The Glass Box for Monday
is the place to comment on tonight's programme. Right interviews? Good reports? Correct story choice?
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Just listened to Julia Harley-Brewer talking about the Heathrow "Peace Camp".
Why did you interview a brewer who likes jam making about this?
Please note that I did as much research about her as she did about the subject she was talking about.
What a dreadfully ignorant and smug woman Julia Hartley-Brewer is, at least if her performance now is any indicator.
I've been involved in various forms of direct action and protest in my time so I no longer surprised by the disconnection between what happens on the ground and what the media tells people happened.
Nevertheless, while people like JH-B can write vacuous, evidence free, 'opinion'-pieces and expect (and be) taken seriously, it demonstrates why ordinary people need to find out things for themselves.
And thanks heavens for George Monbiot: educated, informed and, as we heard this evening, immensely patient.
......and Julia jumped into her 4 x 4 drove off into the sunset?
Hickory?
Did I hear that doctor at 5.25 has called his baby HICKORY?
Some parents are just cruel.
Congratulations to George Monbiot for staying so calm with that hack. How dare she go on the radio claiming to know what he thinks better than him?
And I suppose, since I have posted this on the PM website, by her reasoning, my views are now the views of the ´óÏó´«Ã½?
With regard to your guest Julia Hartley-Brewer, her obnoxious, smug attitude did absolutely nothing to persuade me to listen to her opinion. I have just read that she writes for the Sunday Express. Nuff said.
A fun new game: go to Julia Hartley-Brewer's column on the Express website and check the reader-added comments, applying her own logic to the consequences they have for the legitimacy of her opinion. There are some crackers there.
I have been a member of an environmental pressure group for nearly 30 years, have never used or sanctioned violence, damage to public property or any of the other sinsallaged by Julie Smug or whatever her name was, I now feel an urgent need to start a new single issue group dedicated to prevention of her particular type of pollution.
Re Climate Camp
I'm grateful that some people give up home comforts to highlight the importance of climate change. I don't think someone who alerts people to possible problems is smug - just public spirited.
I have visitd the camp and people were welcoming & nobody preached at me.
I've been thinking about a formula that expresses the inverse relationship between intelligence and speed of talking.
It seems the less thought to interrupt the flow of words will result in a verbal farrago of vitriol.
Now all I need is a constant of proportionality... I think I'll call it the Julia Hartley-Brewer constant!!!
Re the Julia Hartley Brewer interview - to redress the balance here I agreed with eveything she said. Some people do 'protest too much'...
Julia Hartley Brewer - described by Iain Dale as 'delightfully gossipy'. Works for pornography millionaire Dick Desmond.
'Nuff said.
Sid
Sat Navs.
Did your correspondent really ask, "When will a security device "FIND" its way into Sat Navs"?
Re: The sound of summer
Thanks a lot! Now I have to pee.
Re: the item on satnav thefts - I loved the interviewee whose satnav had been stolen and whose first thought was 'It will take me ages to get home'. Bless, I think that says it all about satnav users.
.*** WELL DONE ROYAL MAIL ****.
DIY (GSM + bar)
Good idea JImmyGiro, I bet my carbon footprint is a lot smaller than Julias Carbon Mouthprint.
I just listened to your report about the airport protesters i.e Julia Harley-Brewer & George Monbiot
Thank god people are not afraid to speak up to these useless and annoying protestors. What right do they have to try to delay flights and cause disruption so people can miss a family holiday etc?
We dont need to raise the profile of climate change as publicity for it is already very high?
I dont want their one sided claptrap ramming down my throat? I have my own opinion thank you very much and I dont think delaying a few flights will do anything for their ficticious cause?
They have a right to protest but everyone else has the right to go about their business without being harrassed or inconvenienced!!!!
Climate change is here already and we all know about it so they are just preaching to the already converted? If they dont like the government then they have a vote like the rest of us
PD (11)
hear hear, glad to meet the OTHER Express reader.
