Bbc

Monday

Douglas Murray

The BBC Trust is a classic New Labour horlicks

From our UK edition

Nobody is ever 'invited' to appear before Margaret Hodge and the Commons public accounts committee. They are always 'hauled' before her. Thus it was with a whole phalanx of BBC executives, past and present, this afternoon. There are really two things which came out of the appearance of Lord (Chris) Patten, Mark Thompson et al. The first is the obvious reminder that the BBC has become a strangely upside-down organisation of late. Rich in senior management, it has spent recent years farming out major portions of news and other programme-making, apparently so that it could concentrate on the really important task of management. Of course the BBC is not the only public body to have suffered this upside-down-itis.

Friday

Camilla Swift

Spectator Play: The highs and the lows of what’s going on in arts this week | 23 August 2013

From our UK edition

For many people, stories and story-telling formed the basis of their childhood. But there are others whose childhood is devoid of books, and it’s these children that Oxford’s new Story Museum aims to help. As Robert Gore-Langton puts it, ‘beyond [Oxford’s] dreaming spires is an urban hellhole of burning cars, despair and unemployment’, and, he points out, ‘it is ranked number 32 in Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places to Live in the UK.’ In his piece, he talks to Anne Fine, Amanda Mitichison, Terence Blacker and Keith Crossley-Holland on the joy - and importance - of reading aloud. Below is just one of The Story Museum’s attempts to get children reading.

Thursday

James Delingpole

Is David Starkey God?

From our UK edition

‘Somerset. Winter 877,’ said the subtitles below an arty, BBC-nature-doc style close-up of a coot paddling amid the reeds on the eerie black waters of the Somerset levels. ‘Yes!’ I went, mentally punching the air. ‘I’m in safe hands here, I can tell. Bet they’re going to get all the costume details totally right. There might even be battle scenes. Not crap three-men-with-shields-filmed-over-and-over-again-from-different-angles-with-a-shaky-camera like in the bad old days. But totally convincing CGI-enhanced ones. The Battle of Ashdown, done even more realistically than it was in 871. Yay!’ Then it got even better.

Kate Chisholm

A bearded, medallion-wielding, miniature puppet won’t persuade us to go digital

From our UK edition

Will digital radio ever really take off? We were supposed to be switching over to digital-only reception in 2015 (three years after the TV switchover) but with only 36.8 per cent of listeners as yet tuning in to a digital station the future of DAB is beginning to look very uncertain (and most of those 36.8 per cent will also be listening to an old and much-loved analogue wireless set or transistor). Ed Vaizey, the government’s minister for culture, communications and the creative industries, has said he will announce a new date for the switchover ‘by the end of the year’, but this seems an unlikely target given that more than 60 per cent of the population don’t have access to digital and that take-up is only increasing by 4 per cent per year.

Wednesday

Camilla Swift

Is the RSPCA no longer an animal welfare charity?

From our UK edition

In January of this year, Melissa Kite wrote our cover story about how the RSPCA has morphed from being an animal welfare charity into an animal rights group.  She wrote of the ‘culture of fear at their headquarters’, and explained ‘how deeply suspicious some animal experts have become of this once-respected body’. Since then, the problems have only worsened. In July it was revealed that the charity’s Chief Executive, Gavin Grant, was paid ‘between £150,000 and £160,000’ a year – at least £30,000 more than his predecessor.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Taps for The Washington Post

From our UK edition

So it has come to this. The Washington Post, paper of Bradlee and Woodward and Bernstein and all the rest, has been sold to Amazon's Jeff Bezos. For $250m. That, apparently, is roughly the daily fluctuation in the value of Bezos's Amazon shares. For a man worth more than $20bn, buying the Post is a bit like the rest of us buying a new bicycle. That's how far - and how fast - the once mighty Post has fallen. Even so, it's startling that the Grahams, who have owned the paper for 80 years, have decided to sell. As I write at Think Scotland today, the Graham family has 'sunk their own flagship the better to save the rest of the fleet'.

Saturday

Camilla Swift

Spectator Play: The highs and the lows of what’s going on in arts this week | 3 August 2013

From our UK edition

‘Shakespeare’s Globe’, as the theatre has been called since it was founded in 1997, is unusual for a theatre in that it makes a large annual profit, without receiving public funding. How? Its unique angle means it has no need to market itself – what’s more attractive to an American audience than Shakespeare, in London, in a reconstructed Shakespearean theatre? But its decision to put all Shakespearean productions on hold to make way for another dramatist is a decision which Lloyd Evans isn’t too sure about. Samuel Adamson’s Gabriel may be accompanied by some lovely Purcell music, but the actual play’s content leaves much to be desired. Theoretically, there’s nothing more delightful than evening at Glyndebourne.

