Chris Evans will only stand down from hosting the BBC Radio 2 breakfast show to move to Virgin’s breakfast slot in December, but speculation is already rife about who might take over from him. Even the BBC themselves have got in on the act. So let’s join in and take a look at who might be in the frame.
Radio 2 seems most comfortable when it promotes from within. This is a pattern we have seen over and over. Chris Evans’ return to BBC radio, for example, started off with a series of one-off bank holiday shows before moving to a regular Saturday afternoon show, drivetime and ultimately breakfast. There are a number of names which regularly come up when discussing the subject who are all currently regular Radio 2 presenters.
[read more]Two statements were made in the office after a few games had been played in the 2018 World Cup: “There’s a lot of (red team) vs (white team) matches in this World Cup” and “White is the easiest colour to spot on a football pitch, so those teams do well.” I thought these two statements required some further investigation so went about putting together some statistics to analyse them. [read more]
As political observation goes I am nothing more than casual when it comes to politics in the United States of America. However I have been keeping an eye on this election and have, over the years, kept tabs on previous elections. I also know enough to understand the way in which the electoral college works to elect a president. With this in mind I have taken a look at the 13 so-called swing states — the states in which the presidency will be won or lost — in order to understand how the electoral college may look once the popular vote has been counted. [read more]
Note: this review was written before the Brussels attacks of 23rd March 2016.
There is no doubt that launching a radio station is a difficult thing to do, especially a poorly promoted talk station with no callers. That’s what Paul Ross was battling against yesterday morning on the launch day of Wireless Group’s talkRADIO. But the Paul Ross Full Set Breakfast really struggled to find its identity jumping from current affairs to gossip, staying with no topic long enough to do it justice. Backed by male-dominated, shouty idents, adverts clearly lifted from sister station talkSPORT and impeded by terrible sound quality from poorly tuned compression and the shoebox of a studio the station launched with a whimper rather than a bang.
The station’s lineup also leaves something to be desired: women. There is currently only one female presenter on the station’s weekday schedule, two on Saturday and one Sunday, although Katherine Boyle is not credited in the title of her “7 Days of talkRADIO” programme.* (Arguably this isn’t a problem unique to talkRADIO. The station’s closest competitor, LBC, also only has one female weekday presenter although they do have two on each of Saturday and Sunday.) [read more]
UK train tickets were recently redesigned and are slowly being rolled out across the network. The new design, which has actually been floating around since 2014, has just reached the self-service machines in Farnham (although as of writing not the staffed ticket counter). The Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) claim the new design is supposed to make tickets “clearer and easier to understand.” With this in mind I thought it was time I updated my previous post explaining what you see on the British train tickets. [read more]
Romania made the headlines across the world at the end of last month due to a tragic fire in a nighclub which has, so far, claimed the lives of more than 50 people. The fire itself is reported to have started when fireworks were used as part of an album launch, setting alight the club’s foam sound proofing. One of the reasons so many people were killed is because of the woefully inadequate fire precautions in the club. Following the fire Romanians did what they seem to do best — they took to the streets in protest.*
It seems that there is no doubt that safety rules were flaunted in Colectiv Club on the night of the fire and there is significant public feeling that this was allowed to happen due to high levels of corruption in both local and national government, and that’s what brought people out in massive numbers. Fundamentally they were protesting over the corruption which has embroiled pretty much every element of the state from Bucharest’s sector Mayors to the Prime Minister Victor Ponta. That said it was hard to ascertain exactly what the protesters were hoping would come of their street campaign. Of course with mass spontaneous protest of this kind there’s always a mixed message, but pinning down an outcome which would make people happy was somewhat of a challenge. [read more]
As the Labour leadership campaign rumbles on I find myself torn. There are four candidates standing — Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Kendall — but one has been the subject of the most media attention.
Jeremy Corbyn has excited the media by seemingly being the outsider who has defied the odds to become the hot favourite to win the contest. Along side this Corbyn has got the media’s interest by being a staunch socialist — arguably flying in the face of today’s standard centrist “they’re all the same” image of politicians — what some paint as the party stepping back in time.
From a personal point of view I’ve been in the uncomfortable position recently of finding myself agreeing with Tony Blair a couple of times. Putting aside that people seem to find it strange for an outspoken socialist to be in a strong position to challenge for the leadership of what is supposed to be a party built on socialist foundations, the prospect of Corbyn becoming leader of the party rings alarm bells for the prospect of being elected in the 2020 general election. [read more]
Paul Brummell‘s team published something on his blog last Wednesday which illustrates to me exactly what the British mission in Romania should be striving to do. At the end of a run of blog posts celebrating of 10 years of the embassy’s internship scheme, they posted the answers to three questions posed to alumni of the scheme ahead of the anniversary party. Some of the answers were touching and some made me feel a sense of pride in what the UK’s mission in Romania are doing. I don’t mean to belittle the good diplomatic work that I know the British embassy in Bucharest do (personally, see this), of course, but in the grand scheme of world diplomacy a mission in a stable, friendly European country cannot be the most challenging of postings. For me it raises the question of what a British embassy should be doing in a country like Romania. [read more]
The announcement made by Marks & Spencer at the end of June that they intend to shut their Aldershot Outlet store must have come as a real blow to the town’s management team. Rushmoor Borough Council have been pumping money into regenerating the town’s pedestrianised shopping area, the area in which the M&S Outlet takes centre stage. The unit itself is one of the largest in the town centre and sits in a key location half way up the high street directly opposite the town’s main shopping centre, The Galleries. As one of only a handful of clothes shops in the town centre, the closure of the shop would leave a gap in the town centre in not just a physical sense — there would be a severe lack of quality clothing outlets too. [read more]
In the last few weeks the media has been full of information about the general election, and there are plenty of resources out there to help you find out about you local candidates. (Here’s mine!) But tomorrow sees more than just Parliamentary elections, across the country people are taking to the polls to vote for their local councilors as well. In Farnham Castle ward I’ve had very little information come through the door regarding the local candidates I’m being asked to choose from, so I have gone out to find out at least something about each of the candidates. Below is a list of people standing for Waverley Borough and Farnham Town councils, with some links which might be helpful.
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