DIY
Sorry to be curmudgeonly, but don't soldiers expect to be sent to war zones when they join up? Two of my children have chosen careers that take them to far flung places. I don't expect to be subsidised when I send them parcels.
The ding dong between George and Julia was well referee'd by Eddie, but hardly a fair fight, as Julia had both hands tied behind her back - yes it's true she tied them with her own article, but even so...!
A good piece from Kabul!
and the 17:44 hook wasn't worthy of PM. Lots of those with 'loved ones in Afghanistan' have enough waiting on tenter hooks as it is.
[and finally, what about a local voice from Jamaca or the Caman Islands? - and please, any more about the aftermath from the massive floods in Assam and northern india?]
To paraphrase the satnav item:
"I am in the habit of leaving £200 on my car dashboard. I was surprised and appalled to find that someone had smashed my windows in and stole the money. I demand that the Bank of England now apply security tagging to all banknotes so I can leave my money in full view with impunity."
Similarly the Army/Royal Mail item:
"I believe that since the Royal Mail is a charity and does not have any competition they should clearly be providing me with free postage. This is despite the fact that soldiers are employed by the Army and it should therefore be their responsibility to provide such benefits to their employees."
Next time, please try not to assume everyone agrees with your unstated assumptions?
In the item about satnav, why did no-one suggest that drivers might like to remove the device from their car when it's parked? After all, the device is pretty easy to remove (otherwise thieves wouldn't be stealing them) and they're generally small enough to fit in a pocket or bag.
Congratulations to the Human Rights brigade in confirming the U K as the worlds leading cess pit.
Home to the worlds parasitic scum
If Julia H-B objects thinks the climate protesters are socialist worker types, does she hold different views on protests by pro Hunt supporters etc. They all have loony fringes outside the control of the main group.
How annoying to equate a concern for excessive use of air travel with a dislike of the modern world. Isn't the modern world the one we all want to preserve?
Maybe I'm grouchy, but these are also news stories worth running, either today or on Tues?
(1) China battered by typhoon Sepat
Typhoon Sepat has swept along the southern coast of China, killing at least 15 people and forcing nearly one million to leave their homes for safer areas [Reuters]
(2) Power cuts in Gaza as EU reconsiders aid
Gazans have been suffering a fourth day of power outages as the European Union considers whether to resume financing fuel deliveries to the territory. The only power plant in the Gaza Strip shut down completely on Sunday after the EU suspended payments because of what it said were "security concerns [AFP]
(3) any more about the aftermath from the massive floods in Assam and northern india? There were expected outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, dysentry and other life threatening illnesses.
best wishes
n-n
Did I hear correctly that they now have Sanilav (portable) toilets in cars and that people are stealing them? Who would want to? Think of the mess!
I am intrigued to note reading these comments, that [broadly speaking] less liberal = less literate. I wonder if this holds true in general?
Sid
The debate about kufuffle about doctors' job application/fulfilment process.. .. 2 elements of this nearly drove me to drive my car into a ditch I was soooo incensed ....
(i) did I REALLY hear the reporter (sorry - name not remembered) state ... ",, and the Daily Mail headline read 'Don't get sick tomorrow'" (or words to that effect) .. as if it were almost factual. The Daily Snail has ludicrous alarmist middle England headlines on a daily basis that are virtually always based on ZERO truth.
(ii) The doctor (he with the girl .. yes GIRL !! .. names Hickory), was complaining about doctors having to take jobs that are not their ideal in work in places that they do not really want to work. Well unless I am mistaken that applies to the majority of people. It may be that they do the most commendable job but I am unsure as to why they seem to think they are a species apart.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr - that's better .
I had little sympathy with the Heathrow protesters until i heard Julia Harley-Brewer today, She just dug a great big hole for herself. I woman from the Edwina Curry tradition that if you are forceful and lecture people like 1930's school teacher, it will sound wise.
