´óÏó´«Ã½

The Glass Box for Thursday

Comments

1. At 05:23 PM on 18 Oct 2007, wrote:

   What a happy "co-incidence"! Something embarrassing to report regarding "the competiton"!

   Why not just give the bbc the £8,000,000 of phone earnings?

   xx
   ed

   It doesn't matter what you do, it only matters what you say you've done and what you're going to do.
   Thu Oct 18 17:23:50 BST 2007
   

2. At 05:29 PM on 18 Oct 2007, Alison wrote:

   I can't understand why Jonathan Ross needs to be paid so much money to stay with the ´óÏó´«Ã½. He needs the TV more than the TV needs him! if he couldn't get his cash he would go to another station , so what? it doesn't matter to the viewer which channel we are watching. If he had to go 'stateside' so what? the programme would be sold over here and we would still get to see it. I really don't understand the 'TV Star's ' bargainning power. Terry Wogan is another one. I seriously object to my licence fee going to pay for his mindless drivel. At least Jonathan Ross has a good programme....How much does John Humphries get paid ?

3. At 05:31 PM on 18 Oct 2007, Richard Hadwin wrote:

   It was 5:20 before you talked about any of the other important news stories around the world today. Tonght's PM sounds seriously self obsessed. It was more like listening to an internal news cast. When was the last time the BBSC spent a third of a peak time news programme discussing any organisation losing 10% of its jobs. Talking overly about oneself is poor manners, never mind inappropriate editorial balance.

4. At 06:52 PM on 18 Oct 2007, wrote:

   Last week a ´óÏó´«Ã½ executive resigns because of made up news.

   And now 10% of the staff are being sacked.

   Does that mean there will 10% less made up news, or 10% more?

   btw, can I suggest that Orla Guerin is one of those to get the push. Her pseudo intellectual droning, while suitable for a student newspaper, is just soooooo lame.

5. At 06:59 PM on 18 Oct 2007, Nick wrote:

   Who decided that Jonathon Ross is top class entertainment and is worth such a ridiculous amount of money. Just look how everyone easily replaced another 'top' entertainer, Angus Deayton on Have I got news for you. Ross could be replaced by one of your licence payers who could do equally a good job and would be more than happy with 0.5% (£30,000) per year of his wage.

6. At 07:23 PM on 18 Oct 2007, Edward Wheatley wrote:

   The ´óÏó´«Ã½â€™s excuse that they have to compete for talent by paying astronomical fees to its stars is fallacious.

   There simply isn’t the money about in commercial and digital TV to match them and the Corporation has been conned .

   The reference to the fees paid to Morcombe and Wise trotted out by Mark Thompson as an excuse is irrelevant since in those days there were only 3 channels and audiences were regularly 15 million or more.

   I think these execs are simply deflecting attention from their own inflated salaries which similarly they would not get elsewhere.

   The first cost cutting action should be to cut all ´óÏó´«Ã½ fees and salaries above £30,000 by 15 - 25 per cent and stop all bonuses.

7. At 07:49 PM on 18 Oct 2007, wrote:

   'Im concerned that the cutbacks on ´óÏó´«Ã½ programme making is going to have a terrible impact on viwers choice. I fear we will end up with only repeats as if we don't already get our fair share of repeats. i despair at the shortsighted views of the powers of the Beeb.
   Bina

8. At 08:47 PM on 18 Oct 2007, David Huws wrote:

   I was very disappointed to hear Mark Thompson skirt around the issue of "top entertainers" earning such high salaries (and I use that phrase very lightly, as Jonathan Ross certainly isn't my idea of entertainment). He must be able to accept that the salaries that Jonathan Ross et al are being paid are grossly excessive, to say the least, and the Morcombe & Wise illustration smacked of desperation in trying to justify why the ´óÏó´«Ã½ forks out seven figures to such mediocre "entertainers".Is Mark Thompson going to take a cut in salary to help with the corporation's funding crisis? A 2-4% pay cut for the higher earning executives, if only a temporary measure, would surely have a more positive impact on the funding crisis than axing jobs and neglecting certain branches of programme making.

9. At 10:04 PM on 18 Oct 2007, wrote:

   The ´óÏó´«Ã½ DG may need some of to give them a bit more spine.

   Be sure to take heed of the product warnings, though!

