Quintin Jardine's blog

Always keen to be accountable to the Broadcasting Taxpayer, (let’s be aware of what the so-called ‘TV licence’ really is) the BBC offers its viewers a platform to criticise its news coverage. and take its executives to task. It’s called ‘Newswatch’.

The importance of this programme to the BBC hierarchy is demonstrated very clearly by the time at which it is screened: Saturday morning, 7:45am.

Says it all, doesn’t it?

I’m going well off BBC Breakfast. More and more it’s a  platform for the grinding of axes, and a video box for actors, authors and musicians with something to sell. The presenters are amiably smug  . . . apart from Carol Kirkwood and Sally Nugent who should be given the whole show to run on their own . . . and the content is formulaic. Just occasionally, though, something does catch my attention and stops me from switching to Lorraine or to Sky News.

This morning there was a guy on arguing, in all seriousness, without a flicker of a smile, that bus passes should be taken from senior citizens and given to young people. There was also the obligatory guy arguing that they shouldn’t. Neither impressed me. I have a bus pass, but I use it very rarely, because if I have to go any distance I will either drive or take the train. However it isn’t just a bus pass, it’s an entitlement card that is programmed to be my library ticket as well, with the potential to serve other purposes. If Kim Jong-Eck and his Government decreed that I couldn’t have it any longer, it wouldn’t bother me, but I would take up the cudgels for those people who really do need the concession to let them go further than their own front door. Likewise I’d probably support travel concessions for jobseekers, during business hours, when the job centres are open and when interviews are held.

However I’m concerned that the bus pass argument is throwing up a smokescreen for a problem that is threatening the whole economy. Travel costs are becoming prohibitive for many people, but nobody in power is doing anything about it, not even demonstrating that they understand or care a toss. 

I have just renewed my senior railcard in Spain, for another year. It cost me €5.35, and it gives me 40% off every journey. It pays for itself in one journey to Barcelona. In the midst of the worst economic crisis in its democratic history, the one thing that the Spanish government is not raising significantly are the rail fares, recognising that if people have to choose between getting to work and food, there is no way back. On the other hand, in Britain rail and bus costs are spiralling. It’s time the lamentable UK government, which can offer only fudge and  compromise at a time when strength and clarity of purpose is needed most desperately, realised what is wrong with its own infrastructure and addressed it. Instead of pledging billions to create a high speed rail line between two English cities at some time in the dim and distant, it should be sorting out the shambles that our public transport system has become.

http://www.scottishreview.net/?utm_source=Sign-Up.to&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=8427-293564-The+slow+process+of+justice+has+become+a+punishment+in+itself+

If I had a vote for Journalist of the Year, I’d give it to KennethRoy.

It had to happen, I suppose. Goodreads, which did a decent, impartial job until now,  has been bought by Amazon. Will this never end, until Jeff Bezos is revealed by Doctor Who to be a malign alien entity and is blasted into cosmic dust. Why do people get steamed up about Starbucks, who make a decent cup of filter coffee, hyet ignore the Kim Jong-un of the retail industry?

I’ve just heard a Volkswagen radio ad that struck me as offensive. It targeted, specifically, small business by offering to match any written quote by an independent local garage for servicing a used VW. ‘Local’ is defined as within five miles of their nearest service base, and of course ‘terms and conditions’ apply, for example, there’s an upper limit of two litres on engine capacity. (Henceforth anyone thinking about  buying a Volkswagen with a bigger engine should bear in mind that the manufacturer doesn’t fancy it too much.)

To me that is straightforward bullying, but that’s the way the Germans behave in the EU, (ve vill not talk about ze var) so why should I be surprised?

A few months ago, the government launched a consultation on its proposal that the Public Lending Right office in Stockton should be closed, and its functions transferred to a new department within the British Library. Out of  out of 1015 views expressed by stakeholders, 948, me among them, said firmly that the PLR office is efficient, excellent and popular, and that  it should be left alone. Today the Department for Culture Media and Sport published its response, a vigorous thumb of the nose to all but the 67 who agreed with it.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consultation-on-proposals-to-transfer-plr-funding-and-functions/?346

The process has been a sham, and the civil service has had its way as usual. Come the revolution, bruvvers . . .

This caught my eye today. It asks a very good question.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21841950

My answer is a resounding YES. New parents have considerable statutory rights to protected leave of absence from work; the newly bereaved have very limited and ill-defined entitlements. That needs to change.

I’ve just listened to Osborne’s Budget speech, and seen the embarrassing performance of the Shadow Chancellor, and the back-bench clowns on both sides. My interpretation is that there was stuff there to encourage both the aspirational and the least well off in our society. Here are the key points.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21851965

I’ve also just read some of Ed Milliband’s sound-bites. I’m not a card-carrying Tory, not any moe, but equally I’m not quite sure what’s so bad about putting 600,000 more jobs into the economy, or taking people out of tax, or helping employment by cutting the NI burden on small businesses.

http://www.scottishreview.net/OnlinePetition70.shtml

Way back in the 70s, just after the SNP had enjoyed its first significant success at a general election, two of its members were heard to joke that come the first Scottish government, one would be the Minister for Truth, and the other the Minister for Jails. John Herbert McCluskey QC must have been listening. He was Solicitor General then, a post he held for five years, without ever ascending to the higher office of Lord Advocate. Today, in his 80’s he’s a legal big gun of sorts. Unfortunately he seems to be loaded with grapeshot, to maximise the casualties.

If you have any interest in personal freedom, please read this, and applaud.

http://www.scottishreview.net/index.shtml?utm_source=Sign-Up.to&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=8427-290420-What+happens+when+the+Scottish+Review+refuses+to+register%3F

I suspect that Alex Salmond is too polite to tell Lord McCluskey to his face that his report on the shackling of the public press does a disservice to him and to every person on his panel. I can’t believe that he concurs with it. If these proposals were ever enacted, there would not be a single journalist in Scotland, and among their number I include online magazine proprietors and even bloggers like my not so humble self, who would be able to speak their mind without wondering when His Lordship’s heavy hand would bang on their door.

Eventually, we can expect much less draconian proposals to emerge from the Scottish Government, but I agree with Kenneth Roy. This terrible document should be repudiated at once.

Before the judge pronounces ‘for doom’, a question. What will society gain by putting Chris Huhne and his woman scorned in jail,  to be heated , fed and watered by the state for however long it is. Wouldn’t seriously exemplary fines be a better deal for the taxpayer, and as effective a punishment for them?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21722377

When this point is reached, evil has won.