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Too much about Glorious Goodwood being (not) overrun by chavs.
Guess what 4-letter word beginning with N it's not?
Fifi
On the issue of our dismal train network, we need to take a leaf out of Japan's book and discover how simple it is to make things work properly- safely and on time!
To reply to the question about seats facing backwards on trains, in Japan all seats face forwards and when the train reaches its terminus all seats are turned around. Its incredibly simple!
This really must be the silly season. A couple of weeks ago TransportWatch UK (which despite its grand-sounding name, appears to be just one bloke) was doing the rounds pushing its "concrete over all railways and run (motor) coaches on them" nonsense, now someone's talking again about putting seatbelts on trains.
What's next? The nutter, sorry, person of passionate ideology who keeps insisting we should all go over to decimal time?
Come on Eddie and team, I agree with Fifi here, you can do better than this.
The report on the High Court ruling about indefinite sentences being impossible to escape -- because the prisoner didn't have access to the course that would provide the instruction he had to have before he could be considered for release -- was interesting, but I am sure that there is more to this story than that.
Didn't the Prison Reform Trust recently (within the past week?) publish a report on the 3,000 or so people sentenced since 2005 to indeterminate sentences, and suggest that this was expected to increase to 12,000 in the next five years? And it would have been interesting to be told what the 150 offences for which such sentences can be given at present, or have been given up to this date.
Any chance of a follow-up, PM team, with a bit more meat to it as well as the single individual's case?
In the interest of balance, why doesn't P.M. interview a supporter of the presence of the British Army in what is and will continue to be a permanent part of the United Kingdom; in contrast to the strident voice of the republican supporter interviewed this afternoon?
Why does the ´óÏó´«Ã½ seem only to give a voice to the people who support violence?
Is there any particular reason why you chose a fervent Nationalist to comment on the formal ending of the Army's support to the civil powers in Northern Ireland? Let's not forget that the troops could have been withdrawn at any time, had the IRA decided to stop killing and maiming people. Presumably you're going to be broadcasting a balancing point of view?
Eddie, you're in a perky mood today - I liked 'alleging on sledging'.
I've listened to Today/World at One and PM today. Almost all I've heard of the political news (until the 6 o'clock news now) is about the Ali Muragh/Cameron stand off. You say that this has overshadowed what Mr Cameron wanted to talk about on schools today. Surely this is more important to the whole of UK than this spat and it is the ´óÏó´«Ã½ which insists on making an issue of this. I want to hear about important issues and even the tragedy in Darfur takes second place to a jilted conservative candidate. Time for the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to get a bit more serious and a little less tabloid.
Fantastic to hear Rita Chakrabati claim that the row between David Cameron and Ali Miraj had overshadowed Cameron's speech on education. In reality of course, as all of us non-journalists know, it's the journalists themselves who decide on what priority to give any one story. The PM programme could have decided to treat the Miraj row as minor and the education speech as major. Choosing not to do so and then pretending that no such choice was made is simply dishonest. But then I suppose rows are so much more fun to report than boring old speeches about schools. So much for PM being a serious news programme.
Rail safety.
My grandfather, Donald Corbet Fletcher, born 1882, was the Chief Engineer (not sure of exact title) with LNER in the 1930s/40s.
As such he would attend every major rail accident and to this day I feel very uncomfortable if I am not travelling backwards in the middle of a train!
Not sure if I have brain washed my own children and grandchildren about this.
As for the problem of seats facing backwards when travelling in one direction, forwards on the return journey, the first class seats on trains between Cairo and Alexandra used to rotate - but this of course was to enable passengers to face forwards when travelling.
And, going back to my childhood, the back rests on tram seats could be moved, again so that everyone could travel facing forwards!
I must say its amusing to see David Cameron's Conservatives showing their true nature when under pressure in this latest policy spat. Despite all the PR they are still the Nasty Party! Fortunately the electorate can see this as shown in the polls.
I do wonder why, after sniping from others in the party on the same topic, that Mr Cameron has chosen to stand up to the first person of asian descent to attack him publicly. It may not be deliberate, but is it a sign of some subconscious prejudice?
