is here. Comment here on the content of the programme. Our editor tonight will read and respond.
If there are other things on your mind - click on FAQ for details of how to contribute...whether it's serious or silly there's a place for us. SOOOOMEwhere a place for us.
1708 UPDATE: By the way - Iain Dale, famous blogger is on the show right now. is his blog.
Jump to more content from this blog
PM The evening news and current affairs programme presented by Eddie Mair.
iPM The programme that starts with its listeners. Join the discussions online and contribute ideas for a weekly programme presented by Eddie Mair and Jennifer Tracey.
Read the final report of the PM Privacy Commission.
Meet the commissioners, view the terms of reference and hear the Commission Chair Sir Michael Lyons explain his approach.
´óÏó´«Ã½ © 2014 The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.
RSS feed
Email us
Listen to PM
Hillary Clinton demonstrating that as far as the presidency is concerned, it's not what you say but the way that you say it.
I wonder if she'll change the colour of the launch button, to match her nail varnish ?
I just do think you're fab Eddie Mair and you make the crappy news so very much less crappy and so very much more fun. Yes indeedy you do. Ta. Lizzie. x
I thought it was too good to be true. Following a report on tonights programme, I visited the Radiohead web site to find that you cannot order a free copy of the album. You have to pay something and enter your credit card details. This will also provide the record company with my contact details. This has nothing to do with empowering the public to let them decide the value of music as suggested by the contributor. It's about more money making opportunites and I smell a PR rat!
Regards,
Peter.
I thought it was too good to be true. Following a report on tonights programme, I visited the Radiohead web site to find that you cannot order a free copy of the album. You have to pay something and enter your credit card details. This will also provide the record company with my contact details. This has nothing to do with empowering the public to let them decide the value of music as suggested by the contributor. It's about more money making opportunites and I smell a PR rat!
Regards,
Peter.
I was listening this evening to the discussion on the River Severn and the plans to use it for energy. As usual the environmentalists and guardians of our wildlife are made out to be scaremongering. Why doesn't the Government just make companies in cities turn off their office lighting after say 22.00 hrs at night, switch off computers, ask supermarkets to switch off their outside lights, turn off street lighting etc. After all people managed in the blitz! Why does the wildlife always have to pay the price when the pollution is due to humanity. Time we footed the bill for a change!
1. everything causes environmental "damage" in that change to the environment occurs. Wind, wave, geothermal, tidal - all have an impact.
2. without the scheme being publicly led then who will take the blame?
3. any high discount rate required by private capital to finance a barrage merely reflects political uncertainty over the elements of the proposed barrages future revenue stream. What if the cost of carbon crashes again, this time due to dodgy swap schemes rather than the simple over allocation of credits that occurred in phase 1 (except in the UK of course but we dont mention that, might give greenery a bad name! )
What if the Renewable Obligation Scheme (which would be about 50% of the total revenue today) income stopped as this scheme is not guaranteed beyond 2015 yet a barrage has project paybacks of 10, 20 ? years
I think this should happen and be a PFI project myself. Pay the developer to develop and operate the barrage for a, fixed today, price of power.
Barrages dont seem to me to be very high tech specialist bits of kit to me so an auction should deliver a good deal I think
What is it with the enviromentalists and the Severn Barrage? They just bang on about things like loss of the mudflats and the effects on a few wading birds. The tides will still go out twice a day to generate the electricity, so the mud will still be there at the same times as it is now. The fish etc will still be able to come into the area through the Barrage sluices, where's the problems?
Somebody should stand up to these 'naysayers'
I thought it was too good to be true. Following a report on tonights programme, I visited the Radiohead web site to find that you cannot order a free copy of the album. You have to pay something and enter your credit card details. This will also provide the record company with my contact details. This has nothing to do with empowering the public to let them decide the value of music as suggested by the contributor. It's about more money making opportunites and I smell a PR rat!
Regards,
Peter.
I thought it was too good to be true. Following a report on tonights programme, I visited the Radiohead web site to find that you cannot order a free copy of the album. You have to pay something and enter your credit card details. This will also provide the record company with my contact details. This has nothing to do with empowering the public to let them decide the value of music as suggested by the contributor. It's about more money making opportunites and I smell a PR rat!
Regards,
Peter.
I was listening this evening to the discussion on the River Severn and the plans to use it for energy. As usual the environmentalists and guardians of our wildlife are made out to be scaremongering. Why doesn't the Government just make companies in cities turn off their office lighting after say 22.00 hrs at night, switch off computers, ask supermarkets to switch off their outside lights, turn off street lighting etc. After all people managed in the blitz! Why does the wildlife always have to pay the price when the pollution is due to humanity. Time we footed the bill for a change!
"A frog dying in a bucket"
Brilliant :))
lizzie - how much did Eddie bribe you to send in a comment like that?????
The Burma report was absolutely heartbreaking.Especially the end. I had to leave the room. Thank you for playing it but I can't say for one minute I enjoyed it. We all need to know it though. Thanks to the reporter (I forget who it was now, but he was excellent)
The Burma sequence was an outstanding piece of broadcast journalism. The story of shattered lives told with such humanity. Difficult to hear but beautifully told.
And what a LONG pause before Big Ben tonight! I was beginning to wonder if it was a repeat of that glorious New Year when someone forgot to wind the volume up & we missed the beginning of the bongs. Now wouldn't that have been embarrassing!
Never mind "savour the moment" - I was getting quite stressed on your (well, Marc & Jeremy's) behalf.
Ooh! Two straplines for the price of one. Aren't we lucky?
It must be tricky for reporters to report on events in a country that they're not allowed to enter, Zimbabwe for example, but Feargal Keane's report was superb - heartbreaking but superb.