   Salaam
   ed

   The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.

   Thu Oct 18 22:05:25 BST 2007

10. At 10:10 PM on 18 Oct 2007, wrote:

    R.I.P. Deborah Kerr, the "iconic English Rose", like the iconic English gentleman, David Niven.

    Check it out.

    Slainte
    ed

    People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.
    -- Bokonon, "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
    Thu Oct 18 22:10:07 BST 2007

    and one from the blog's own fortune cookie lucky dip:

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11. At 11:38 PM on 18 Oct 2007, Paul from Bristol wrote:

    One of the most disturbing phenomenons of modern time is the government sponsorship of faith schools, After amazingly saying on todays's PM that faith schools did not indoctrinate children (excuse me, so what exactly is peddling repeated lies to children called then ?) Rowan Williams then went on to mention the phrase "Muslim children", I can only quote Richard Dawkins on this: "Children are too young to know their religious opinions".

    His full quote is below:

    "My favourite consciousness-raising effort is one I have mentioned many times before (and I make no apology, for consciousness-raising is all about repetition). A phrase like "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should clang furious bells of protest in the mind, just as we flinch when we hear "one man one vote". Children are too young to know their religious opinions. Just as you can't vote until you are 18, you should be free to choose your own cosmology and ethics without society's impertinent presumption that you will automatically inherit your parents'. We'd be aghast to be told of a Leninist child or a neo-conservative child or a Hayekian monetarist child. So isn't it a kind of child abuse to speak of a Catholic child or a Protestant child? Especially in Northern Ireland and Glasgow where such labels, handed down over generations, have divided neighbourhoods for centuries and can even amount to a death warrant?

    Catholic child? Flinch. Protestant child? Squirm. Muslim child? Shudder. Everybody's consciousness should be raised to this level. Occasionally a euphemism is needed, and I suggest "Child of Jewish (etc) parents". When you come down to it, that's all we are really talking about anyway. Just as the upside-down (northern hemisphere chauvinism again: flinch!) map from New Zealand raises consciousness about a geographical truth, children should hear themselves described not as "Christian children" but as "children of Christian parents". This in itself would raise their consciousness, empower them to make up their own minds and choose which religion, if any, they favour, rather than just assume that religion means "same beliefs as parents". I could well imagine that this linguistically coded freedom to choose might lead children to choose no religion at all.

    Please go out and work at raising people's consciousness over the words they use to describe children. At a dinner party, say, if ever you hear a person speak of a school for Islamic children, or Catholic children (you can read such phrases daily in newspapers), pounce: "How dare you? You would never speak of a Tory child or a New Labour child, so how could you describe a child as Catholic (Islamic, Protestant etc)?" With luck, everybody at the dinner party, next time they hear one of those offensive phrases, will flinch, or at least notice and the meme will spread."

12. At 08:27 AM on 19 Oct 2007, wrote:

    Paul (11):

    I agree completely with what you say.

    I received the worst beating of my childhood due to being from "the wrong school" ie being the wrong side of the Protestant/Catholic divide for the particular street I was walking on.

    I'm horrified by the indoctrination of children into religion at school and the way it produces a deep-rooted "them-and-us" mindset wich can't be healthy.

    The place for religion is in whatever holy-buildings are appropriate, not in school. I actually object *more* to any of my taxes going towards supporting faith schools than to supporting overseas military ventures.

    That said, the piece on last night's programme was very interesting, if personally disturbing to me.

13. At 09:12 AM on 19 Oct 2007, Ian Watson wrote:

    I hve my own story about ´óÏó´«Ã½ editing. I was a contestant on the Weakest Link (I didn't win, but that's irrelevant). Anne doesn't see the questons before she asks them - and when she asked me a long, convoluted question, she tripped over her words, so that by the time she'd reached the end, I'd forgotten the beginning! I was tempted to ask "Please repeat the question without stumbling" but thought this would be churlish. It was an either or question, and, you guessed it, I picked the wrong answer. It was about Shakespeare and telephones. Suffice to say, I was kicking myself as the words came out of my mouth. When the programme was shown, Anne's stumbling had been edited out. In fact, the question had been simplified. So it makes me look even more stupid than I really I am, and believe me I've had some ribbing for it. It's no use trying to explain to folk what really happened - I gave a stupid answer. I'm fully expecting to see myself on one of those "How stupid can you get" programmes. It does annoy me that the celebrity's mistakes get air-brushed out.