According to the horses at glorious Goodwood they love Chavs - as they told me who would clean the stables and feed them if it was not for this group of people...snooty Dave and his pals....hardly!! And if you don't believe me you have never rode on them from Languna Isla to the Darwin Boarding School (half a mile from Goose Green) and back over a 6 year period in the middle 1950's and early 60's....
I think the item on the withdrawal of the British Army from Northern ireland was disgraceful. Why does the ´óÏó´«Ã½ always seem to wish to denigrate the Army. It was the politicians who put them there, but if they hadn't, Ulster would have collapsed into civil war. PM however, managed to focus on a disenchanted member of the nationalist community who could only complain about how bad the troops were. No mention of IRA atrocities, soldiers murdered, civilians bombed and shot by thugs on both sides. What a lousy piece of unbalanced reporting, with no recognition of a terrible job managed in appalling circumstances. Eddie. you shold be ashamed to have reported in this way. Why not fire the Editor?
To have seat belts on the train you first need seats, i dont think they would work for standing customers !!!!!
Hey, this stock market hassle aint over yet. DOW down 150 on the day.
Well we all get our fingers burnt occassionally trying to bring about the collapse of capitalism, so here goes.
-150 in NY after Europe closed should mean London down 75 first thing tomorrow.
Even tonight the FTSE is still 3 percent below the floor the Beeb tried to define for us
So, here's what I sent to Newsnight, a programme Eddie is too good for:
Monkeys on typewriters. But even so. Tonight S. Flanders finally got something right - the doctors iniquity.
But I was telling her all that, when P. Hewitt was in place. Why didn't S. Flanders accuse her of not standing up to doctors?
There's another case against them. The GPs conned a finance deal that they cashed out as salaries that should have gone into surgery - to - clinic development.
So why the late timing Stephanie? My guess - a post - Hewitt briefing from somewhere. For Gods sake learn to think for yourself.
Now about the stock exchanges.
This is a classic case of some objective problems - defaults in the low quality mortgage market -but its the sort of crisis where belief is all.
The question is: can the markets be Keynesian and boot strap themselves the self fulfilling recovery? (They bid up the markets, the markets reckon that as plenty of spending power around (rising stocks are a widows cruse) etc)
There is another interesting point. Risk lovers are long term losers of course. Are the banks frightening themselves with that fact over private equity outfits?
Of course help for mortgage defaulters and govt spending would be the solution in a rational society.
Because stock market booms are really just a set of highest prices a bunch of 3,00 fat cats in NY and London think they can get away with, and stock market slumps a set of punishments for the lower orders that 3,000 fat cats think they can get away with.......
We're allowed to say that even though Al Qieda believe it too.
Note Paxman's closing summary on markets. FTSE rises were reckoned numerically both absolutely and as 'more than' 3 percent.
Dow was just described as 'down' - despite falling by 2 percent from hi to lo during the day.
It all helps with Jeremy's pension of course but that shouldn't deter PM from using the current market events to attack a lousy system for determining how much spending power there is iin hte economy and how its distributed.
'Upon a hill,
We're singing still
C'mon Eddie'
Hey, this stock market hassle aint over yet. DOW down 150 on the day.
Well we all get our fingers burnt occassionally trying to bring about the collapse of capitalism, so here goes.
-150 in NY after Europe closed should mean London down 75 first thing tomorrow.
Even tonight the FTSE is still 3 percent below the floor the Beeb tried to define for us
So, here's what I sent to Newsnight, a programme Eddie is too good for:
Monkeys on typewriters. But even so. Tonight S. Flanders finally got something right - the doctors iniquity.
But I was telling her all that, when P. Hewitt was in place. Why didn't S. Flanders accuse her of not standing up to doctors?
There's another case against them. The GPs conned a finance deal that they cashed out as salaries that should have gone into surgery - to - clinic development.
So why the late timing Stephanie? My guess - a post - Hewitt briefing from somewhere. For Gods sake learn to think for yourself.
Now about the stock exchanges.
This is a classic case of some objective problems - defaults in the low quality mortgage market -but its the sort of crisis where belief is all.
The question is: can the markets be Keynesian and boot strap themselves the self fulfilling recovery? (They bid up the markets, the markets reckon that as plenty of spending power around (rising stocks are a widows cruse) etc)
There is another interesting point. Risk lovers are long term losers of course. Are the banks frightening themselves with that fact over private equity outfits?