Thursday

Clarissa Tan

Clarissa Tan experiences the greatest show on earth, and laughs

From our UK edition

I watched Top Gear (BBC2, Sunday) for the first time in my life last week (the rock under which I’ve been living is pretty large, practically a boulder). I thought I’d better plug this knowledge gap before it got too embarrassing, seeing that Top Gear is the greatest show on earth, the travelling Big Top de nos jours, a daredevil combo of acrobatic stunts, mechanical wizardry and freakery. Fakery too, apparently, as it’s emerged that in a recent episode scenes that looked spontaneous were actually staged. These involved flashes of watery chaos, upturned tables and angry diners shaking their fists as an amphibious vehicle hastily built and even more hastily driven by Jeremy Clarkson & co. blasted past a bucolic restaurant by the River Avon, spraying all and sundry.

Peter Phillips

70th anniversary of Composer of the Week

From our UK edition

Mention of the 70th anniversary of Composer of the Week brings to mind a distinguished list of long-running programmes on Radio 3. They all beg the question of how they have managed to survive so long in an atmosphere of constant doubt about the value of a station that has so few listeners. Time and again it has seemed as though dumbing down would be the fate of all these old shows, if not of Radio 3 itself, and every time a peculiarly British mix of grudging respect for the arts alongside a trenchant nostalgia for familiar things — of the kind that has kept The Archers going since 1951 — has saved them. Composer of the Week can outrank The Archers, however, having been launched (as This Week’s Composer) in August 1943.

Tuesday

Douglas Murray

Mehdi Hasan and the EDL

From our UK edition

At the weekend I was on the BBC TV programme Sunday Morning Live. We discussed pilgrimages and the ethics of the banking industry. But the first debate was the most heated. It was titled, ‘Are Muslims being demonised?’ The Huffington Post’s UK political director, Mehdi Hasan, claimed that Muslims are indeed being demonised. For my part I argued that while there are serious reasons – principally terrorism and murder – to be concerned about some strands of Islam, those who would tar all Muslims with the brush of the extremists are doing something very wrong. I thought it an interesting and lively discussion. However at the very end Mehdi Hasan told a smear which I think needs correcting.

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

The BBC bows to celebrity

From our UK edition

The licence fee is both a blessing and a curse for the BBC. The clue is in that nickname — Aunty — both affectionate and slightly patronising. Aunty implies that the corporation is a friendly family affair, middle-of-the-road and just a teeny bit desperate to stay in favour, like grown-ups attempting the dance moves of the next generation. The Beeb may have an unfair advantage over its commercial rivals because of the fee but its reliance on taxpayers’ funding also makes it dependent on the goodwill of whichever political party is in government. That means it has to be seen to be a vote-earner, or rather not a vote-loser, if it wants to retain its fee-supporting status. It must cater for all tastes, and keep up (and in) with the popular mood.

Monday

Sebastian Payne

An inconvenient interview: Andrew Neil defends his grilling of Ed Davey

From our UK edition

Andrew Neil’s interview on Sunday Politics the other week triggered much reaction – and protest from those who do not believe that there is a debate to be had. Andrew has replied at length today, and we thought you might be interested in what he has to say. First, the offending interview: The viewers included one Dana Nuccitelli, who works for a private Californian environment company and blogs at the Guardian. He objected to the Sunday Politics graph showing the absence of warming and said it should be 'should be totally disregarded and thrown out'. His conclusion: 'Throughout the show Neil focused only on the bits of evidence that seemed to support his position.

Friday

Camilla Swift

Spectator Play: Spectator Play: The highs and the lows of what’s going on in arts this week

From our UK edition

Wadjda is the first feature-length film to come out of Saudi Arabia, and was shot by the country’s first female director - but those aren't the only things that are great about it, says Deborah Ross. It's also ‘fascinating, involving, moving, and an entirely excellent film in its own right’. The story might be simple, but it’s the glimpses of how life might be for a woman living in Saudi Arabia make it ‘wonderful’. Deborah’s second film this week is the The World’s End, an attempt to be humorous that despite its cast (which includes Martin Freeman, Rosamund Pike and Simon Pegg) is completely unfunny, and ‘just boring’. Even the zombies fail to make it more exciting...

