Monday Moan 60

STILL SPENDING OUR MONEY ON FOREIGN ‘REPORTING’

It’s been a while since the BBC News team had a chance to set up camp for live broadcasting of its main news bulletins from somewhere overseas.  The growing unrest in Cairo had them packing their bags and heading for the airport faster than Usain Bolt can run the 100 metres.  

I have never understood this desire to be ‘on the spot’ with the newsreader then interviewing the resident Correspondent who reports from that part of the world throughout the rest of the year.  Add to this the fact that the quality of the picture was very poor and the sound and vision were not synchronised, and you have to wonder about the wisdom of uprooting the team from their home studio. Do we feel better informed because the programme is coming live from Cairo?  Does the presence of the newsreader there make us think they are better informed and able to tell us things that the Correspondent already there could not have covered?

Or does it just make us think what's the point, and why is our licence-fee being spent in such a cavalier fashion?

 

 

TRAFFIC FLOWING FREELY? TIME TO SWITCH ON THOSE VARIABLE SIGNS

Like a child with a new toy, whoever is in charge of those roadside and overhead signs on motorways can’t seem to resist playing with them even when traffic is flowing freely.

A long trip down to Cardiff at the weekend went smoothly except on the four separate occasions where these variable signs had been switched on.  Traffic duly slowed down as the signs suggested there was congestion ahead …………………. and, therefore, began to bunch up, thus creating some congestion.  Apart from that, the road was clear, so when the last of the signs was passed a few miles further on the traffic was allowed to flow unimpeded again.   Maybe the signs had been needed earlier, but as so often appears to be the case, someone had either forgotten to switch them off or had decided it would be fun to keep them on.

The return journey was even more instructive.  Approaching the M4 junction with the M25 fairly late in the evening, when the traffic had flowed freely all the way from Wales, the dreaded warning signs sprung into action.  We merged into the M25 traffic OK and once past the overhead signs the traffic sped up and moved freely and quickly, until the next overhead sign telling everyone to slow down was reached. Cars slowed and bunched again.  This flow freely/close up and bunch pattern was repeated each time an overhead sign was approached, so that the whole section between the M25 and the M40 was negotiated like a kind of bizarre cheetah and tortoise tag team.

It probably kept someone amused back in the control room.

 

 

SEAMLESS  TRANSITION AT OLD TRAFFORD

A new season, a new manager at Old Trafford for the first time in nearly 27 years, but don’t worry about David Moyes being able to step into the shoes vacated by the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson.  His whining about the fixture list being ‘fixed’ in order to disadvantage Manchester United was so reminiscent of Ferguson  at his most irrational that you begin to suspect that Moyes might even be his love-child. 

There’s something reassuring about this seamless transition from one miserable chip-on-the-shoulder manager to another – the King is dead, long live the King!

 
 

 

RELEGATION FORM, WITHOUT EVEN PLAYING

Resisting the temptation to suggest that this BBC website Premier League table is a pretty good prediction for the coming season (as the initial round of results shows all too clearly), I can’t help wondering if someone was having a laugh by initially getting the alphabetical order wrong, so that when it was corrected it had the effect of Tottenham managing to lose three places even before a game had been played ……….

Thank goodness it wasn't Manchester United involved, or poor old David Moyes would have blown a fuse!