Of course help for mortgage defaulters and govt spending would be the solution in a rational society.
Because stock market booms are really just a set of highest prices a bunch of 3,00 fat cats in NY and London think they can get away with, and stock market slumps a set of punishments for the lower orders that 3,000 fat cats think they can get away with.......
We're allowed to say that even though Al Qieda believe it too.
Note Paxman's closing summary on markets. FTSE rises were reckoned numerically both absolutely and as 'more than' 3 percent.
Dow was just described as 'down' - despite falling by 2 percent from hi to lo during the day.
It all helps with Jeremy's pension of course but that shouldn't deter PM from using the current market events to attack a lousy system for determining how much spending power there is iin hte economy and how its distributed.
'Upon a hill,
We're singing still
C'mon Eddie'
Hey, this stock market hassle aint over yet. DOW down 150 on the day.
Well we all get our fingers burnt occassionally trying to bring about the collapse of capitalism, so here goes.
-150 in NY after Europe closed should mean London down 75 first thing tomorrow.
Even tonight the FTSE is still 3 percent below the floor the Beeb tried to define for us
So, here's what I sent to Newsnight, a programme Eddie is too good for:
Monkeys on typewriters. But even so. Tonight S. Flanders finally got something right - the doctors iniquity.
But I was telling her all that, when P. Hewitt was in place. Why didn't S. Flanders accuse her of not standing up to doctors?
There's another case against them. The GPs conned a finance deal that they cashed out as salaries that should have gone into surgery - to - clinic development.
So why the late timing Stephanie? My guess - a post - Hewitt briefing from somewhere. For Gods sake learn to think for yourself.
Now about the stock exchanges.
This is a classic case of some objective problems - defaults in the low quality mortgage market -but its the sort of crisis where belief is all.
The question is: can the markets be Keynesian and boot strap themselves the self fulfilling recovery? (They bid up the markets, the markets reckon that as plenty of spending power around (rising stocks are a widows cruse) etc)
There is another interesting point. Risk lovers are long term losers of course. Are the banks frightening themselves with that fact over private equity outfits?
Of course help for mortgage defaulters and govt spending would be the solution in a rational society.
Because stock market booms are really just a set of highest prices a bunch of 3,00 fat cats in NY and London think they can get away with, and stock market slumps a set of punishments for the lower orders that 3,000 fat cats think they can get away with.......
We're allowed to say that even though Al Qieda believe it too.
Note Paxman's closing summary on markets. FTSE rises were reckoned numerically both absolutely and as 'more than' 3 percent.
Dow was just described as 'down' - despite falling by 2 percent from hi to lo during the day.
It all helps with Jeremy's pension of course but that shouldn't deter PM from using the current market events to attack a lousy system for determining how much spending power there is iin hte economy and how its distributed.
'Upon a hill,
We're singing still
C'mon Eddie'
Nick (9) we didn't do Darfur on Tuesday because we did it on Monday when Mr Brown first made the comments he repeated at the UN.
Your interview with Marion Walsh should have been balanced by someone with an opposite view of history in Ulster.She repeated the claim of the authorities having a "shoot to kill" policy.Wether this is true or not is not certain.What is beyond dispute is the fact thay the IRA had a "bomb to kill" policy.
I paricularly took exception to Marion Walshs comparison of the British Army with the invading forces of the Nazis.You cannot invade your own country.
The Republic movement had the aim of removing all British prescence from Ulster and has obviously failed despite murdering thousands of inocent people in an attempt to subjugate the majority of the population.
I'm annoyed and saddened that you choose an embittered Irish republican to comment on the army's 38 years here in Northern Ireland.
I remember seeing the remains of dead soldiers being cleared off the streets of my home town and I couldn't understand then, and I can't understand now, why their deaths didn't merit more than passing mention on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ news that night. I'd like to assure the relatives of those and nearly 800 other soldiers who gave their lives for freedom in Northern Ireland that the people here are greatful for their sacrifice. A poppy wreath is still laid every year in our town in their memory. we haven't forgotton them, even if the ´óÏó´«Ã½ doesn't seem to care about them. Marion Walsh's commments came from the bitterness of defeat.
