It's kind of a fixture in my life, has been, on-and-off since Sixth Form. A habitual way to wake up. Over the years I have had periods of aversion and I don't tend to listen on my days-off. But it's the Today Programme, coming up to its fiftieth birthday in the autumn.
On the whole, it does quite a lot right, but there is very little blog material in listing the stuff it does right. A year or two back, I was in conversation with Doctor Little Brother who bemoaned the ignorance about Science in the mainstream media, singling out 'Today' for criticism. I don't think he felt that Today was a uniquely bad offender, rather that a aims to be programme that aims to be at the forefront of journalistic standards ought to be better. His contention was that if people in general knew as much about science as they do about Politics they would join him in despairing at the low level of scientific knowledge.
Not necessarily disagreeing with him I observed that the actual level of knowledge about actual politics amongst so-called political journalists is nothing to be proud of. again, singling out 'Today' seems unfair because they are probably less sinning than most.
This came back to me yesterday in a feature on/interview with an officer from Mole Valley council about plans for a hostel to house families of service personnel in rehab. I would hazard a guess that up and down the land, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people with experience of the Planning Process. I accept that each council operates the process slightly differently, and that the issues in each case are different. However, I got the distinct impression from yesterday's programme that the Today posse felt that Planning Committees are a completely alien process. The thrust of the interview was that surely this could have been settled weeks ago without a row breaking out. The officer sounded surprised by the suggestion.
Obviously, I can't speak for Mole Valley but councils in general try to make the Planning Process fairly transparent. It seems a lot of people don't know that it is technically a 'quasi-judicial' process meaning that it isn't purely about the numbers on either side of the debate. The local residents were consulted, and expressed their views. Often residents express views that are irrelevant to Planning Law. Often politicians are swayed by the possible electoral implications of granting permission to a perfectly legitimate application against a groundswell of local opposition (some of it rational, some of it emotional, some of it whipped up for dubious reasons).
I don't think that it's the role of National Radio habitually to cover local issues, but it does make me despair when this level of ignorance of basic process is paraded as quality news coverage. Also the basic principle of jurisprudence of allowing everyone a fair hearing is not one that should be skated over blithely. My brother posited the theory that few journalists have even a basic degree in science; I would say that very few seem to have a basic background in the processes that may be local, even parochial, but are the bread-and-butter of how 'politics' affects the every day lives of everyday people.
More importantly, I realised with some horror that there is a problem of possible national impact. I wake up to Today on the radio alarm, and generally turn it off before going downstairs and opening it from the website. Yesterday I did not do that, and realised that the two feeds were not in sync. this was slightly annoying when there was a pause for breath downstairs and I could hear words from upstairs. Slightly more irritating when there were two different voices, and slightly more irritating again when the voices were of different genders. The crunch came at 8.00 am (approximately) when there were two distinct broadcast of the Greenwich Time Signal. Upstairs had finished before downstairs began. I concluded that the web stream must be delayed by a few seconds. I then pondered whether the FM stream is also delayed (for the elimination of swearing), and I recalled when upstairs and downstairs terrestrial FM streams seemed out of sync for a few minutes a year or so ago.
Years ago my friend was auditing the National Physics Laboratory with the atomic clock. I asked her for a precise reading in order to put my watch right. She suggested that, for my purposes, the Greenwich Time Signal was sufficiently accurate. I had to concede she was probably right. But now, I'm wondering - what is the Greenwich Time signal? And is this perhaps the beginning of the end of the world?