14. At 09:33 AM on 19 Oct 2007, Jacques wrote:

    Re Carolyne and Bina Cossar (7)

    Being French, I hesitate to correct errors of grammar in the English language, but, surely, the plural of 'cutback' is 'cutsback' and not 'cutbacks'. For concatenated words such as these, I always look at the past tense to determine where the letter 's' is placed, but in this case, because the word 'CUT' is irregular, my 'rule' does not work.

15. At 01:33 PM on 19 Oct 2007, Vyle Hernia wrote:

    Paul from Bristol (11)

    I think your statement is rather sweeping. People refer to the children of Catholics as Catholic children as a form of shorthand, although it is perfectly true that they may not yet have embraced the Catholic faith. Some faiths claim that a child automatically belongs to the faith of one or more of its parents, but non-RC Christianity does not generally hold that view.

    They could say "Catholics' children," but for many the correct use of the apostrophe would prove difficult. It is also doubtful whether faith schools have a monopoly on untruth.

    Jacques (13)

    If it's of any comfort, we always refer to Members of Parliament as MPs, not MsP (which could get confused with MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament))

16. At 02:40 PM on 19 Oct 2007, Chris Ghoti wrote:

    Jacques @ 14, I think the safest thing to go by in such a situation is whether one regards the word as hyphenated or not. If it is not hyphenated, as cutback seems not to be, then the s would generally go at the end of the complete word to pluralise it. cf 'flashback'; I don't think one could really pluralise that to 'flashesback'.

    The plural of cutpurse is not cutspurse, nor of cutout, cutsout, nor as far as I know of cut-throat, cuts-throat, even though that is hyphenated because of the double-t. Perhaps they ought to be, but 'ought to be' in the English language never gets one very far!

17. At 02:58 PM on 19 Oct 2007, simon perry wrote:

    The response on last night's PM from Mark Thompson and his ludicrous comment that Jonathon Ross represented 'Top talent' was nothing short of pathetic.

    I'm sure that I am not alone in considering that Ross's so called brand of 'entertainment' consisting as it does of a mixture of mindless drivel and crude profanity is an insult to the majority of licence payers and does not merit payment at all let alone the obscene amounts that he receives.

    This typifies the current attitude by ´óÏó´«Ã½ management that they have to dumb down and reduce standards in order to maintain viewing figures whilst clearly disregarding the majority of licence payers who have no say in the programme output.

18. At 04:27 PM on 19 Oct 2007, R Smith wrote:

    Having stumbled into the occasional Jonathan Ross TV programme and finding him puerile and rude on his ‘chat show’ with diction which makes his film criticisms slightly difficult to listen to, I assumed he was hired because he was also cheap in the financial sense of the word. With so many potential job losses in the wind, a good man in his position would fall on his sword for the common good.

19. At 02:40 PM on 20 Oct 2007, Pat Burrows wrote:

    Radio 4 is about the only place you can actually hear news on the ´óÏó´«Ã½, if not all channels. I suspect a lot of the unfortnuate ´óÏó´«Ã½ journalists who left for better paid shores after Messrs Birt and Jay changed the emphais of the news from quality broadcasting to quantity output must have moved to Murdoch-land as Sky news seems to be full of familiar faces from over ten years ago and near-decent news coverage. Just look where that fine news reporter Clarence Mitchell is now, for instance!

    Radio always wins though, but I am very worried that if everyone is working in one ´óÏó´«Ã½ newsroom in the future, standards of news coverage on the radio wil suffer. An old friend of mine from ´óÏó´«Ã½ local radio told me that when they changed job and ended up in the White City news area, they were working next to one ´óÏó´«Ã½ TV programme that could best be described as distracting.

    I so wish Thompson et al would listen to those who really know what's happening on the ground!

20. At 08:52 PM on 21 Oct 2007, Chris Ghoti wrote:

    Somebody on R4 pointed out yesterday that Ross's salary per annum is pretty-much the same as the budget alloted to two entire news teams in R4. Can anyone remind me which two it was, if they happened to hear that?

    I asked at the time, but there's a limit to the 502s I go on trying to post through.