They don't get it do they? How can you not compare the Republican's attitudes to the Imperial presence?
The IRA was a response to the civil rights situation in the north, not a cause. When there is equality and suffrage, you won't find People's Armies being formed anywhere in the world. Well done 'PM', they will catch up eventually.
Sorry to throw in a change of subject, but what is your take on Ritalin use in our schools?
Ritalin works by allowing the dopamine levels to 'over-accumulate' during neurone transmittance.
Dopamine functions at the synapses during the "anticipation of pleasure", and is believed to be integral with the process of learning. Correspondingly, adverse stimuli such as bad food or bad sex etc, will result in a decrease of dopamine.
My contention here is that administering Ritalin to children must risk the perversion of learning negative stimulation.
Or put another way, a kid sparked up on Ritalin may learn a bad lesson just as well as a good one.
So what possible disincentive is there in the teaching profession to proscribe the drug wholesale, considering the potential crutch for crap teachers presented with a classroom full of pro-brainwashable students?
Jimmy (23) - thank you for that - but the best place to introduce serious topics is The Furrowed Brow. Why not repeat this comment there? Best wishes, Eddie
I have never written to a blog before but I feel very strongly about the interview with Marion Walsh on the subject of troop withdrawal from Northern Ireland. The interview was totally one sided and MUST be balanced with someone with a different perspective on the subject. I am an ex-serviceman although I never served in NI, several of my colleagues did and came back severely traumatised by their experience, some never really recovered and are still suffering today evan after decades have passed.
The Republican movement and the Protestant movements must accept responsibility for the atrocities committed in the name of their repective 'causes' and admit that if there had not been a military preaence in NI then the provence would have descended into civil war.
Why do your reporters on the PM programme appear to be biased against any form of military activity?
In addition to the above subject, I would like to mention the interview? (using the word advisedly) with a serving officer in Afghanistan about civilian casualties after an operation in Halmand Provence. The woman intervewer obviously had her own opinion and did not give the officer a chance to make his point that they are fighting a vicious terrorist organisation in the Taliban who do not hesitate to utilise civilians as human shields in the hope that they will be killed and therefore score in the propaganda war. What are our soldiers supposed to do? Lie back and be killed?
Notwithstanding the reasons for our troops being in Afghanistan and Iraq, they have been placed in an extremely difficult situation by the politions and are, as every Serviceman does, getting on with the job and making the best of it.
Come on PM, let us have a bit more unbiased reporting from now on and give our Servicemen the support they deserve!
Eddie (24) - Do you want me to get wrinkles !?
;)
Understood.
Eddie Mair @24
Apparently Anna Ford says "There are only two types of people at the ´óÏó´«Ã½: radiators and drains". What does she mean Eddie?
Thanks for your comments on the Operation Banner item.
Our original intention was not to set up a stand alone interview on the end of Operation Banner but a discussion between two people who had strong personal memories of the start of the operation. Ideally we wanted this to be a member of the Armed Forces and a member of the Catholic community who the Army went in to help.
However, we were hampered by time and logistics and we didn't succeed in setting up both legs of the discussion. However, I thought it was worth running the interview with Marion Walsh because, while I can understand why many people find her views disagreeable, she is not an isolated voice among Catholics who remember Operation Banner.
It's worth noting that the Army's point of view has been well represented across Radio 4's coverage of the end of Operation Banner. The Today programme had a discussion with Colonel Tim Colins and Professor Michael Clarke, Director of Rusi. Also, at the time of setting up the interview with Marion Walsh, General Sir Mike Jackson was booked to appear on the World Tonight. However, where I think we were wrong was in not letting listeners know where they could find alternative voices/opinions voices/opinion either already broadcast on R4 - or due for future broadcast later in the day and we should certainly have flagged that up in the course of the item on PM.
Sorry to have sent you the same stuff thrice.
I blame your Submit... !. You click it, it changes colour to amber and then just sits there. If you move the mouse away it goes blue. Trickier than working out where the rain is over the Irish Sea from a ´óÏó´«Ã½TV weather map.
But if you click a few times you know you've sent ONE 'cos then you get a banner complaining you've sent more than one message and serial messangers are probably up to no good, so your messages (presumably but evidently falsely all but the first) have been blocked.
