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Rajan Datar is away this week. Our guest presenter, Tazeen Ahmad, has written this blog:

On Over To You this week we take a look at the work of the Burmese Service.

2 September will be their seventieth anniversary and, let's face it, covering Burma is no easy task.

The military junta who rule the country do not allow the ´óÏó´«Ã½ any access and the recent history of the country has been extremely turbulent; from the monks protests of 2007, to the cyclone which devastated the country in the same year, to the forthcoming elections due later on in 2010, Burma is a country which is rarely far from the news agenda.

And this is without even mentioning the continuing house arrest of Aung San Su Kyi, a woman who in spite of all of the odds, remains firmly in the public eye. How can a station with no access to its beat possibly continue for so long?

Also on the programme, how many of you speak the language of finance? A listener contacted us concerned that terms like "Quantitative Easing" conceal what he would describe as the far simpler "Printing Money."

Is there a danger that the language of finance could conceal more than it reveals?

Sometimes getting facts out of Burma seems a lot simpler than doing the same with the world of finance.

I do hope you manage to listen. Rajan Datar will be back from his holidays next week.

Tazeen Ahmad is this week's presenter of Over To You

Over To You is your chance to have your say about the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service and its programmes. It airs at 00:40, 03:40 and 12:40 every Sunday (GMT).

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This week, programmes from two heavyweight correspondents come under scrutiny from alert and combative listeners.

First up: John Sweeney's provocative exploration of Western intellectual apologists for tyrannical regimes in a two-part series called "Useful Idiots" (the phrase used for the title is attributed to Lenin).

Amongst other examples, John Sweeney (pictured) focuses on the unquestioning belief of people like Beatrice and Sydney Webb, and Doris Lessing, in Stalin's brutal route to a "Communist Utopia", before, in the second programme, analysing Tony Benn's description of Chairman Mao as "a great figure", and the role of George Galloway and Yvonne Ridley as employees of .

Listeners Merrilee Prior and Saeed Vahid - both coincidentally from Canada - took exception to John Sweeney's theses for different reasons - and as you'll hear in the programme this weekend, gang up on him to make him defend his views.

I hope you'll agree the effect is entertaining as well as enlightening.

Merrilee is not happy about the term "idiots" for people who may just have a different view from the majority - and, for that matter, from John Sweeney, whilst Saeed feels the programme lacks balance. To his mind more examples of intellectuals supporting atrocities committed by Western regimes were needed. Make your own mind up on how well John defends his thesis by listening to the lively discussion on Over To You.

Meanwhile another listener takes Allan Little to task for not providing enough context in his piece in last week's From Our Own Correspondent about the shrine in Medjugorje in Croatia, to which thousands of Catholics go on pilgrimage every year.

Basically there is much dispute in the Catholic Church as to whether the apparitions of the Virgin Mary, first witnessed by some children in 1981, have credibility.

Januaress Makau from Kenya argues in his email that as a senior and trusted news correspondent for the ´óÏó´«Ã½, Allan Little is failing in his duty by not mentioning the controversy.

Allan for his part argues that FOOC is a chance for reporters to go "off agenda" and give more personal accounts; that his piece was much more about how Medjugorje is now an "ecclesiastical boomtown "; and moreover what is going on there is more about an expression of national sentiment than anything else for the townspeople.

Finally on this week's Over To You a unique World Service Trust radio project in conjunction with ´óÏó´«Ã½ Urdu and Internews, an international media development organisation, to provide information as aid to the millions of people affected by the monsoon floods in Pakistan.

34 local stations are taking three programmes a day in both Pashto and Urdu.

The result is not only a vehicle for passing on news about available clean water supplies, food and medicine but also a fascinating sounding board for people's complaints, comments and worries on the ground.

It is taking the concept of "lifeline" broadcasting to the next stage, say those in charge. It will be interesting to hear in due course whether the people they are being broadcast to find them useful.

Rajan Datar is the Presenter, Over To You

Over To You is your chance to have your say about the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service and its programmes. It airs at 00:40, 03:40 and 12:40 every Sunday (GMT).

• Listen to previous episodes of Over To You
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In this week's Over To You we look at a number of the points raised by listeners about a variety of programmes.

Among them was a documentary called Korea's Lost Children, produced and presented by Ellen Otzen, and it told the fascinating story of South Korea's overseas adoption programme. 

The scheme began in the 1950s as a way of dealing with the mixed race children who were orphaned in the aftermath of the Korean War, and even now around 1000 South Korean children are given up for adoption in western countries every year.

You can hear an interesting selection of comments from listeners who all have some personal interest in the subject, or experience of it.

Rajan also talks to Gilles Lordet, chief editor of the organisation Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for international press freedom.

This is in the light of the recent elections in Rwanda, in which the president, Paul Kagame, was re-elected with more than 90% of the votes cast in his favour. 

This could be seen as a vote in favour of stability - but the independent election observers were concerned at the lack of an opposition movement within the country. 

Gilles tells Rajan about the difficulties for journalists of reporting anything the government would prefer them not to report, and the ways in which he'd like to see the situation change. 

Rajan also talks to Murray Holgate, the Network Manager for the World Service and the man in charge of the schedules - not a job I'd want to take on, now that I've heard more about what it involves.

Murray was responding to listener Joan DeForeest from the Czech Republic, who is unhappy that, since the schedules changed in the spring, she can't find some of her favourite programmes at a time when she's able to listen.

You can hear whether Murray is willing - or able! - to do anything about it in this week's Over To You.

Cathy Packe is the Producer, Over To You

Over To You is your chance to have your say about the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service and its programmes. It airs at 00:40, 03:40 and 12:40 every Sunday (GMT).

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Since the news has been dominated by the terrible humanitarian disaster that has engulfed north-west Pakistan in the past few days, we decided that looking at the challenges of covering this kind of story would be an interesting topic for Over To You.

Tazeen Ahmad is presenting again this week while Rajan's on holiday, and she has a particular empathy with Pakistan, as it's the country where she was born.

As you can hear on the programme, she talks to Aamer Ahmed Khan, head of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Urdu Service. He admits that finding out what's really going on - when not only the physical infrastructure of the country, like roads and bridges, has been destroyed, but phone and power lines are also damaged - can often be extremely difficult.

As you can hear in the interview, he says that he might like to be able to provide more coverage - although he does feel that, bit by bit, his journalists have been able to piece together a picture of what is really happening.

He also tells Tazeen about the special lifeline programming that's planned for the region.

From next week, extra programmes in Urdu and Pashto will be broadcast, giving listeners in that part of Pakistan up-to-date information concerning the relief operation, and where they can go in order to get help.

We also have a varied selection of listeners' comments and queries in the programme, including a fascinating email from Kerubbar Sekho, who contacted us from Zambia, confused as to when to use the terms English or British - and where the UK comes into the picture.

As someone who was born in England (and, for that matter, Britain and the UK), I'm still not sure I could come up with a coherent explanation of the differences.

So we approached Robin Lustig, one of the most experienced World Service presenters, and a man who is used to conveying complicated issues to listeners.

You can hear his explanation of a tricky conundrum on this week's Over To You.    

Cathy Packe is the Producer, Over To You

Picture credit: Getty Images

Over To You is your chance to have your say about the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service and its programmes. It airs at 00:40, 03:40 and 12:40 every Sunday (GMT).

• Listen to previous episodes of Over To You
• Subscribe to the podcast
• Send the team your feedback by email (overtoyou@bbc.co.uk), telephone (44 144 960 9000), SMS (447786 202006) or by leaving comments on this blog

• Bookmark with:
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