Amusing Olympic fact of the afternoon.
Surely the spotlight should be on that hardy bunch of Brits training for the Beijing Olympics. Seasoned, hard-hitting, well-trained...Wait, was that a cameraman?
New reports state that there will be more BBC staffers out in Beijing than athletes. Here's The Telegraph's breakdown: The corporation has revealed that 437 employees will be flying out to cover the games, compared to around 300 athletes who will actually take part.
May the best reporter win.
Alice Fishburn
No one can accuse the excellent Chris Dillow of not thinking outside the box. This morning he takes the BBC to task for their US election reporting:
Put it this way. Why should the BBC spend so much on reporting on the Democrat and Republican primaries, when it can just quote the betting prices, in the same way it mentions the FTSE 100 index? In principle, such prices should convey all available information about Clinton's, Obama's or McCain's prospects cheaply and efficiently, saving the huge cost of having a mob of reporters over there.
Money-saving and market-friendly. I wonder if they'll go for it?
Alice Fishburn
 This morning Barney Choudhary reported for the Today programme from the McCann's home village of Rothley in Leicestershire.
His story? The extraordinary number of journalists that have descended on Rothley. Like, er, him for instance.
His interview subject? A man who has come to Rothley from Belgium to make a TV documentary about... the extraordinary number of journalists that have descended on Rothley.
You couldn't make it up.
A very odd tale was told on the Today programme this morning. It concerned the flooding of a Welsh valley to provide water for the people of Liverpool.
A woman who had attended a protest meeting in Liverpool as a three-year-old child claimed that the people there had been awful to the protestors.
Then she said that the local MP Bessie Braddock had thrown rotten tomatoes at them. Her recollection was not challenged.
But really, is this likely?
Maybe a historian of the period can furnish Comment Central readers with more and better particulars about this crucial event.
 On the BBC website, World Affairs Correspondent Paul Reynolds writes of Douglas Alexander's foreign policy speech:
Gordon Brown also stressed to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, whom he met in London on Thursday, that Britain would always aim at multilateralism in foreign policy, though holding its options open for independent action in the final analysis.
That was perhaps code for - no more Iraqs.
Or perhaps not. Really - what does the statement to Ban Ki Moon mean? How does it differ from Mr Blair's policy? Didn't he aim at multilateralism while holding his options etc?
Obviously, there won't be another Iraq. There was only one Iraq under Tony Blair and I don't think there's going to be another in a hurry.
Does it mean no more Kosovos? No more Sierra Leones?
I think, on careful reading it means...
Nothing.
This morning the Today programme's estimable series on social mobility came to an end with a debate involving Simon Jenkins and Jeff Randall (listen to it here, it starts 20 minutes into the clip). They were discussing, among other things, whether social mobility had stalled or was continuing to increase.
One important point seemed to be missing from the discussion and, unless I missed it, from the series too. The increased mobility of women in the last decade.
Greater equality between men and women is welcome and means that we are an opportunity society today in at least one way we have never been before.
One consequence of greater sex equality though, will be to entrench class and reduce economic equality. As high-earning men marry high-earning women the multiplier effect lifts the wealthy family even higher above the low-earning counterpart.
Sex equality is one explanation for what many believe has been a slowing in social mobility.
Nick Robinson reports something that has been hinted at for a while now - Gordon Brown has dropped his mad, bad idea of an independent NHS Board.
This prompts two thoughts.
First, Gordon Brown's reputation as an incubator of solid and deep policy ideas is massively overblown. That this idea was a silly one was obvious from the get-go, yet for quite a while he allowed it to be seen as his flagship new idea.
Now that he has dumped it, what is he left with? Not much on the NHS if Nick Robinson's list is anything to go by.
My second thought is that it is interesting how little impact on Brown's reputation this incident has had. Consider the fuss made about the much smaller mix-up in Tory grammar school plans. It is much easier to be inconsistent in office than in Opposition.
That is something the Tories now need to take note of. Brown may have backed off the silly NHS independence plan (my explanation of its silliness is here) but the Conservative Party still favours it. I don't think the policy will survive a great deal of scrutiny.
And if they are forced to dump it, they should not expect the same muted reaction that greeted Mr Brown's U-turn.
The sensationally good Evan Davis has a post considering what he calls: The Bank's Worst Decision
He advances a number of lessons that should be learned after the Bank of England made a mistaken decision to cut interest rates in August 2005. Click here to see what they are.
As usual Evan argues well. But very unusually in our long friendship, I don't agree with him.
