Reviewing the Papers

Today I went on one of my quarterly jaunts to the local radio station BBC Radio Humberside to review the papers for the breakfast show hosted by the experienced and long serving senior broadcast journalist Andy Comfort. The atmosphere is relaxed and it ends up a bit of a natter really and very enjoyable. 

I stayed away from the main story of the Conservative party conference - too much rhetoric, not enough substance for me so I reviewed and said a few words about the following stories:

I started at 07.21 with The Sun: The front page had a story about the arrest of a Coronation Street actor for an alleged serious offence. He has not been charged but when he was arrested, the case became 'active' in the eyes of the law and to protect a miscarriage of justice and to prevent him not having a fair trial, the media is very restricted as to what it can say at this stage. This, in my view was the paper committing contempt of court and said so in no uncertain terms. Only a matter of opinion of course, but it was there to be said.

My second story in the second slot after the news at 07.41 from the Independent: TUC urges the Government to be flexible over the pension cuts. Listed was a huge number of public sector professionals who are going to go on strike on 30 November and I made comment about the story and the fact that I could remember the winter of discontent of the early 1970s and how uncomfortable a time was that.

The third story from the Yorkshire Post revolved around the Football League Chairman's view that football was about to go bankrupt if it wasn't careful. I agree and commented that perhaps wages  and the recent court case over satellite fees for football were a serious issue for the game.

The next story was from The Times about the pending announcement about BBC cuts and stated that BBC were planning repeat programmes and cuts including selling off buildings and making staff redundant. How right they were. I discussed, among other things that I wondered (although I don't like it) whether or not the BBC should consider advertising.

The final story is always a light one from me and as reported in the Daily Telegraph, it concerns a group of motorists from Cumbria who were in a car park but because of some unknown electrical interference, could not get into their cars because their car key fobs couldn't transmit the signal to unlock their cars. My point of this story was that when I first got a car in the mid seventies, I serviced it myself, changed the plugs, altered the timings and the distributor cap points and changed the oils etc. Just a key in the lock then, not even central locking! Now of course the ability of the ordinary car owner to service their own car is no longer possible because of the car's complex computer driven systems thereby leaving us at the mercy of garages.

I then travelled to Leeds for a meeting and I am now weary at the end of a long day. Going to see my son in Liverpool this weekend. I'll report on the trip.

Have a great weekend

Chat soon

Ta-ra.