Plans for second (fourth) Forth rail bridge

The Beeb reports that plans - dating from 1945 - for a second rail bridge over the Firth of Forth have been recently uncovered in a Glasgow office.  Their provenance remains a mystery and Network Rail is asking for help.

But it shouldn't be described as a 'fourth Forth' bridge - given it dates from a time 18 years before the second one opened.

Former Liberal MP appears on Antiques Roadshow

Former Richmond Park MP, Jenny Tonge, appeared with a couple of antique Spanish chairs on yesterday's edition.

You can catch the exchange on BBC iplayer here at 41 mins.

Friday favourite 134

The beeb have run a series of documentaries about ABBA over the festive season.  And it reminded me of just how complex their songs are.  And it is also an opportunity to feature this 1984 Blancmange cover of 'The day before you came'.

How to save the NHS maternity service £180 million...

A quick search of the BBC website reveals that the cost of paying out compensation where maternity cases go wrong is £300 million a year.

This is considerably less than the insurance premium of £482 million last year. 

You would have thought NHS managers might have worked out the obvious solution...

In praise of police commissioners

Durham's Labour Police and Crime Commissioner, Ron Hogg, has called for a rethink on drug policy, calling for Danish style shooting galleries where intravenous drug users can access clean needles and medical advice while feeding there habit.  The Beeb's report claims 'Results published in the Lancet showed that prescribing pharmaceutical heroin in this way can reduce the use of street drugs and associated levels of crime.'

Meanwhile, the previous week Christopher Salmon, Dyfed/Powys's commissioner attacked the culture of the police that saw them trying to frame former Tory Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell.  In an attack reported by the Daily Mail he said: ‘The culture around police forces is too closed, too defensive, too politicised and, in some cases, feral.'

This sort of debate on drugs policy and call to account for overblown and unaccountable elements of the constabulary was almost entirely missing from the debate on crime and policing (or was easily dismissed by the vested interests at the Home Office and their media friends) before the election of police commissioners.

Now there is an influential cadre of local people - with a democratic mandate - who are able to move on the debate from the old, sterile race to be seen to be the toughest on crime - regardless of its effectiveness.  That's a good thing which I hope will lead to more of them questioning how we are currently policed and for the Lib Dems to actually take these elections seriously because - like elected Mayors - they are almost certainly here to stay.

VAT cut day to support local pubs

Many local pubs today are reducing their prices by 7.5% to highlight just one of the unfair conditions they operate under compared to supermarkets.  They are calling for a reduced rate of VAT for the hospitality industry in order to help them comptete with the big supermarkets.  The BBC report has more.

It is clear many local pubs are operating under extremly unfavourable conditions - particularly those who are being forced to finance the over-leveraging by the big pubco's management.

I can't see the VAT cut getting Treasury support - even if their estimated cost of introducing the measure of £9bn is proved to be an exaggeration.

But if the day highlights the plight of many pubs and encourages the Business Minister Jo Swinson to move quickly to end many of the unfair pubco practices - it will have served its purpose.

Friday favourite 121

BBC Radio 6 are apparently running a competition to find songs that mention Scottish football teams - so here's my contribution.  The Proclaimers 'Joyful Kilmarnock Blues' which gives you two for the price of one...

Harriet Harman is being economical with the actualité

Harriet Harman apparently told the Andrew Marr show that the problems in their Falkirk branch were a 'one-off' and 'played down suggestions that the problems went wider than Falkirk.'

So why then have the Labour Party taken into 'special measures' (in effect suspension) at least 14 constituency parties? Many of these are also in the process of selecting parliamentary candidates.

The Labour List blog describes the process as a 'Kafkaesque farce'.

The 14 parties are:

• Bethnal Green and Bow
• Poplar and Limehouse
• Brentford & Isleworth
• Ealing Southall
• Falkirk West
• Feltham & Heston
• Oldham East and Saddleworth
• Oldham West and Royton
• Birmingham Hall Green
• Birmingham Hodge Hill
• Birmingham Ladywood
• Birmingham Perry Barr
• Warley
• Slough

It was 75 years ago today...

That a steam engine called Mallard reached 126 miles an hour on the East Coast mainline near Grantham, Lincolnshire. The Beeb and others have lots more.  But I stumbled across this film earlier - an attempt to show how fast that really looks using 1930s technology:

The ultimate unexpected item in the bagging area...

... so says the Beeb

In praise of Nigel Farage

Yesterday Nigel Farage took refuge in an Edinburgh pub having been barracked by some malingering trots from Edinburgh University.

The Beeb reports that in response to accusations from Student Association vice president, Max Crema, that UKIP was a racist party, Farage replied wonderfully: "If you believe that then you are less intelligent than you look, dear boy."

That the woosterish Farage is clearly happy to take on all comers in places that are traditionally resistant to such characters is a sign of his confidence that UKIP isn't going to go away.  And why should it? 

The attractions of both Labour and Tory parties in the UK has declined massively - from 97% of the vote in the 1950s to barely 65% in 2010.  And with the implosion of the Lib Dems, UKIP are clearly going to remain a non-racist but populist 'none of the above' choice - led by a man who is the consummate anti-politician politician.

Gryff Rees Jones - why comedians shouldn't appear on Question Time

Jones began his first answer by saying I agree with everything that the panel has said and disagree with everything too.