She didn't
George Monboit conversly was calm thoughtfull and measured, and I thought the protesters were the looney's
Totaly turned that story on its head, nice one PM!
ROGER SAWYER! Did you know you got a special mention on PotW yesterday? And now the whole world knows that you holiday in Rochdale. And also that you are (apparently) "PM's Editor". I expect we shouldn't mention that in front of Peter Rippon. He probably thinks it's his job still...
Re: SatNav thefts.
I once heard that even removing the SatNav bracket from the windscreen may not deter thieves.
Thieves know that most people who remove SatNavs will stash them in a glovebox, so all the enterprising thief has to do is look for the telltale ring smear left behind by the suction pad, break in, open the glovebox, and swipe the SatNav. Which, being disconnected from windscreen and accessory socket, is even easier to swipe.
-oOo-
Just wondering... talking of SatNavs and SatChavs...
(SatChav, noun. A person who trusts the advice given by their electronic navigation device more than environmental visual clues [e.g. roadsigns])
After Google's "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean" joke, and Multimap directing Shropshire drivers onto a seasonal passenger ferry to cross the Severn, imagine the fun that could happen if SatNav manufacturers included similar 'mistakes' - especially given the number of drivers fooled by fords several feet deep, tracks "Unsuitable for motor vehicles", and even culs-de-sac (Offmore Lane, Kidderminster - vehicular access to the cricket ground car park only, after which it narrows into a conventionally sized footpath - but even more worrying is that ambulance drivers have mistakenly blindly followed their SatNavs down the lane).
Julia Hartley-Brewer - thankyou. You irritated me so much that I got out of the car (without Sat Nav) and completed the following tasks that I have been putting off:
Painted the staircase, fitted light in kitchen, touched up paintwork in guest bedroom where woodstain had left marks looking like an arterial bleed. Thankyou Julia, so nauseating that even the jobs one hates seem possible. Oh, and you're as smug as a Moooordlin college graduate who works for a pornmeister.
Great think about SatNAv is that the good lady does not get the flak when we get lost.
Unless the thing has crashed and she has not realised so hasn't reset it. Being a man, if I was passenger/navigator I would have realised the thing was not working and got the map out. Being a sad geek I would be watching the thing instead of the view. Eddies warning about the home function has been highlighted before and does make sense.
I always used to think Private Eye's Glenda Slagg wasn't real till I heard Julia Hartley Brewer. Now, the question is did Julia model herself on Glenda or is Glenda modelled on Julia?
I don’t even have SatTel, or ExtMet, or PoiRub, etc, etc.
I was advised by my probation officer friend to place my sat nav in my handbag and leave my empty glove box open. I guess one of her clients told her that one! Its worked so far.
re SatNav.......I was taught how to read and follow a road map........
...now where was I?
DIY
Morning All,
I was editing yesterday. Thank you for your many postings here in the Glass Box and in the separate strand about Learco Chindamo/Philip Lawrence. I was initially going to lead with the with the end of the Heathrow protest, but Eddie persuaded me that the Chindamo ruling would resonate more. He was right.
It's a more nuanced story than it seems at first viewing and I hope we got that across... ie not just a case of some Liberal Hand-Wringing Judges making a Perverse Ruling that no Right Thinking Person could possibly agree with. It will be interesting to see what happens with the Home Office Appeal and to see just how tied the hands of the judges were by the law, EU or otherwise.
The Heathrow Protest stuff was interesting too, though the discussion didn't quite get to some of the things that we thought interesting... for example, the way of delivering the message. Are some people are getting fed up with what they see as hectoring and lecturing from the protestors? Are the media misrepresenting the message? One of the protestors' spokespeople called me after the programme, already jodphur-ed up and mounted astride his high horse and moaning that we had not given them any airtime and had only broadcast police untruths. Clearly George Monbiot had gone in one of his ears and straight out of the other.