I think that learning lessons from a single mistake is a very bad idea indeed. If the Bank made repeated errors, then lessons can be learned and changes made to reduce their average propensity to make mistakes.
But if you attempt to adjust procedure in response to one mistake you may increase the total number of mistakes. It could be, for instance, that the decision by the bank was correct and the outcome, due to randomness, a poor one.
The BBC and other broadcasters face a challenge. All day they have been running the idea that these are good but not sensational results for the Conservatives. Now it is quite clear that this is wrong. The results have been sensational. Will they change their analysis?
This morning, it seemed as if the Tories would make between 500 and 600 gains. A moment ago they passed the 800 mark, heading to above 850.
Here is what local government expert Michael Thrasher had to say earlier this week: The real significance of these local elections may not be Labour losses as much as how the spoils are divided among the main opposition parties.
The Conservatives have been leading the field in opinion polls and local by-elections alike for some time. But (and it’s a big but) the party continually falls short of the critical 40% mark – the minimum national vote share likely to be needed to win an overall majority in the House of Commons. These contests offer David Cameron the chance to show that he can lead a Tory fight back that has real and enduring substance.
For that to happen to the party must register in excess of 600 net seat gains and push the total number of councils it controls up from 169 towards the 200 mark. The shire districts are likely to be the Conservatives’s most fertile territory, but the advance will need to be broad. In Braintree, Dartford and Rugby a modest swing from Labour is required. By contrast the Liberal Democrats are the obstacle to be overcome in Harrogate, Mid Suffolk and Shepway.
As I posted earlier, I believe the national opinion polls and think they provide a better guide to national opinion than do local election results. But judged on its own terms you cannot say anything other than that this has been a very good Conservative result.
So I share Iain Dale's frustration.
Click on the button below for the latest developments
And sign the petition here.
Murad Ahmed
The BBC's John Simpson reported this morning on the kidnapping of his colleague Alan Johnston and gave the impression that almost everyone in Gaza deplored the abduction. His desire to emphasise just how much support there is for Mr Johnston was understandable, but also risks obscuring the real story.
Mr Johnston's kidnapping is not merely a criminal act, it is a political move. In order for listeners and viewers to understand it, the full extent of the in-fighting among Palestinian factions must be explained.
Mr Johnston's kidnappers are thought to be the Durmush clan, who also played a key role in the kidnapping of Gilad Schalit, the missing Israeli soldier.
The links between the various groups are complicated: Until recently, the Durmush clan had been considered an ally of Hamas. However, roughly two and a half weeks ago Hamas militants killed two Fatah members from the family. In response, the members of the Durmush family killed three Hamas militants and abducted four more, and published leaflets accusing the Hamas-led government of being anti-Islamic.
Members of the clan have also fired on Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar's home on a near-daily basis, who as a result no longer sleeps at home.
Johnston's abduction is a violent power play and, as with Schalit, the clan is holding out against Hamas as part of their feud.
This explains why the BBC emphasising that Johnson is a "friend of the Palestinians" isn't cutting as much ice with the kidnappers as one might hope.
I know that the BBC is an impossibly difficult position as both reporter and employer, but the story is the link between Johnston's disappearance and the feud, civil disorder in Gaza since Israel's departure and Schalit. The BBC has a responsibility to report it.
 The great Evan Davis, BBC Economics Editor, is running the London Marathon and is raising money for the Anthony Nolan Trust. You can donate here.
He notes: My target is to raise at least as much in thousands of pounds as it takes me hours to run the course. It seemed like a clever target at the time, but it leaves me unsure as to whether to put my effort into running faster, or raising more cash.
Only an economist.
 This morning's Times obituary of John Inman finished with this:
For the past 30 years, Inman lived in a mews house near the canal in Little Venice, West London, despite a fire in 2004. After a lifetime of living in hotel bedrooms, he enjoyed leading a life of quiet, domestic routine.
Inman was a private man who did not like talking about his sexuality, but in 2005 he entered into a civil partnership with his partner of 35 years, Ron Lynch.
But just eight years ago, Inman still felt it necessary to say this.
(UPDATE: For more, read Matthew Parris's excellent piece published this saturday)
 The injunction obtained by the Metropolitan Police against Nick Robinson has given birth to a great deal of speculation. But it has made one thing horribly clear.
Supporters of the Prime Minister have been arguing that the pattern of police arrests suggested that they didn't really have anything.
