(Monday) Moan 48

 

The Perils of Live Broadcasting – part 1

There is an understandable desire amongst broadcasters for the live interview, particularly when they are covering breaking news stories.

 

But it doesn’t always work out well.

 

Radio 5 Live decided that last week’s story about a plane being diverted to Stansted under escort from RAF Typhoons warranted the ‘breaking news’ treatment.  Chris Warburton was the man charged with extracting some interesting information from the passenger selected for interview. 

 

It didn’t go well:-

 

CW “tell us exactly what you were able to see?” 

Passenger “Ah, well nothing much”

CW “and what did you hear?”

Passenger “ah, nothing because we were at the front of the plane and it must have been at the back”

CW “so what about the fighter plane escort. That must have been alarming?”

Passenger “well actually, I didn’t see anything because I was sitting in the middle seats and you can’t see out of the windows and in any case we were flying in the clouds”

 

So, not much of an eyewitness account. But it was good radio because of the discomfort of the interviewer - who ploughed on in an ultimately vain attempt to get his subject to say something interesting.

 

 

The Perils of Live Broadcasting – part 2

Worse than the live interview is the live broadcast whilst an event is taking place or just as it has finished.  If the event is going on we often see the reporter standing up with his back to whatever is happening, speaking in hushed tones because they know that they are disrupting the main event – for example, speeches at conferences or whilst some sporting event is in progress. So irritating for the viewer.

 

And then we have the broadcast at the end of an event, often a sporting event, as the crowd is dispersing. Now this ought to set alarm bells ringing, you would think.  Apparently not, if the report from Wembley Stadium after the Championship play-off game yesterday is any guide.  Reporter Chris Slegg was doing a piece to camera about how Crystal Palace had won the game and the Premiership jackpot, when a departing Watford fan took the opportunity to give this incisive comment on the game. 

 

Predictable?  Of course.  Will it happen again?  Inevitably.

 

 

German football resurgence?

So, Bayern Munich won the all-German Champions League Final against Borussia Dortmund on Saturday.  A close and very fast-paced game that was decided only at the very end. Dortmund fought hard to upset the odds, often making Bayern’s dominance in Germany this season seem questionable, but the right team won, both for their performance on the night and for their results over the whole season.  Watch the Bundesliga highlights show on ITV4 each week to see the quality of the German league.  

 

Just a couple of minor observations, rather than moans.  First, the British press went overboard (surely not?) before the game about how German football had reinvented itself following years of ‘under-achievement’ (i.e. not winning a major trophy at either club or international level for years) and how they had, in particular, focused on developing their own young players.   Sounds like a good point, except that the Munich team contained six non-German players and the Dortmund team four. It’s the same with all the top teams in every country – they scour the globe for the talent and then go for those they feel are the best mixture of skill and affordability.  Let’s not pretend the Germans are any different.

 

Second, there seemed to be an inconsistency in the Deutsche Bundesliga’s own website’s headline of “Arsenal, Juventus and Barcelona: just a handful of the seven sides to crumble under the might of Bayern Munich this season”, when set against their own summary of the game when Arsenal came so close to knocking Bayern out of the competition – “Bayern suffered an almighty scare when Arsenal won the second leg 2-0 to draw 3-3 on aggregate but lose on away goals”.

 

Not so much a crumble as elimination on a technicality.

 

 

 

The new Ice-Cream Wars?

It seems that more and more people are resorting to online shopping from the major supermarkets these days. 

 

Advocates talk about the time and effort saved in shopping online as against getting into the car, driving to the shops, walking round the aisles to choose the things they want, and then reversing the whole process to get home again. Why not have someone else do the hard work and leave you free to do other things?

 

Those against this trend argue that you can’t beat being able to choose which items will go into your basket – this apple rather than that one, this cake you wouldn’t have considered except that it looks so tempting as you are walking round the shop, etc.

 

I hope that those who are resisting the new way of shopping will continue to do so, or the roads around us will become even more clogged with supermarket delivery vans than they are at present.  They appear at all hours of the day, banging their crates as they unload their deliveries, revving their engines as they struggle to negotiate the narrow streets lined with parked cars.

