BBC News Stock Footage

On the 1st of Feb BBC News ran the latest in the BAA Stansted Sale saga which has been running for quite a while. On the 3pm update stock footage is regularly used for stories this is what they came up with for Stansted

Looks a bit old doesn’t it. those of you familiar with the Airport will recognise that it’s the “old” terminal in the footage which was replaced in 1991! Using the aircraft in the picture I can date the footage to somewhere between April 1988 and August 1989. Has no one updated the stock film since then? There must be 1000′s of hours of footage available so who dug this rubbish up? Having said that though at least they used film of the correct airport unlike ITV London at the weekend who used footage of Gatwick while talking about Heathrow.

TV bits 30/01/12 part 2

The other thing I wanted to write about was a News Story about a death on a Railway Crossing. Yet again someone has been killed and all everyone can do is complain about the lack of safety on crossings.

There is nothing wrong with the crossing in question or any other for that matter the problem lies with the people using them. Only stupid people who don’t treat a railway crossing with the proper respect and use it correctly get hit by trains unless they happen to be committing suicide. Crossing a Railway Line is simple before you cross STOP LOOK and LISTEN just like you do when you cross the road anyone who fails to do this pretty much gets what they deserve sooner or later.

Roads are infinitely more dangerous to cross claiming thousands of lives each year but there are no calls for crossings to be banned and bridges/tunnels to be put in instead. The latest case brought up the Elsenham case again where 2 young girls died crossing the line at the station. As a result of this Network Rail are being prosecuted and will plead guilty despite the fact they have done nothing wrong.

There is one reason the Girls died and one only and that’s their negligence and stupidity when crossing the line. If there was something unsafe about the crossing then people would be killed or injured regularly. Now the court case and campaign by one of the Girls Parents could eventually lead to the removal of all Rail crossings in the Country costing an absolute fortune all because his daughter didn’t use a crossing in a safe and responsible manner.

Because of people like the Girls Dad this country is now a pathetic place where “blame culture” rules supreme it’s everyone else’s fault all the time and no one takes any responsibility for their own actions. Enough with this if you get hit by a train it’s your own fault place the blame where it belongs. Stupid people will always do stupid things no amount of health and safety legislation will ever change that and the sooner everyone realises it the better.

TV bits 30/01/12 part 1

Seen a few bits I’m going to comment on. First off there was a program called “Britain’s Gay Footballers” Exactly why does anyone want to know or care for that matter what sexual orientation footballers are? It’s their job not their sex life. Why would anyone need to “come out” are they planing to have a relationship with their team-mates or something? You play Football it’s a job like any other in how many other jobs to people announce what orientation they are? just get on with kicking a ball around for the obscene wages you earn and do what you want with your private life if the media become a problem then take them to court and sue them for discrimination. Why is sexual orientation still such a big deal? have gay people got nothing else in their lives to talk about? why does there need to be marches to be proud of it, radio stations to talk about it and so on? I don’t need to talk about being straight and I’m pretty sure no one else does either. I followed a gay TV presenter on Twitter but nearly everything she posted was about her sexuality and quite frankly it gets rather boring after a while so I unfollowed her. it’s only your sexual orientation get over it and get on with your life no matter what orientation you happen to be

BBC Inside Out (Dry December) – A None Drinkers View

On Monday Night (9th of Jan) I watched  Inside Out which had a special show where 1 Presenter from each region had to go through December without drinking Alcohol. I watched the North West version but turned off after the shrivelled prune of a woman taking part exposed her pierced midsection to the world (sic). London faired rather Better With Wendy Hurrell presenting.  I was quite frankly shocked by this program the fact that a person who isn’t a full blown alcoholic finds not drinking for that sort of time period a challenge absolutely amazes me. The program showed things like how people struggled to have an evening out while avoiding booze! How can any functional human being struggle with such a simple task? People go out for an evening to meet and socialise with friends what difference should the contents of your glass make? (if you need to drink to have fun with people they can’t be very good friends) and why do people even need a glass in the first place? I drink liquid when I’m thirsty if I’m not then I don’t have anything I don’t see the point of drinking for the sake of doing so.

One thing that disappointed me about the show was the lack of anything about the effects drink has on the brain. surely there should have been some form of test done before and after the experiment to find out if there was any improvement in brain function.

The Biggest thing it highlighted for me was just how much drinking is a part of our culture and how poor attitudes are towards it. Alcohol is still seen as a requirement for having fun which disturbs me greatly. Why can’t people enjoy themselves without it? any person who can’t go out and have fun without Alcohol really is a pathetic excuse for a human being in dire need of getting themselves a life.

Alarmingly Teetotallers were shown as some group of outcasts that  lack the “benefits” of drinking and need to find other ways to socialise. The group featured made Teetotaller’s look like a bunch of nutters did someone muddle none drinkers up with a group for recovering drug addicts? because that’s what that lot looked like. Images like this lot only do harm and encourage people to drink even more. I don’t drink and I don’t socialise any differently from those who do and the same applies to a huge number of people.

Personally I dislike the term Teetotaller greatly I’ve never felt the need to give someone a special tag just because they don’t drink. I also don’t smoke or do drugs but don’t feel the need to call myself “straight edge” either. There is no need for an entire lifestyle based on whether you drink/do drugs or not I just made a concious choice not to do any of these things when I was in my teens a decision I have never regretted for a single second. I don’t have any problem with those who drink or to a certain extent those who smoke it’s their choice to do what they want I’m just not interested in being part of it one bit.

