stories, and much of the time, these are ignored.
Yet another young person was stabbed to death at the weekend, and as I said on this morning's 'Prospects', the police and the media go their merry way, and give no details and no descriptions, preferring the usual platitudes, a point which I've been raising for some time. It is a point of valid interest to viewers, voters, parents, tax-payers, when youngsters in London are so terrified of gang-violence that they're writing essay-assignments about it, in the weeks before they're stabbed to death. I don't see people marching in the streets about the ruddy Booker Prize. Surely the resources and expertise at 'NewsN' can prepare a report on the reportage of the recent spate of murders, and get at least close to why police,politicians and you in the media appear more interested in with-holding information than in catching murderers.

SMOKING WITHOUT FIRE

Is it not abundantly obvious that successive governments have carried out a rearguard action for tobacco? Every step taken was designed to look like concern while minimising impact on sales. That we still sell from food outlets, an addictive poison that would require pages of Health and Safety data, if sold industrially, says much of hypocritical governance. Tobacco should have been classified as a 'dangerous drug' long ago, put on 'notice to quit', and suppressed by the very same cunning advertising that promotes it. Instead, it still features in TV drama, and shelves for packets 'just happen' to mask most of the death warnings. You wanna define 'British' Gordon? Take a look behind the checkout. (It's where you pay when you go - oh forget it.)

APOLOGY FOR DUPLICATE.

Barrie S

I dont want to question Barrie's enthusiasum for the smoking ban but have you ever considered the governments possible motives.

The Corporate Nazi's evidently support it as it will increase sales of nicotine replacement patches, chewing gum and inhalers. These are far more lucrative than fags for the stock market parasites, and think of all the property they can speculate in as the result of closure of many pubs and working men's clubs, often in prime locations.

Hundreds of people have lost their jobs as a result of the smoking ban, and as one on TV pensioner forced outside to smoke his pipe remarked " fascist ". He looked old enough to have had personal experience of Hitler.

I WATCHED MANDELSON RIGHT THROUGH

Peter Mandelson declared: 'The EU Commission is given a mandate . . .'
I don't remember doing that. Anybody?

Is it too much to ask for a bit of intelligent cohesion? Good reporting on the NHS - to a limit (not enough focus on the fact of privatisation) - and then Mandelson pops up having his say. All, in typical ´óÏó´«Ã½ style - unrelated.

How about making the connections - that when the privatised, liberalised huge health investor contracts in which we are engaged, are included in what Mandelson is offering under the WTO Services Agreement (GATS), they will become irreversible - whatever the scenarios and whatever the spiralling cost.

It was sad that Gavin saw fit to try to degrade what Allyson Pollock had to say about privatisations on Monday - because she was the only person with the goods.

The focus should be on the privatisations - but also how they will be irreversible as trade agreement commitments.

Wake up Paul Mason. Yes, people can handle information if you pull your finger out and provide it. And they have a right to know.

What a trivial Newsnight report on the smoking ban a year on. No mention of how it has affected the pub trade.
Just a jolly little let's have a laugh at these silly smokers. You wouldn't rubbish any other 'minority' group like this, but of course, the Corporation has government backing on this issue.
Smokers were perfectly happy to comply with requests not to smoke on trains, buses, in restaurants, shopping centres, etc. But New Labour, which could have taught the former Soviet union a few lessons in repression, had to make it 'illegal' to smoke in public places. And they wonder why they are so unpopular.
Now I will be sixty later this month. Started smoking when I was 15 and am in great health. Don't see the ´óÏó´«Ã½ ever making programmes from this angle of the health spectrum though, because it loves the doom and gloom scenario, fed by easy to cover government and pressure group press releases.

YES GAVIN SWATTED THE LADY (Monday)

I refer to 'stayingcool' #9 above. I remember RECOILING at Gavin's almost surly rejection of the lady's input. It seemed measured and relevant to me, and music to the ear, contrasted with the usual smug suspect. I found myself pondering what might have gone before . . . Might Gavin comment?

Shameful really, really shameful, that Newsnight could only manage a 5 minute piece on a smoking ban that has shattered the social lives of millions of smokers, wrecked pubs and clubs all round the country, and turned a quarter of the population into social pariahs.

I suppose that the idea was to portray smokers as old and inarticulate has-beens, the relics of a former age, people to sneer at - neatly sidestepping the fact that these were the men and women that helped build this country, over whose freedoms snobbish and derisive and ever-so-fashionable antismokers now trample.

We aren't going to go away, you know. You can sneer at us all you like. We will take back our country in the end.

Good programme, particularly the NHS data analysis.

Shame Mandelson only comes on now, whining about naughty boy Sarko, when it would have been interesting to hear a bit more of him on the Irish Problem. It's hardly news that he feels undermined by the French - Trade and France have always been at loggerheads; Lamy was the one of the (very) few who vaguely managed to bridge that culture gap. On top of that, Mandelson also happens to have manoeuvred himself into the rather unenviable corner of Most-Despised-Commissioner-Since-Cresson, something to do (amongst others) with Chinese shoes and steal, and subsequent anti-dumping investigations....