Forget Guido, they said. The dawn swoops were an attempt to intimidate witnesses into coughing up something, anything, that could be used. Yates of the Yard was aiming for a spot on Celebrity Big Brother, his motivation similar to that copper who nicked Mick Jagger and George Harrison on dope charges.
More than one attempt was made to encourage me to write this.
But I always responded by asking - how do you know? The link between cash and peerages seems fairly obvious to me, but let's wait and see whether there's any hard evidence that would hold up in court, shall we?
The Nick Robinson saga shows that the police definitely do have something, something hard. Otherwise they wouldn't need to protect it with an injunction, now would they?
Melanie Phillips has become a Kelly death conspiracy theorist: Having first accepted that Dr Kelly had committed suicide, I came increasingly to believe that he had been killed.
She speculates that it might have been the Iraqi intelligence services or our spooks. But I think she's missed out one obvious suspect.
What about the BBC?
Melanie has missed the real story. Some believe the BBC knew about 9/11 before it happened.
And if you think about it, it was the Corporation who had the most to gain from Dr Kelly's silence. Perhaps the notorious BBC black bag unit was involved.
I am just saying we shouldn't rule it out.
 A couple of weeks ago I accused the BBC of bias in its Middle East coverage. Now I am wondering if I made a mistake.
Hear me out.
A couple of days ago the social psychologist Robert Cialdini went to 10 Downing Street to discuss environment policy. The main thrust of his remarks concerned what he calls "descriptive social norms". One of the stories he told his audience was this: Not long ago, a graduate student of mine visited the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona with his fiancée—a woman he described as the most honest person he’d ever known, someone who had never taken a paperclip or rubber band without returning it. They quickly encountered a park sign warning visitors against stealing petrified wood, “OUR HERITAGE IS BEING VANDALIZED BY THE THEFT OF 14 TONS OF WOOD EVERY YEAR.”
While still reading the sign, he was shocked to hear his fiancée whisper, “We’d better get ours now.”
What could have spurred this wholly law-abiding young woman to want to become a thief and to deplete a national treasure to boot? I believe it has to do with a mistake that park officials made when creating that sign. They tried to alert visitors to the park’s theft problem by telling them that many other visitors were thieves. In so doing, they stimulated the behavior they had hoped to suppress by making it appear commonplace—when, in fact, less than 3% of the park’s millions of visitors have ever taken a piece of wood. Park officials are far from alone in this kind of error.
Indeed. For isn't this the mistake I was making by accusing the BBC of bias?
People take their cue from others. They behave as they think they are supposed to behave. Say that I argue that Jeremy Bowen's memo blaming the Hamas-Fatah violence on Israel is typical of the BBC. He is biased, like all the other correspondents. What am I saying? That bias against Israel is the social norm in the BBC, that if you are work for the BBC that is how you are supposed to be.
This might make the problem I am fighting against, worse.
What might work better? To say that Jeremy Bowen is letting down the BBC with his rare memo. That most employees of the BBC strive hard to be fair and that Bowen is departing from the norm.
Just a thought.
 The best political point of the day? Tory spokesman John Whitingdale's observation that the BBC's revenue rises in two ways - first because of an increase in the licence fee and second through an increase in the number of people who pay it.
This Indepen report suggests that by the end of the period household growth will add in the region of £700 million. This makes the settlement far more generous than has been reported.
The real problem for the BBC is the tight borrowing cap. If the corporation had real self-confidence it would seek to escape this by planning to move to a subscriber base, perhaps starting with BBC1, and away from the licence fee.
The settlement is timid on all sides.
You can't name a programme that and then say "Er, no".
You can imagine the programme proposal, can't you? You can imagine the memo to the commissioning editor saying: "We hope that Mr Robinson will find some ways to make the NHS better. It is quite likely, unfortunately, that he will be unable to do so. But will you give us a big budget to make the programme, just in case we find that he can."
So it was always inevitable that the programme would be edited to make it appear as if Mr Robinson had found some sort of way forward.
Chris Dillow suggests that the solution they proposed resulted from the BBC's "managerialist ideology". I think it arose from a journalistic requirement to find some solution. There they were, sitting in a circle and someone said: "Mmmm, let me think, let me think. I know! What if the problem Gerry found was that they needed more people like Gerry? Yes that's it. Brilliant."
I agree, however, with Chris, about the real problem - structure and incentives. How can a nationalised industry with no competition, no prices and no consumers possibly work efficiently?
Stephen Pollard has got his hands on a Jeremy Bowen memo about the coming year in the Middle East. It is fascinating and depressing.