 

Last week these two vehicles were delivering at the same time – not sure if they were going to the same address or not.  Or maybe, as my wife suggested, it’s the start of a supermarket equivalent of the ice-cream van ‘wars’ we used to see?

Monday Moan 39

 

I know I shouldn’t smile, but ……..

An Aston Martin DBS costs around £180,000, or it did until production was discontinued.

A Vauxhall Corsa costs around £10,000 when new.

Last week an old and rather battered Corsa, fetchingly painted in various shades of pink, managed to run into the side of a sleek, black DBS whilst the latter was standing at a petrol station being refuelled.  The story had its funny side, of course.  The pink Corsa was being driven by a woman with pink hair, for example, and then there was a troubling degree of pleasure at seeing something so valuable damaged by something so cheap and unpretentious (ok, apart from its colouring).

But some other things troubled me about the story as well.  First, the DBS owner’s immediate assertion that the vehicle was a write-off, beyond repair.  Oh really?  Look at the picture and see how much damage there is, and then consider whether writing off such a valuable car with that amount of damage might possibly be one reason why your insurance premiums are at an all-time high.

And then there were the comments from Aston Martin, whose spokesman is reported to have said “The DBS is not of the understated elegance of a DB9, nor the youthful agility of the V8 Vantage. It is explosive power in a black tie, and has its own unique character which will equal that of James Bond.'    

I’m guessing this ‘quote’ must have been taken out of context, but even so, what on earth is it supposed to mean?  Don’t these people speak English any more?

 

From our Bavarian correspondent

So, Arsenal came away from Bayern Munich with a 2-0 victory rather than suffering the humiliating loss that many had predicted.  Going out of the competition on the away goals rule seemed particularly harsh, given that they actually won the game against all the odds.

Those odds were high.  Bayern have now played 16 games at home against English opposition in European competitions.  Only one other side has beaten them over 90 minutes (yes, I know this ignores Chelsea’s game last season, but over 90 minutes that was a draw; after extra time that was a draw; then Chelsea prevailed in a penalty shoot-out).  Anyway, which other English side has managed to lower Bayern’s  colours?  None other than Norwich City, who won there in 1993. 

Most of all, I loved the way that the pre-match atmosphere was described on the Bundesliga’s own website -  “The stadium has remained relatively empty [40 minutes before kick-off] – it’s too cold for the fans, who have seemingly opted to stay inside as long as possible whilst they eat their pre-match sausages …….” 

Sausages for the Germans, beefburgers for the British. What do Italian or Spanish fans eat before I game, I wonder?

 

It’s all a matter of priorities

Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce were caught lying about which one of them was driving when a speed camera registered that their car was being driven too fast.  

Toby Hayden battered his girlfriend at a cashpoint after the machine failed to allow him to withdraw any money.  He was drunk. He was serving a suspended sentence for a previous violent crime. He assaulted two police officers who turned up at the scene.

One of these crimes was, essentially, victimless – nobody got hurt, nobody suffered as a result of the illegal action.  The other saw assaults on anybody who happened to be there at the time.

All three of the accused were convicted.  Two of them were sentenced to time in jail. One of them was given a community service order.

Can you guess who received which sentence? 

No doubt my learned friends would be able to explain it all.  It’s all a question of priorities, I suppose.  Perverting the course of justice is just a more serious crime than beating up an innocent person on our streets and then assaulting the police officers who came to investigate. 

Or should we have just a tiny worry bead that the legal system is bonkers?

  

Standards and incompetence

A quiet lunch out in a hotel that advertises itself as "the perfect place to sit back, relax and enjoy the delights that we have to offer" should not feature in the Moan, should it?  Well, I’m afraid it does – and on two counts.

First, doesn’t anybody dress up to go out for a nice meal these days?  I know that nobody bothers with a tie and jacket, even for evening meals in rather nice restaurants.  That battle was lost a long time ago.  But I was still surprised to see that in a large party out for a meal to celebrate one of their number reaching the age of 55, t-shirts outnumbered both polo and rugby shirts amongst the men, and jeans were the unanimous choice of them all.

Second, what kind of an establishment invites you to take your tea and coffee in the lounge before checking that there is actually space in the lounge for you to sit?  Yes, you’re right - an incompetent one.