Nikki Noodle (26)... you raise some interesting issues. Part of the problem is access and cost. We do report stories like the China Typhoon, but the difficulty is trying to do something beyond providing voice pieces via correspondents: language barriers, remoteness, governmental access restrictions etc mean it is much more difficult to the get the kind of testimony and eye witness reportage we would like. And we do do aftermath stories, but again they are not based on constant presence. Which doesn't mean we should not try harder and I will see what we can do.
Annasee (31): yes, I did hear about my mention on POTW only because my brother-in-law phoned incredulous that we had holidayed in Rochdale. POTW had apparently phoned up Tim the Tourism Officer to ask who it was... and he remembered my moaning to him about how difficult boating along a canal that crosses the Pennines had been. And Peter Rippon *pretended* to laugh when he heard me being described as PM's Editor. It was a bit like watching Hannibal Lector smile, you know the bit after he says "I ate it with some Fava beans and a nice Chianti".
And Electric Dragon (22), surely you are making assumptions about what our assumptions are... Or that we have them. The two stories you mention were pretty straight reporting on a) Sat Nav industry developments relating to police and motorist concerns and b) Post Office response to Sir Richard Dannatt.
Toodle pip
Rog
Okay, my thoughts re the broadcast yesterday. As usual, I missed the first 15 mins (never leave the office on time...) So I won't pass comment on the interviews on the Lawrence/Chindamo issue...
Julia Hartley-Brewer: Oh dear! She had an open chance to put across a reasoned argument, explaining her stand logically, financially, scientifically, but all we got was polemic. To rely on a social networking site such as Facebook as the basis for a viewpoint is as logical as having a chocolate teapot! Normally I feel George Monbiot goes OTT about things, but he came across as someone who was reasonable, open to debate, and willing to listen to the other person's point of view. This was all down to Ms Hartley-Brewer's attitude and comments.
The scare stories that I saw in various papers and news channels about the protests were just that, scare stories. I know it's the silly season, but even Journos & Hacks in the tabloids and mid-market papers ought to be able to use a bit of common sense!
Okay, Sat Nav. I know a number of people who use satnav systems as they drive around for work. The issue isn't usually leaving the unit on the dash/stuck to the windscreen. Most users take the systems off and hide them away. Unfortunately, the mounting clamps usually leave circular marks showing anyone walking past that there's a system in the car. Simple tricks like wiping the windscreen after removing the unit will help.
Doctors Training: Whilst I have a lot of sympathy for the point made by Cake Maker (29), we have to admit that the admittance system this year was a complete farce, not giving applicants enough space to list their qualifications was ludicrous, and to try and push them all through at once just plain madness.
Your weather presenters have a completely new language, with words such as Scollund, Wells and Arlund - and this strange phenomenon Fringlanderwales...
They also measure in marls or kil-OM-eters, but of course many people on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ do this, and they really should STOP IT!
Love from Doc
I made this comment earlier on the Chindamo thread ... should have said it here, as it's less about the issues than about the way PM presented the story.
Fifi
Headline sets us up to think: "They're going to do WHAT?"
* Outrage! *
Interviewee confounds expectations by sounding more contrite and tremulous, even than the client he describes. There are complexities in the case and he gets them all across. Eddie allows this.
* Oh... *
5.15 bulletin repeats the 'outrage' headline anyway... wasn't Brian Perkins listening??
I am not expressing any opinion about either life sentences or deportation. These are very complex matters and require a proper face to face discussion adequately to thrash them out ... postings here need to be brief. (So I'll try to be!)
My point was, and still is, that headlines read out during a programme, 'after' the story has been explored in depth, should reflect what emerged during the piece.
Either that, or leave THAT headline out of the immediately-following summary.
Fifi
re (39)
Many thanks Roger for your reply!!
n-n
Fifi (42)... I really don't think we did what you've accused us of doing.
Our first headline said: "The foreigner who stabbed the school head teacher Philip Lawrence to death is told he can stay in Britain when he's freed from jail. I'll talk live to his lawyer".
