Richard Whiteley, the presenter of Channel 4’s Countdown, has died aged 61, Channel 4 have announced. I have watched Countdown for many years, and no-one who watches regularly can have failed to warm to the presenter’s unique style and sense of humour.

There’s a full obituary over on the BBC website.

Requiescat in pace

The public sector workers’ union, UNISON, has rejected the very idea of ID cards, and suggests that their members may even refuse to implement it. And the LSE are about to announce that, by their calculations, the estimates of how much the scheme will cost are far too low. It’s all less than good news for the government, who seem intent on forcing through the costly (and largely useless) legislation. The current situation is put most eliquently by Krishnan in today’s Snowmail:

Tonight this is where we are: the government does not know how much ID cards will cost, nor do they know how much it will save in reduced fraud, nor do they think it will prevent terrorist attack. But they want everyone to think ID cards are a good idea. I am left wondering if ID cards are the answer what is the question?

I was going to use this opportunity to make a big post explaining why I think ID cards are a bad idea. But, other than the fact the cost has now almost tripled, my objections are largely the same as they were more than a year ago. So you may as well just read that. And while you’re reading it, perhaps you can come up with the reason I called it ‘ID cards and the constitution, when it doesn’t even mention the latter. Because I’ve no idea.

The Observer seems slightly shocked that nurses top the league table of public sector workers taking sick days off work, leaving wards understaffed. Rachel Downey, who calls herself a ‘nursing commentator’ (sounds a demanding job), says this is because they work so hard:

‘Their job is physically and emotionally demanding and becoming more so,’ she added. ‘The pressure on them has increased as demands have risen because of new targets and rising expectations from patients.’

As hard as nurses work (and they do work exceptionally hard), this isn’t the reason for the increased sickness abscence. It’s a simple answer to a simple question: Nurses are off a lot because of the extremely strict rules governing when they are allowed to come into work. Healthcare staff aren’t allowed anywhere near a hospital ward for forty-eight hours after having diarrhoea, for example. I’m sure public sector workers at the Inland Revenue don’t have to have two days off because they had a dodgy curry on their last night out, but for nurses it’s a necessity to ensure that they don’t spread illness amongst the patients.

Similarly, you might not mind a snivelling full-of-cold council worker on the end of the phone, but you’d be less than impressed if the nurse looking after you was coughing and sneezing into your open wounds.

So it’s hardly surprising that nurses end up taking more time off work than those in other public sector professions, and so these are hardly ‘shock’ figures as the Observer claims, and I’m quite disappointed that they’ve decided to question the dedication of the nursing staff of the NHS rather than putting their brains and researchers into gear first.

The Beeb’s new editorial guidelines include one paragraph which is sparking quite a bit of debate:

we [will] install a delay when broadcasting live material of sensitive stories, for example a school siege or plane hijack. This is particularly important when the outcome is unpredictable and we may record distressing material that is unsuitable for broadcast without careful editing.

Some people have been saying that this amounts to improper censorship, and fails to show the world as it really is.

Clearly, the whole point of this guideline is to provide sanitised, ‘safe’ news coverage, so that innocent people being killed in a horrific fashion will not be shown to the nation. Some commentators have been asking why this is necessary, when we see such very graphic imagery in films and dramas. This, of course, misses the point entirely; there’s a vast difference between fiction and reality.

For example, to see one’s relative quite literally blown to pieces live on television would cause untold mental suffering to lots of people, and would add very little to the public’s percerption of the event. That said, perhaps nineleven would have had a little less impact on the US as a whole had the second plane not been shown smashing into the tower – a moment which may well have been censored under the new guidelines (though, to be honest, I’m fairly sure it would have been shown).

The most unworthy argument, certainly from my point of view, is the idea that the BBC should show things absolutely live, in case the public switch over to another network. Frankly, if people are voyeuristic enough to switch networks at a time of high crisis simply to see pictures a few seconds ahead of time, then I don’t think that BBC News 24’s more analytical and level-headed approach to news will suit them anyway.

Perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly, I trust the BBC’s editors in the judgement of when to use this new device. They should (and, I think will) be careful and deploy it only when absolutely necessary, but they certainly should not pander to the whims of those saying that a few seconds’ delay is too high a price to pay to maintain the dignity of the dying.

Once again, apologies for the delay – I keep pressing ‘Save’ instead of ‘Publish’ – it’s a new affliction to me, and one that I can’t easily explain, but it means that I don’t notice the post isn’t up until I come to write the next one. I’ll get over it soon. Just bear with me.