I visit pubs and have done so on a weekly basis since I was 16 (I’m 30 now) and haven’t drunk booze in that time and it hasn’t reduced my my enjoyment of an evening compared to a drinker one bit in fact probably quite the opposite. Nights out are a lot more fun when you don’t have to spend a fortune on drink and you can still remember your evening the next day. On many nights I have been out those not drinking greatly outnumber the drinkers. This is due to the fact that people have Cars and therefore can’t drink. On almost every occasion the split between drinking/none drinking is fairly even.

The way not drinking was shown came as no surprise considering the show was put together by Journalists. People in this profession probably have more of a drinking problem than just about any other. They are a bunch of hypocrites as well as when they’ve finished explaining about the dangers of Alcohol on the news and the problems of antisocial behaviour they go out get wasted and post drunken pictures of themselves on Twitter looking like a bunch of louts. The next day they will also share facts with the world like they have a hangover and are just getting round to getting dressed at 6pm. This may go a long way to explaining why a large chunk of what is produced in TV News is total crap.

How to get reporting wrong

Back to something normal for me now with reporting accuracy. I’ve just seen a prime example of how to get it wrong (on BBC Look North Yorks 22/12/11) by Caroline Bilton.

She reported about how human movement could be used to generate energy. The report started off ok with basics delivered well enough until she used the words Train Station. There is no such place as a Train Station it’s called a Railway Station. It is called a Railway Station because it’s a Station on a Railway. We have a Rail Network, National Rail Inquiries, Network Rail and so on that is why we put Railway before Station instead of Train. Quite why almost no one can get this right these days I don’t know.

With that abuse of the English language out of the way onto the main problem with the report. A shoe was shown which had been developed to be able to charge Electrical devices such as Mobile Phones (not just the lazy term Mobile used in the report) We were then told “the shoe idea was ruined after 9/11 anyone walking around with a device in their heel would look like a terrorist”. Now what can any of you remember about 9/11 involving shoes? that would be nothing because shoes had nothing to do with it.  The event that ruined the idea was the attempted Shoe Bombing of American Airlines flight 63 on Dec 22 2001 by Richard Reid which was a separate event.

How can someone get something this simple so wrong? Has she not checked her facts for her report? Whatever went wrong having such a fundamental  error throws into question the accuracy of the other facts used in the report given her inability to get one as simple as that right making the whole report worthless and a waste of airtime which it turned out to be anyway regardless.

This is just a typical example of the standard of reporting on domestic news these days. I don’t know if it’s because the reporters are lazy, stupid, incompetent or some other reason but whatever it is it needs to stop. I watch reporters by the dozen on TV and I can count on 1 hand those I think will produce accurate reports (hence the rather small number of reporters on my presenter pages blog so far) I’ve stopped capping many reporters due to the poor standards of their work during the year and given the new recruits coming onto TV seem to be even worse I don’t see myself capping many new faces in 2012 to replace the rubbish ones.

Electrified train lines to cut TransPennine journey times

I’m going to try something different here for my blog and write about a news Story I’ve seen recently. I decided to use this as it’s easy to look into and easy for people to understand plus I have travelled on the UK rail network extensively growing up and have seen similar changes made to my local line giving me some knowledge in this area.

This story ran on BBC Look North on Monday 28th November and can be read here. It says that there are plans of the line is to be electrified to improve journey times cutting them from an hour to 45mins. To most people this makes perfect sense put when you look into it further it gets more complicated. The TransPennine line uses Class 185 trains which have a top speed of 100mph. The proposed new trains are going to be second hand from routes around London which means either Class 317, 319 or 321 all of which have a top speed of 100mph and are 20+ years old which begs the question how are the journey times going to be reduced by trains with similar performance? As it stands Journey times from Leeds to Manchester range from 52mins to an hour with most taking about 55mins. The existing trains can’t run to their full speed potential due to them being too heavy for the line (most of the route is suitable for no more than 75mph) . The electrics will presumably be lighter thus able to run at greater speed But to do this will still require major track improvement work to take place as well as the electrification.

My local line went fully electric 20+ years ago and this hasn’t brought the improvements in service it should have done. Granted trains are more frequent now but they had more carriages and were faster back in the days of Diesel power. Platforms were lengthened to accommodate 12 coach trains on the line something that the line still rarely has (partly due to the fact the work was not done at all stations). Like the Leeds to Manchester line it has 100mph trains which can’t be used to their full potential due to the quality of the line.

Why not just do the track work and use the existing trains to their full potential? There’s no need for electrification when the existing trains can do the job plus they are 15 or so years newer than the planned trains for the route give passengers decent trains don’t take them away and replace them with rustbuckets. When the improvements have been made Class 220/221 diesels with a top speed of 125mph could be brought onto the route reducing journey times still further

Children in Need – A new Idea

It’s Children in Need again so it’s yet another night of TV presenters and celebs making prats out of themselves on TV all night and apparently that’s supposed to make us donate money somehow. I have a better idea instead of being an excuse for celebs to grab TV exposure for themselves and people sitting in baths of baked Beans which should be donated to homeless people to eat not wasted on crap like this lets just raise some cold hard cash which is what the day is supposed to be about here’s how.

Every person working in his country works 1 hour for free on CIN day what the person would have been paid goes to CIN. Last year CIN raised about £18m to raise that much requires 3m on minimum wage to work an hour for free. There are about 30m in employment in the UK think how much could be raised. This requires no extra effort from anyone and could raise more than 10x as much. The TV telethon is then replaced with a series of short programs throughout the week showing the difference the money has made to peoples lives

Simple isn’t it.