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: The Met Office answers Rupert Darwall, and a defence of Bolívar

From our UK edition

Wild weather Sir: Weather and climate science is not an emotional or political issue — even though emotions and politics run high around it, as illustrated in Rupert Darwall’s article (‘Bad weather’, 13 July). However, it is important that opinions are rooted in evidence, and the article contains numerous errors and misrepresentations about the Met Office and its science. Here are a couple of points. The assertion of the Met Office’s ‘forecast failure’ is just wrong. The Met Office is beating all of its forecast accuracy targets. We are consistently recognised by the World Meteorological Organization as one of the top two most accurate operational forecasters in the world.

Kate Chisholm

Radio review: At last! A proper Book at Bedtime

From our UK edition

It had begun to look as if Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime had been taken over by the zealous publicity-hungry PRs of publishing. For the past few months we’ve had nothing but the latest John le Carré, Neil Gaiman, Mohsin Hamid and Jami Attenberg. Books that would sit better in the morning Radio 4 slot as Book of the Week have been foisted upon us at 10.45 p.m., just when we want to start winding down from the hectic day, to escape from the traffic and fumes of the internet-bound life into which most of us have sunk. What we need post washing-up, dog walk, news, last texts, tweets and blogs is not bracing new writing, stuffed full of our worst imaginings and post-9/11 fear and loathing.

Monday

Steerpike

Alan Yentob laments as austerity reaches Aunty

From our UK edition

Troubled times at the BBC. There has been shock at the spectacular amounts of money that have been poured down the drain, and the row over executive pay-offs grows more vicious. And now new boss Sir Tony Hall is said to be limiting Aunty’s credit card. Some of the Beeb’s biggest spenders are up in arms as the age of austerity finally hits home. Fresh from having his £1,000 taxi bill exposed, Alan Yentob has been humiliated by his bosses. I hear that upon arriving at Glastonbury recently, the Beeb’s Creative Director had an almighty tantrum on discovering that he was staying in a Travelodge. Fellow travellers tell me that he spent the whole festival in a sulk and grumbled to anyone who would listen about this great indignity.

Thursday

James Delingpole

Brainwashed from birth: the cult of the BBC

From our UK edition

Last week I was on holiday with my family on the Algarve. The good news was that, thanks to the BBC’s widespread availability in Portugal, we didn’t miss out on Murray at Wimbledon. The bad news was that, for the same reason, we couldn’t escape The Apprentice. But this isn’t an anti-Apprentice column. It’s an anti-BBC column prompted in part by something annoying somebody said to me on Twitter the other day. I’d written, not for the first time, that I considered the BBC ‘a total waste of money’. And the tweeter replied primly, ‘The BBC is a total waste of money or actually you quite like Today, Proms, Glasto, wildlife docs. Can’t have it both ways.’ No, actually, you can.

Tuesday

Douglas Murray

There are upsides to live TV, but being spanked by David Dimbleby is not one of them

From our UK edition

Belated thanks to readers who wrote in about the BBC’s Question Time last week (still viewable here). It was a slightly odd edition, I thought. The panel – Margaret Hodge, Danny Alexander, Sarah Woollaston, Tony Robinson and me – found ourselves in agreement on more things than is usual on the show. On party-funding we agreed that the parties are all in a mess – albeit in slightly different ways. Likewise we thought that although there may be an argument for it, this isn’t a great moment to raise MPs pay. We all wanted the NHS to remain solvent, though disagreed on the priorities. And everyone was concerned about the coup in Egypt. I think the only point of real contention was between the chair – David Dimbleby – and me.

Tuesday

Rod Liddle

Down with the Glasto smugfest

From our UK edition

I suppose this will seem churlish, but I’d just like to add my support to the grime rapper Wiley who, upon arriving at the Glastonbury festival, tweeted to Michael Eavis: ‘Fuck you and your farm.’ I’m not sure what motivated this annoyance but credit where it’s due, it’s roughly what I’ve felt about this bloated middle class smugfest for the last fifteen years. If it persuades the badger-strangling but otherwise impeccably PC post-hippy Eavis to call it a day, so much the better. Why in Christ’s name would anyone wish to attend a music festival in which the headline acts are almost double the ages of the cabinet (and slightly further to the right)?

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Do you agree with the Tories’ Alternative Queen’s Speech?

From our UK edition

A bunch of back bench Conservative MPs have won the right to present to parliament, via the almost pointless conduit of private members bills, a sort of alternative manifesto. A fairly uncameroonie alternative Queen’s Speech. The MPs in question include Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone, both of whom sound a little as though they had stepped out of a Mervyn Peake novel and both of whom represent constituencies comprised largely of orcs and goblins in Northamptonshire. That being said, they are both rather good fun and have been principled thorns in the side of the current party leadership. If you can have a principled thorn. I suppose you can’t. Anyway, to pluck three issues out of their list of 40, they will be introducing bills to: Ban the burqa.