On a different tack, when it started I thought that the Sounds of Summer would be a bit of a laugh, and so it was. But it was also rather insightful. It said a little bit about us. In fact very much in tune with the teasing question you've been posing recently Eddie. Can we have a regular 'Sound of the Season' on PM or iPM?
And lastly I think the end of tonight's programme should be a template for the next time the Queen opens parliament - because she could get the State Coach and entire Household Cavalry into the gap before the bongs.
Re:- annasee - yes harrowing report.
The last quarter of an hour was superb Radio. It's always great when producers and presenters use the medium in a creative way - as illustrated this evening.
Lovely to hear the 'laughs' and explanations.
Lovely to hear the 'Sounds of Summer medley' - nicely topped with the interview with Michael McCann on Big Ben - isn't he just great value - I noted they used a clip of him from PM on the 6 O'clock news.
Well done Eddie and team - excellent broadcasting.
Re:- annasee - yes harrowing report.
The last quarter of an hour was superb Radio. It's always great when producers and presenters use the medium in a creative way - as illustrated this evening.
Lovely to hear the 'laughs' and explanations.
Lovely to hear the 'Sounds of Summer medley' - nicely topped with the interview with Michael McCann on Big Ben - isn't he just great value - I noted they used a clip of him from PM on the 6 O'clock news.
Well done Eddie and team - excellent broadcasting.
just heard the sad news about Ned Sherrin. I always enjoy Loose ends - my time in the bath with some radox :-)
The Telegraph says :-
The veteran broadcaster Ned Sherrin, who brought satire to British television screens with That Was The Week That Was, has died.
Ned Sherrin had been battling throat cancer since last year
The 76-year-old, who had been battling throat cancer since last year, died peacefully at his home in Chelsea at 3.30pm.
Emma Freud, who worked with him on his Radio 4 show Loose Ends, was by his side.
She said: "He was very calm and very peaceful with himself when he died and he lived the most magnificent life.
"He was one of the happiest souls. He did a job that he loved, he lived in a flat that he loved and he was surrounded by people who really liked and respected him.
"Loose Ends was my first job in broadcasting and I am still doing the show now and that is because of him. He taught me so much about broadcasting."
Journalist Victoria Mather, who also worked on Loose Ends, said: "He created satire with That Was The Week That Was.
"He created David Frost. He just loved constantly encouraging young talent.
"He was the most loyal friend and a lovely, extraordinary man."
Sherrin produced and directed numerous theatre productions in London.
He wrote two autobiographies and several books of quotations and anecdotes. He was made a CBE in 1997.
I do like Feargal Keane's reporting, and his piece was very moving. But, at the end of it I didn't feel that I had learnt much about the situation in Burma specifically. Small children are dying of malaria all across many parts of the southern hemisphere, every death is desperately sad.
Perhaps I missed something, but could we have more about the background to the civil unrest and the ongoing struggle for democracy in Burma and why Aung San Suu Kyi is such a powerful symbol? Maybe some more about the British connection? "Tell me, Britain, what was it that first attracted you to oil rich Burma?"
aaaaaaah! 502!
Tried to post last night but it doesn't seem to have appeared - sad to hear about Ned Sherrin. Realised he had been missing from Loose Ends a long time but didn't realise he was so ill.
Fergal Keane - very moving, the piece made me pause. I thought that Eddie managed the transition from that to the rest of the programme perfectly. Well judged in tone and timing.
Simon Hoggart is always a joy (though Gordie's laugh seemed quite genuine to me).
Loved the sound of summer montage and Big Ben Bloke was actually very interesting. But savouring the moment? Eddie, you cheeksome lad!
Good show I thought.
Another rota crisis meant that I was holding the reins for PM last night.
I'm glad some of you liked the Fergal Keane piece. He really understands radio - sound, texture, pacing, the use of words. Programme editors are usually meant to hear pieces before they go on air, but I didn't get the chance to with Fergal's because it arrived quite late. Normally, that would have me in a bit of a tizzy, concerned as to the quality of an item on "my" programme - but with a Fergal Keane piece, I was able to rest assured it would be good...and it was.
Simon Hoggart was brilliant - some of his comments had the studio managers in fits of laughter, which is never easily achieved ;-)
And as for "savour the moment before the bongs"...I thought that more than 6 seconds of silence on Radio 4 sets off alarms in various managers' offices!!!
Re Marc, who said:
And as for "savour the moment before the bongs"...I thought that more than 6 seconds of silence on Radio 4 sets off alarms in various managers' offices!!!
- - - - - - -
Oh Marc don't bring that old chestnut up again.
Incidentilly and totally non-related, but the GTS pips are now locally generated - and do not come from Greenwich.
However in olden times when they did originate from Greenwich
To ensure the line from Greenwich was okay a tone - inverse to that of the pips themselves - was fed continuously down it. The tone was cut on the hour and a box of kit - within the racks of equipment - would then generate the five pips. If for any reason the line from Greenwhich became disconnected - the box would sense the lack of tone - and trigger an alarm - alerting engineering staff of the problem.
I share UptheTrossachs' reservations about the Fergal Keane piece. It was desperately sad to hear about the plight of the people concerned but it didn't add anything to our understanding of the situation in Burma necessarily.
He even managed to make the quite unbelievably poignant event of the family having their photo taken with the dead child into a rather mundane event.
"And as for "savour the moment before the bongs"...I thought that more than 6 seconds of silence on Radio 4 sets off alarms in various managers' offices!!! " - this from the man who cut the silences between the opening bars of the Jaws theme because they were "too long"...
So was he also responsible for the notorious woodpigeon editing too? Not to mention the total removal of the lovely bagpipes from my "Sound of Summer"?
Come on, name names!