Here is what the BBC's Middle East Editor has to say about what he calls the fragmentation of Palestinian society: The reason is the death of hope, caused by a cocktail of Israel's military activities, land expropriation and settlement building – and the financial sanctions imposed on the Hamas led government which are destroying Palestinian institutions that were anyway flawed and fragile.
I am genuinely astonished at this. Are the doctrines and behaviour of the groups themselves not part of the explanation. The murderous militancy of Hamas? The corruption of Fatah?
It demonstrates an unbelievable degree of bias to blame Palestinian civil strife entirely on the Israelis.
But beyond the question of balance, what is striking about the memo is how poor the analysis is. There's no hint for instance of anything deeper, such as the analysis of Christopher Caldwell that I linked to yesterday. If this is the best that the Middle East Editor can do, how can correspondents with less specialist knowledge do better?
I think Stephen Pollard has discovered a really important document, which makes a loud and eloquent case that something is dreadfully wrong with the BBC's coverage.
 When I worked in politics, I used to number among my rules of media engagement: "Never be interviewed by Nick Robinson".
At the time, Nick was just starting his career on-screen and so the advice struck those to whom I gave it as odd. But I would explain that years of knowing Nick had demonstrated that if your argument had an inconsistency or weakness he would find it extremely quickly. I think this view is now a standard one. He is simply the best.
So I am very much looking forward to his new programme Decision Time, the first (sorry, second) installment of which goes out tonight. It will look at the way in which governments make difficult choices.
The edition will deal with Iran and Nick previews the arguments on his blog.
It seems that Sir Malcolm Rifkind will argue that we need sticks as well as carrots to deal with the Mullahs, but would prefer the latter to the former. If I've understood him correctly from this short summary, then he is quite right. A policy of providing carrots will not work without accompanying sticks, as European policy over the last couple of decades has shown clearly.
Listen to the programme and then read this - Kenneth Pollack's very worthwhile book The Persian Puzzle
The BBC Editor's blog contains this story: [Common's Speaker] Michael Martin, has agreed to change the rules to allow the cameras to follow the normal flow of the action, and to show reactions from around the chamber. It’s not the same thing as being there yourself, but for the first time the outside world is getting a real sense of the place – of the intimacy of the Westminster chambers and the closeness of the protagonists, standing feet away from each other across the debating chamber.
Nothing can make an empty chamber look full, or cheer up a dull and poorly made speech. But our experience so far (the experiment [in the Lords] came in at the start of term, and has now been made permanent) is that following the debate as the director sees it, and seeing MPs’ and Lords’ reactions, is going to make Parliament a lot more watchable.
The difference between hearing a speech in the Chamber and watching on television is not, however, the pictures. It is the sound.
Showing reactions would help provide a little context but it is the noise made by sedentary members that really changes the way speakers behave.
The BBC picks up the speeches on microphones and the main speaker is thus amplified so that they can be clearly heard on television. The background noise of MPs heckling can be heard, but is nowhere near as loud on television as it is in the Chamber.
When the minister or opposition spokesman is shouting aggressively at the other side this sounds terribly shrill to the watching TV audience. In the Chamber it may be the only way to be heard at all.
Broadcasters wouldn't want to be forced to play all the Chambers noise as it is heard by participants.
But I suspect that if they did, the behaviour of MPs would quickly change. Certainly, the viewer would get a fuller understanding of what is really going on.
How about that for the next innovation?
There's an entertaining difference of opinion between The Independent's Steve Richards (here) and the BBC's Nick Robinson (here) about the coverage of the police interview with Blair. Richards's key charge is this: The BBC is not anti-Labour or pro-Tory, but unable to take a stand on policy issues, and, wanting to make waves, it has inadvertently become anti-politics.
Robinson responds thus: This simply won’t do. A senior police officer in charge of an investigation which is unprecedented in British political history has stated publicly that his inquiry team has "significant and valuable material" and hints that charges may follow..... The BBC is not being “anti politics” when it reports those facts.
I'm with Nick. The idea that the police interview was unremarkable is ridiculous.
I think that cynicism about politics and politicians is dangerous and both the media (the BBC is less guilty than most) and politicans can encourage it. A fightback is in order. But if I were in charge of the fightback strategy, the loans affair is not the event I would pick.
Daniel Finkelstein
is Comment Editor of The Times and writes a weekly column. Comment Central is his rolling guide to the best opinion on the web. Click
here for more information on the blog. Robbie Millen, the Deputy Comment Editor, will also be posting.
Send us an E-Mail
|
