Monday Moan 56

Don't waste my time by disagreeing with me

Margaret Hodge was at her most combative, argumentative, intransigent and rude in a session about rural broadband last week.  She has form (see Moan 44 and others, for example).

 

The initial session of the hearing started with Margaret Hodge giving an open and friendly platform to BT’s competitors to put their points to the Committee, including the CEO of one company which has not, so far, invested a single penny in the UK.  No such luxury or latitude was afforded to the witness from BT, who found himself being hectored, told he was wrong, and being ridiculed by Hodge. She disagreed with him when he quoted facts, relying in some cases on the obviously much more reliable evidence of “an industry insider told me”.  Her sidekick Richard Bacon, MP (no, not the Radio 5 broadcaster, although the latter would undoubtedly be a more thoughtful, serious and useful person to have on the Committee), spent the session looking to raise a laugh and trying to make fun of the BT witness – he told him he should consider a career as a Jesuit priest (because he could say that black was white) and then that he should have been a comedian, because he had the temerity to deny that BT had a monopoly on superfast broadband.  “Boom, boom” was the intelligent contribution of Bacon (the MP) to that, ignoring the witness pointing out that Virgin Media had a larger share of the retail market than BT.

 

Ian Swales, MP tried to be clever by saying that decisions on building infrastructure did not depend on likely use - “You don’t build a road based on how many cars are going to use it, you just build the road.”  Oh dear.  Back to school for Ian I’m afraid.  Of course investment in infrastructure takes account of expected demand.  Do we need a new road, and if so, does it need to be single carriageway or a multi-lane motorway?  How on earth does he think we get to the answer without taking account of likely usage of that road?  Similarly regarding investment in almost any other infrastructure like schools, airports, etc.  Poor old Ian also had a whole argument with Government officials at the next session haranguing them for blocking the possibility of using fixed wireless solutions, when in fact this was completely the opposite of what the witness had said, and Swales was forced to apologise for his misinterpretation.

 

Margaret Hodge and Richard Bacon spent large amounts of time having side conversations, distracting the witnesses and showing huge disrespect to them.  She complained that witnesses were not answering her questions, but what she actually meant was that their answers did not match her pre-conceptions. She got so frustrated by this refusal of witnesses to agree with her that her aside of “Oh Jesus” at one point caused one of the MPs on the Committee to note that this was inappropriate and un-Parliamentary language.

 

The thing is, we pay for these people and we have a right to expect that they will conduct themselves appropriately. This should include objectivity and giving witnesses both a chance to be heard and the right to say things that conflict with the Committee members’ pre-conceived notions and positions, without being accused of lying or having their evidence dismissed out of hand.

 

Value for money?  I don’t think so.  Maybe there should be an investigation into the value for money of the Public Accounts Committee?

 

 

It’s a heatwave – but not in Rochester (again)

The UK is experiencing a heatwave – it’s all relative, of course, but here in the UK we are not used to high temperatures, so a few consecutive days of them constitutes a heatwave.  Anyway, we have now had something like 10 days of hot weather – with the one exception being last Saturday, when we went to Rochester to sing at their annual open-air ‘Prom’ concert.  This always takes place on the third Saturday in July, and it seems that it is traditional that whatever the weather has been doing on other days, on the day of the concert the weather will be rubbish. 

 

This year was no exception.  Temperatures of around 30c on other days disappeared and a more typical 18c was reached – for one day only, of course, as the hot weather returned the following day. It was cold, it was windy, the extra layers of clothing were all needed – but it was still great fun and we’d certainly do it again!

 

 

ITN – they decide what’s news

Yesterday’s Independent Television News decided that the main news was that the Prime Minister had again refused to answer repeated questions about whether or not he had discussed proposed rules on health warnings on tobacco products with one of his advisers, Lynton Crosby, who works for a PR firm whose clients include tobacco companies.

I would be amazed if the two of them had not talked about this at some stage.  And I would add a very loud ‘SO WHAT?’  I’d rather he was talking to an adviser who actually knew something about the issues in question than someone with a theoretical knowledge, gleaned from something they had read or that had been sent to them.  Do people imagine that everything a politician says has sprung from their own imaginations or research?   That would be ridiculous.  Of course politicians are recipients of information, of ‘lobbying’ on a daily basis – that’s the only way the system can work.

 

Here’s the thing.  This ITN ‘story’ was actually gleaned from an interview on the BBC earlier in the day – and yet the BBC did not even think it newsworthy enough to mention in its own main news bulletin.  

 

Strange choice for ITN?  Well, they have a track record for choosing strange lead stories.  At the end of June, for example, they thought the most newsworthy story of the day was their own ‘investigation’ which revealed that some NHS Trusts were saving money by not having to pay VAT for certain services.  Nothing illegal about this, they acknowledged, but still worth interviewing Margaret Hodge (yes, her again) and elevating this above all other news of the day.  The story was delivered with all the seriousness the presenter could muster, managing to link the NHS with Starbucks and Google, who have also been accused of not paying tax that they did not need to pay.

 

Not much of a story really.

 

Have the BBC got it in for the England cricket team?

Not content with their previous attempt to make England get twice as many runs for victory as was actually the case (see Moan 52), the BBC were at it again last week in the First Test Match against Australia.  

 

Obviously worried that the Aussies were not able to make much of a game of it without some outside help, the BBC stepped in to show that 5 wickets had fallen when in fact only 4 had done so:-

 

Didn’t make any difference, of course, as the Aussies were beaten and then suffered a humiliating second defeat at the weekend.  Oh how they would have gloated had the boot been on the other foot.  We, of course, are more restrained – HA!