Never mind.
So the FTSE is THREE PERCENT DOWN this morning.
Will there be a song and dance about that from PM?
Again I ask why does the Beeb report climbs in the markets but not falls? (Dermot Murghanhan's last shout as a beeb Newscaster before going back to Big Brother to get his orders called a small climb last week as the 'largest climb ever since last Tuesday'. Well, a cock up, but well in the spirit of Beeb reporting.
Why has there been a Nick Owen swop transfer? Couldn't we have just given back Dermot and the odious Nick Robinson?)
In climbing the markets in effect create private and inequitable spending power. Meanwhile those on low fixed incomes, benefits, pensions, as well as tax credits, suffer 'cos government is even less willling to spend when private asset inflation is driving spending. Both sorts of demand creatrion would be we are told inflationary.
So one cheer for the crashes. With good governments theroughout the world things would get better like that.
The only person I knew who was killed during the Troubles was an English serviceman tortured to death by the IRA, but I try not to allow personal feelings to influence my judgement in this matter. People on *all* the sides in that conflict did things they ought to be ashamed of, at one time and another, and rehashing who did what worse to whom really won't help matters at this point.
Deciding how to deal with this story must have been an editorial nightmare, and I think the team got it right. If nobody had been interviewed, accusations of 'plugging the ´óÏó´«Ã½ line' would have abounded. If two people from opposite 'sides' had been interviewed on the subject of the British troops being withdrawn from the north of Ireland, there would have been complaints from whichever 'side' had the first say, because the other was given the opportunity to 'reply'. If each had been given the opportunity to 'reply', the entire PM programme for the next ten years would not have been time enough to contain all the arguments being hashed over for the umpteenth time, the accusation, counter-accusation, denial and rebuttal and sound and fury. If they had been interviewed simultaneously, it would have been a recipe for disaster.
I was impressed by the tone and tenor of the interview with Marion Walsh. It became clear that there was no point in challenging her world-view and that her 'received truth' was all she was perceiving, and that seems to me to have been a very cogent point well-made (regardless of which 'side' she actually came from). The quiet suggestions that another view of matters might exist, put calmly by the interviewer and brushed aside by her as irrelevant, made that point quite as clearly as another interview-subject actively putting forward the other side of the arguments could have, and far better than any strong reaction by the interviewer.
I thought that as interviews on a difficult subject go, this was a little masterpiece of the art, allowing the subject of the interview to indicate exactly what she was, where she was coming from and how much weight could be put on her opinions, but without any heat or animus on the interviewer's part and without his giving any reason for any heat or animus on hers.
What would have been the point of a confrontational piece at this stage in the game?
Well done that team, and well done that man.
Jasper at 28 should have pointed out he was last night's editor....
Eddie Mair at 31 should have pointed out he is a presenter.
mac @ 32, why?
(I ought perhaps to point out that I sometimes ride a bicycle...)
Marion Walsh? Who her? What a perfect platform you gave the IRA. She was cool and every bit as slick in patronising propaganda as those masters, Martin and Gerry. Hardly a squeak to defend our poor young squadies and the saintly Mr. Pastry (who"caused all the trouble").No mention of any cowardly, easy-target-only atrocities, just a banging on about that 'bloody' day when all the republicans were home having their Sunday lunch. They saw you coming Eddie.
Should mac at 32 point out that he is a Frogger?
Chris @ 32. Why not?
Where's today's Preview?
My quessy ; - How much is a second hand hip?
Re 35.
Sorry I forgot
Mac (32) Hahahaha :-)
39. Should i froget it or beg fror frogiveness?
mac @ 39
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhh
40 You mean i should craok it.
41
Lines for Chris
Oh! after eh!
when both before K
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when both before K
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when both before K
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when both before K
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Jasper at 28 should also point out that he is not replying as the editor of the Today program or The World Tonight and should therefore not exploit his position to arbitrarily decide to counter-balance personally perceived bias in other programs - if that is the excuse he is trying to use. The piece was not balanced - the entire premise was one sided and the questioning was feeble. Where was fearless, robust Eddie "you're-making-my-point" Mair in this case?