That's a pretty fair assessment of what had happened... and was about to happen. Brief, yes... but it was a headline.
Then - as you say - the interviewee put his case across pretty well. Eddie put Mrs Lawrence's and the Home Office reaction to him and he responded.
At 5.15 Peter Donaldson said: "The widow of the murdered head teacher Philip Lawrence has said she is devastated to hear that his killer has won an appeal against deportation. Learco Chindamo, who's 26, is serving a life sentence for killing Mr Lawrence outside a school in Maida Vale in London twelve years ago. Lawyers for Chindamo argued that deporting him would breach his human rights".
I think that is a pretty fair summary of the story, I have to say... including a reaction from his lawyer. Mrs Lawrence had said she was devastatde and she repeated that today.
I really can't see where the "* Outrage *" is in what the headline said. And we clipped the lawyer at 5.30pm as well.
The fact is, though, that many people are * outraged * by the ruling.
All the best
Rog
Roger (44) : Thank you for your reply. No other programme would do this!
The trouble with headlines generally is that they can only pick up the 'main points' .. and if they're any good, by doing this they trigger a knee-jerk response in many readers.
'The widow... is devastated...' is one 'main point'. 'My client [I'm paraphrasing] won't kill again and Mrs Lawrence wouldn't know him if he passed in the street' is a balancing one (there were others) - that there's no time for in a headline.
What I'm saying is NOT that the headline was wrong, or unfair, or misleading.
What AM I saying then?
That, having just spent several minutes carefully teasing out the complexities of the story - which many people wouldn't have thought of because they're too busy being outraged about the crime and now the outcome - the headline just rubberbanded back to a summary that would trigger the 'outrage' response again.
It would be more appropriate either to leave that story OUT of the immediately-following headlines, or to put it at the end rather than leading with it again.
The effect is to 'jar' on the ear. As an editor of the written word, I think that's a valid comment.
I have felt the same thing with other stories too, not just this one. It's not about content. It's about timing.
But thank you for explaining. I'll tell you if it happens again... maybe then you'll see what I'm getting at.
Sorry for banging on about it!
Fifi ;o)
Fifi (42) - I missed most of the programme last night, but because of your posting and some of the heat raised in other threads, I've just listened to the first 20 minutes via Listen Again.
I honestly can't see what you perceive to a problem with the coverage. Both opening and 5:15 headlines were factual and concise - I don't consider that they were particularly set up to make us think "outrage!" or anything like that.
I don't think that the lawyer was either contrite or tremulous, but simply putting his client's case to best effect. Eddie was rightly pretty forthright with some of his questions and tried to ensure that the situation was viewed from all angles and not just that of Learco Chindamo. I thought both Eddie and the lawyer did their job pretty well.
Again I can't see what you object to in the 5:15 headline - chiefly a repeat of Mrs Lawrence's view of the ruling.
I have an opinion on the decision, which I will keep to myself, as I don't want it to colour how my view of the coverage might be perceived. I honestly don't see how the PM coverage, given the timescale and interviewee, could have been bettered.
Re: Fifi on 'snsationalism' and Roger and RJD's replies
I'm sorry this argument is tucked away on an old thread and i am suffering under the difficulty that radio player will not allow me to rewind and reply at will.
However surely the problem is as i suggested in my (76) (at the Lawrence thread) - namely what Frances meant when she compared her human rights protection with the protections afforded to her husband's murder.
Was she referring to law which failed to prevent murder but accommodates the murderer?. That is what she appeared to be saying today.
It is also possible that she feared for her safety. As she would, when, as it emerged today, she should find that Learco is not to be deported. That must have been a shock to here because the Home Office had been assuring her he would be. Reid had relocated him away fro man open prison on that assumption.
That fear to her eternal credit already seems to be reducing (from what she said today, Channel 4).
Fifi felt there was a certain amount of exaggeration which the interviews settled but that that exaggeration was repeated in a subsequent news summary.