Unsurprisingly his answer then went downhill from there.

QT should stick to having a panel of politicians (surely a fundamental requirement of a political question and answer show?) and if it can't manage that it really shouldn't bother at all. 

It's typical of the BBC's mindset that it thinks mixing light entertainment with heavyweight political debate adds a new and vibrant dimension - when in reality all it does is distract from both and cheapens the debate on what are matters deserving of grown up discussion.

Beeching report 50 years on

On 27 March 1963, Reshaping Britain's Railways was published - otherwise known as the Beeching Report.  So by way of commemoration here are (Michael) Flanders and (Donald) Swann with 'Slow Train' which runs through some of the stations that were axed as a result of Beeching.  The BBC's economics correspondent, Stephanie Flanders, is the daughter of Michael Flanders.

Cheese headline of the day...

Norway goat cheese fire closes tunnel

Friday favourite 92

BBC radio 2 has run a competition for the nation's favourite number two single.  The results include many songs worthy of the number one slot - particularly given some of the songs that stopped them topping the chart.

Here's one of my favourites Sit down by James - number two in 1991 beaten to the top spot by Chesney Hawke's The one and only.  Here they are a few years later on the ever excellent Jules Holland.

The futility of sports personality of the year

Bradley Wiggins is no doubt a worthy winner of the BBC's sports personality of the year 2012.  He is both a successful sportsperson and has a personality to boot.  But he is the exception as this list of previous winners shows.

The fact that previous winners include Ryan Giggs, Zara Phillips, David Beckham, Michael Owen and Greg Rudeski shows that in unexception years (unlike 2012) it goes to either the most well known sportsperson (usually a footballer) or someone with a fleeting association with sporting success. 

It might be better (and cheaper) if it stopped being an annual jamboree and instead was held less frequently to allow for more real sporting achievements by real sporting personalities.

Lib Dems to finally oppose internet snooping bill?

According to the Beeb, Nick Clegg is now 'non-commital' about the Communications Data Bill and is likely to use a Parliamentary report into it as a reason to withdraw support.  The joint MP/Peers committee apparently states, 'The Home Office has failed to make the case for the new laws' among other criticisms.

If so this is good news - but why has it taken so long for Clegg to make the right decision?  Is there no-one around him with the right liberal instincts and political antennae to have seen this many months ago?

Lords defeat for secret courts shows government needs rethink

With the Lords showing common sense and rejecting the government's plans for secret courts the BBC reckons the government will not accept defeat and 'go on the offensive'.

They shouldn't and Lib Dem ministers need to advise Conservative colleagues that attacking a fundamental tenet of western liberal democracy would be a deal breaker for many Lib Dem members and activists - just like the Home Office's ill advised proposals to increase internet snooping powers.

The breath of opposition to secret courts can be judged at their campaign website - and if you haven't added your name to the petition I recommend you do so now.

BBC journalism needs radical shake up

With the news that the BBC's DG has quit - with an unneccessarily large pay-off - the focus of attention is on how the corporation continues to report the fall out of the Savile case.

But the risk is if the focus is solely on child protection the underlying weakness of some of the BBC's day-to-day journalism will escape the attention it deserves.  Attention that so far none of the 124 senior managers who are paid well over £100k each has spotted.

The BBC newsroom is the political wing of the Labour Party.  It has a metropolitan elitist bias that finds it inconceivable that the left can do no wrong.  After all the Beeb once employed Polly Toynbee as a serious journalist.  And the fact that Newsnight is produced by BBC Scotland - a place where the right is even more frowned upon - might explain the alacrity with which they published untrue (and unchecked) allegations of child abuse about a Tory peer. 

And it's not just in the political world where the BBC (and particularly BBC Scotland) falls down on the job of basic journalism.  The inbuilt BBC bias to Labour is mirrored with their inbuilt old firm bias in Scottish football.

BBC Scotland Sport continues to employ people like Jim Traynor and Billy Dodds - people who compromised themselves completely over the collapse of Rangers.  Traynor was fingered by Alex Thomson of channel 4 as one of the reporters who simply regurgitated what they were told over lunch (but hopefully not their actual lunch) with senior Rangers execs.  Dodds was employed by Rangers and benefitted from their illegal tax-evading employee benefit trust (EBT). 

And today the BBC website's match report of Hibs v Dundee Utd contained the following opening sentence: "Hibernian moved temporarily back to the top of the Scottish Premier League after their first victory over Dundee United in seven attempts ..."

The word 'temporarily' was later removed during the succeeding Celtic v St Johnstone game - but the expectation was clear that Celtic would win.  Happily they didn't and now are two points behind leaders Hibs.

You would have thought with hundreds of senior managers and editors that they might actually do their job of employing people who are actually good journalists and casting an editorial eye over their output.  One can live in hope that whatever happens to the BBC as a result of this shambles they use it as an opportunity to have a truly radical shake up of their organisation - but I won't hold my breath.

US election result update

I'm refusing to watch the taxpayer junket that is the BBC coverage of the US elections.  So I started with Sky News and soon switched to Al Jazerra UK - because it is low budget has no adverts (so far) and means it has to rely on expert opinion rather than celebrity flannel.

But I fancied seeing what Fox News might be saying - but sadly wasn't allowed to view by my Sky box as I hadn't subscribed to their 'entertainment' package!