As silly as Andy Duncan, head of Channel 4, was to try and defend Big Brother as ‘a Christian parable for our times’, you can almost see where he’s coming from. There are stories of transition, triumphs of perceived good over perceived evil, and of personal growth in between the bickering and fighting. But that was never the reaction he was going to get from a religious gathering, who are stuck in tradition and their old ways (which is not, by definition, a bad thing, but that’s a whole other argument).

But despite all that, the Times article on the subject is very good. It compares Biblical quotes with quotes from Big Brother contestants. Tabloidesque and faintly ridiculous, but also very funny.

I know a Blair apology is a rare old thing, but I’m sure that the poor people who are being asked to pay back tax credits they received due to government errors, despite the fact that they can’t afford to do this, are terribly grateful.

And, in a classic Blair non-apology, he didn’t apologise for the error itself, but for the ‘hardship or distress’ it caused. Which could easily have been avoided if his government had simply drawn a line under its own mistake, instead of effectively penalising those on the receiving end of the error.

And then he launched into a speech about why tax credits are normally wonderously marvellous things, and that the whole system is bascially perfect except for this one small error, that’s resulting in people having to live on £56 per week. He’s not even suggesting any way of helping these poor people out.

He should be ashamed of himself, and he should take some action to sort this mess out, not try and brush over it with a vacuous apology and self-congratulation. Pathetic.

As widely predicted (even by me), Nick Robinson is on the move from ITV to the Beeb, as their new political editor. He’s not the person I would’ve chosen, but the only other real candidate is Martha Kearney, and she’s not a favourite of mine either – of the two, frankly I’d prefer Robinson.

But there’s a wider issue here, as Polly Toynbee points out in tomorrow’s Grauny: Robinson is yet another macho attack-dog of a politcal reporter, in an organisation full of them. Personally, I would prefer to see someone like Elinor Goodman as political editor. But clearly the decision has been made, and, no doubt, I’ll come to like Mr Robinson over time. Even if at the moment, I think he’s a bit useless – but that’s probably more to do with ITV that it is him. Hopefully.

Apologies for the slight technical hitch which meant that this post only appeared about 24hrs after it was supposed to – I clicked the wrong button!

From the Times:

Potato farmers held a noisy protest outside Parliament today to get the term “couch potato” removed from the Oxford English dictionary, claiming it harms the vegetable’s image.

A similar rally took place outside the offices of the dictionary’s publishers in Oxford, with demonstrators carrying signs that read “couch potato out” and “ban the term couch potato”.

The British Potato Council wants the expression stripped from the Oxford English Dictionary and replaced in everyday speech with the term “couch slouch”. It says the phrase makes the vegetable seem unhealthy and is bad for its image.

That seems foolish. What seems more foolish, however, is that Nigel Evans MP has spent in the region of £1000 of taxpayers’ money tabling an EDM on the subject. Normally I wouldn’t object to that, especially given that there have been such protests – it is important that these people’s feelings are recognised. But when the OED has already told the protesters that words are not taken out of the OED, since their usage has contributed to ‘the patchwork of the English language’.

So either Mr Evans has wasted your money by expressing support for a futile campaign, or else he wants to change the nature and function of one of Britain’s most respected institutions, the OED. Which is it?

I can hardly believe I’m writing this, but Christine Hamilton has a very interesting piece in today’s Sindie, about celebrities in major trials, and how the outcome has little bearing on people’s perception of them. She cites people who’ve been found not guilty and yet are still considered ‘disgraced’ anyway (eg John Leslie), and people who’ve been found guilty and yet it hasn’t really done them any damage at all (Hugh Grant).

So the question is, will Michael Jackson be able to rebuild his career? I suspect he probably will to some extent, since he has a very dedicated fan base, but he’ll never be as big as he was before the trial. He’d been moving on a downward slope anyway, and he’ll just continue down it. But he’ll earn enough to live more than comfortably.

I’m generally very relaxed about Google and it’s projects, even when they could potentially open up web surfing to their prying eyes. But their plan to rate news stories by accuracy has me feeling uncomfortable, because it begs the inevitable question: Whose accuracy?

Taking a typical example: Hutton. Newspapers still widely report that the Government sexed up the September dossier, and yet no inquiry has yet found that to be the case. So are the news stories inaccurate? Not in my opinion, because I agree with them. But those who disagree would argue that they were indeed inaccurate.

Obviously, all news sources are editorialised, but Google seems to have tried to be as balanced as possible, by using algorithms to sort through the news, and present lots of different angles from lots of different sources. But rating these sources by accuracy will doubtlessly make it far more editorialised, and it’s important that users are made aware of this, and get to know what the editorial line is. Otherwise, this could lead to people thinking they’re getting impartial news when in fact they’re receiving anything but.

Fox, anyone?