The whole problem seems to be what Frances meant by pointing out she had a right to a family life. Was she referring to the right that was destroyed in 1995 yet lives on, very properly, in her mind in deep regard of hers and her husbands lives together.
She certainly today contrasted the effect of the murder with the protection Learco has been offered by the law.
Or was she saying, in effect, now my family is in danger.
Perhaps both yesterday, but today it was not any sense of increased danger that SEEMED to be the problem. She had also found it easier to acknowledge as a fact that Learco would be free in England some day.
The abiding probelm seemed to be the contrast between a rights destroying murder and rights given to a murderer - a feeling that this assymmetry was too much to bear.
In retrospect the problem with the item(s) on PM was that Frances attitudes were not considered except in a blanket way. That the Home Office had led her to believe Learco would be deported seems to me such an important fact that it is difficult to see how the matter could have been adequately reported without considering it.
Without knowing that, Frances was surely to be taken on best interpretation as being 'devastated' by the contrast between her loss of her husband and hence her right to family life and Learco's capacity to 'pick and choose' how to live..... by right.
That point was well answered in the interviews. i would not have expected to find that the sense of surprise and shock in the original news item at 5 (particularly the last line of your reporter's clip) would be carried on into Peter Donaldson's 5.15 summary.
On the information we had then i uphold fifi's complaint.
From what we know now i should like to know why PM didn't know it then - that the Home Office had been setting Frances up with a particular expectation and she was shocked because the Home OFfice had been saying something completely different.
If that shock persisted until 5.15 so beit but as listeners we were not told of it in the first place and so fifi is assuredly right.
As for RJD's contribution (the man who criticises Chris Ghoti fro having an opinion on every matter)i think, as Simon Worral will agree, RJD is at his most coherent in the first sentence of his second paragraph.
Roger's account leaves out his reporters clip (a woman's voice) in the intial news cast. Why, i wonder? It certainly puts him in no position to answer fifi's point. Which he proceeds not to do.
Mr. Justice mac presiding.
Sentencing (and punctuation) to be pronounced later)
Mac;
I've expressed no opinion on this thread. Nor did I manage to listen to the programme so far this week (work calls).
Don't drag me into some spurious argument between yourself and RJD (and what the original trigger was for THAT I neither know nor care).
Si.
Oi, you two, quit it, will you?
I made my point. The editor disagrees and so do some of you. Mac agrees with me and I haven't changed my mind.
Like RJD, I'm keeping my opinions and detailed interpretations of the issues involved to myself ... it's editorial comment I'm making, not content comment.
Can we let this particular instance go, now, please?
If something else 'jars' in the same way in the future, I'll try expressing it again. But let's not fall out over this, shall we?
I can live with people disagreeing with me, especially when their point of view is so clearly expressed. Snow big deal!
Fifi
(Not yet wishing she hadn't bothered, but getting there...) ;o)
Fifi (49) - I'm afraid it's your friend mac who is the problem. He doesn't seem to be able to make a point concisely, logically or without invective. That's why I'll never knowingly converse with him. I thought that you of all froggers would recognise a troll.
Jimmy (10),
"I've been thinking about a formula that expresses the inverse relationship between intelligence and speed of talking."
Is Blair the exception proving the rule?
xx
ed
I know this is a bit late but why do people leave the uk?
It's because of the awful state of the country,
it's too crowded,too violent, too divided, too dirty,too expensive. it has no sense of community (thanks to thatcher)it's too obsessed with consummerism and frankly it's a total mess.
Cheers,
Denis
Hole in the Universe
Thank you PM, what a relief, after more than thirty years leg pulling about the bald spot on the top of my head, I now discover that the universe has one as well.
Gerry,
Lochawe
Denis (52), I disagree on both counts:
I like living here and don't feel any of those statements are true. But then I don't listen too much to the scaremongering that is widepsread in the media.
I think that anyone who leaves for those reasons probably has an idealised view of the place they are heading to, and, if so, will soon be back. People do, of course, leave for other reasons.