Twerps in charge at BBC...

Once again the BBC's governing body demonstrates its lamentable lack of understanding of what their charge is all about. We read that they want Radio 4 to seek out younger listeners by changing what they freely admit is a highly successful format. Barmy is what they are.

Radio 4 does not need to seek younger listeners because listeners, of any station, are maturing so they will come to it in due time. What matters with all of the BBC's output is that it keep pace with the world in which it broadcasts, reflecting our culture, technology and tastes without pandering outside of its remit.

Radio 1 is for young listeners, whether by age or inclination. Radio 2 is for the middle range and ditto. Radio 3 is for lovers of classical music (and IMHO should not be dithering about with semi-classical works except as 'items of interest'). And Radio 4 is now, always has been and evermore be a mature, considered and intellectually stimulating source of news, current affairs and general information along with quality drama; a station to which we all turn in time. And that time will come whatever age we are and in whatever age we are living. What it must never do is alienate this mature audience by pretending it is in any way Radio 1 or 2, or even 3 to a degree. It is all the BBC; they are all BBC listeners.

Soon after I read this news item I heard the absolutely perfect example of what Radio 4 is about - The Media Show. The excellent Steve Hewlett included an interview with a Talk Radio executive. It was his interpretation of 'Talk Radio' that brilliantly explained why Radio 4 is so good. It is NOT talk radio, as he clearly understands. It is speech radio. He seemed also to understand that even in the sports arena it was not where his kind of radio would go. Maybe he'd make a better trustee than those wanting change for change sake.

The trustees have NO role in determining the style, format or output of any individual station. They are about the BRAND, which is The BBC and the standards, ethics and finance of its component parts - radio stations, television stations and now new media (which is narrowcast, not broadcast, really but that's another story).

The executives in charge of the stations and their output need to be very careful of listening to any siren voices, even among their apparent allies. We have seen before serious tinkering with the format of Radio 4 had to be largely rowed back as audiences declined. Evolve by all means. Stay modern. But serve the mostly 40-70somethings you have always served since being spawned out of the Home Service and Long Wave all those years ago. That audience died long ago (well a few of us live on) but it has been steadily replaced with new ears attached to more modern brains. Keep up at the back but please don't wander off in search of some young flesh. You might be middle aged now but having a mid-life crisis will not help anyone.

In the year 2012, 2012... the eve of destruction

Never have I been frightened by a government before. I grew up in the days of Eden and Macmillan and I was too young for proper political perceptions but they seemed merely patrician. I was able to vote in 1964 and felt empowered when Wilson got in. It seemed like a brave new world.

That it was not was only partly his fault or that of the Labour Government. When the Tories came back with Heath it was again pretty patrician although the country was in a mess. Douglas Home was a joke. Maggie appalled me but was sane for the first seven years. I had met Keith Joseph man y years before and was not surprised when things got a bit hairy later.

But I still had no fear and the grey days of Major proved me right to be sanguine. I had seen Blair in action as committee opponent of privatisation and thought he would be brilliant. He was but not exactly as I had hoped. But he still didn't scare me. Gordon Brown did but only when I met him; as a politician I expected him to be dour, deliberate and boring. Pretty much, he was.

But Cameron scares me rigid, and Clegg does nothing to ameliorate the worry. I think Cameron is already barking. It took Maggie years to believe her own legend; brave Davey is busking his own heroics already. He seems blind to the reality that he has no mandate, that he is embarking on policies even his own MPs have never seen and than the revolution he is attempting requires money as well as support it does not have.

He stands to wreck the health service - for ordinary people, not the rich who do not care. He is intent on allowing Gove to destroy what is left of the education service. Again the rich are not involved. He has so weakened the military that there is a real danger that the daft Trident will be all the sabres we have to rattle - Lord help us then. He is orchestrating the destruction of local government and in the process casting adrift the poor, the needy and dispossessed (there is no Ellis island for them Dave, honest!). He is willing to risk the destruction of libraries, parks, forests and a whole host of associated cultural and lifestyle benefits.

Meanwhile he is also failing to provide anything like a decent environment for business to flourish.

This weekend he decided to alienate our immigrant brothers. Nice one Dave.

If the nation slides into true depression with unrest on the streets he will even have emasculated the police and army in advance.

What frightens me is that this wholesale, blind revolution in the nation's culture under these conditions is the kind of bonfire of vitalities that can lead to the conditions for having an emergency government of national unity. I'm not saying Dave is a wannabe dictator of course. Just that I really do wonder if we shall have another election after all. Ever...

Spam, spam and, er less spam thanks

It is more than 10 years since I had any trouble with SPAM - or Unsolicited Commercial Email. But I appear to have just invited something very similar back and it is a part of the modern social networking phenomenon.

Back then I worked for one of the companies unwittingly and virtually powerlessly propagating UCE; the American leader and owner then of PIPEX - UUNET. They operated the vast majority of the internet structure and it was inevitable that the spammers used their servers and client ISPs as vectors for their pernicious trade. And hopped from site to site, server to server to beat the SPAM hunters.
There are those out there who will recall the struggle a certain PR man had in deflecting their criticisms that 'you aren't doing enough'. It was easy to say we were but pretty hard to convince when the next raft of spam hit the inboxes with UUNET addresses littered through it!

Today my box is so free that Kaspersky has taken to suspecting entirely reasonable mailers simply on the basis of their success. But I have just changed all that for the worse and I am wondering whether I like it.

When YouTube and Facebook arrived I toddled off and registered and dabbled like I always have. Blogging arrived and again I dipped in a toe but got lazy and my retired lifestyle oddly means I only go on line an hour or so a day. I am back at blogging as it gets things off my chest without worrying that anyone is forced to read it - letters to editors are at least read by the editor and a sub, poor things.

Twitter seemed no more than a goldfish bowl in which the famous, the wannabes and the voyeurs could splash about harmlessly. A sort of Hello magazine without the tedium of having to talk your way into the columns.

But then I started to notice how now everyone doesn't just 'do' something on line. They are immediately exhorted to do it again and again. Tweet to your friends, put it on Facebook, make a video and stream it on YouTube, blog it and so on. In effect it seemed to me that someone had found a way for us victims to start generating our own SPAM! But it is worse even than that.

For I found some bloggers I enjoy reading and so I 'follow' them. And now my inbox is full of the blatherings of other bloggers I don't follow, usually singing the praise but sometime crudely hostile to the blogger I do want to read. I can filter it but it still sails the fibre sea.

What have we done? When I was an internet professional I received up to 400 targeted emails every day. It was often a nightmare; after all, some were really important to me. But if I were in that job today I'd be tweeting and bleating everything to make sure my audience got the message. And they would bleat and tweet back! The pipes would be pumped up with the crud like they were in the bad old days of real UCE. But we can't complain this time - Spam it might often be but unsolicited? Oh no, we've signed up for it!