Wisdom of the ages.

Most people think the big media story of the past week was Chris Evans taking over the Radio 2 breakfast show formerly presented by national treasure Terry Wogan; most people are wrong. The big story is the return to the airwaves of Moira Stewart.

Its big news because three years ago the BBC decided that Ms Stewart, a much respected journalist well on the way to achieving national treasure status herself, was too old to read the news and dropped her in favour of a monstrous regiment of ‘auto cuties.’

As always happens when a national treasure is trashed in the name of modernity there was a public outcry, the BBC was accused of being ageist and taking another shambling step in the direction of dumbing down. Similar accusations were fired off last year when Arlene Phillips, the acid tongued judge on Strictly Come Dancing, was dropped in favour of Aleysha Dixon.

Never one to let a band wagon pass her by Women’s Minister Harriet Harman told the BBC’s The World this Weekend programme last week that the BBC’s axing of any female news reader over the age of forty was a result of the media’ finding it possible to value the older man’ but not the older woman. Ms Harman, who also coined the cringe worthy term ‘wellderly’ for anyone in possession of a free bus pass who is sprightly enough to get out and use it, is a mostly irrelevant presence in that national debate, but just this once she has hit the age related nail squarely on its greying head.

The BBC, and all the other news channels in the UK, are groaning at the seems with middle aged men but have a policy towards women of the same vintage that seems to have been inspired by seventies sci-fi flick Logan’s Run. Never shy about jumping on bandwagons itself the BBC has stepped up to the plate and brought Moira Stewart back to read the news on Radio 2 and is hiring four ‘older’ women to read the news on television. Arlene Phillips has been given her own dance programme and all is right with the world; at least so they think.

You and just about everybody else might think different and with good reason. Tagging older women as another minority group to be placated in the name of ticking the right boxes is a compliment with a backhand like Boris Becker’s. Deciding that someone’s age, or their colour, gender or sexual preference for that matter, is the most interesting thing about them is little more than prejudice with good manners.

The fact that the BBC and other broadcasters think we the viewers are more concerned with who reads the news than the details of the stories they are covering says everything about their attitude to current affairs.

The equation is ugly in its simplicity and follows these lines; age equals gravitas and serious ideas while youth stands for unthreateningly photogenic triviality. Needless to say in a television culture where the most serious thought crime of them all is thinking itself triviality is always going to win the day.

Age, of course, brings with it a sense of perspective and it might be no bad idea to have a moratorium on hiring newsreaders under the age of forty. Older journalists might have had the wit to treat the two biggest news stories of the past month, the cold snap and the Hewitt/Hoon coup against Gordon Brown as minor distractions rather than major catastrophes

I don’t advocate a return to the days when newsreaders, on the BBC at least, all wore evening dress and stood to attention before the microphone, the twenty four hour news cycle has changed our relationship with the news, increasingly people want to be participants in the process rather than passive consumers. That the viewing public also wants to be treated like adults and to see people on screen that reflect the whole spectrum of ages and races in society shouldn’t really be news to anyone.

Source: politics.co.uk

Save our election night.

Well upholstered Tory Chairman Eric Pickles, now there surely is a name made to appear on the marquee outside the theatre on the pier of a run down seaside resort, is not a happy man. He weighed in ( really I must stop it) to criticise the growing numbers of councils believed to be considering moving the counting of the votes for the next general election from Thursday night to the following morning.

The move, claimed to be due to the rising numbers of people using postal votes and the high cost of paying council employees to work until the early hours of the morning counting the votes, mirrors current practice for all European Parliament elections and most local elections.

Employing the sort of rhetoric Seneca would have given his right arm for Mr Pickles said delaying the count until the Friday morning meant the event that defines our democracy would have ‘all the impact of a soggy sparkler on Bonfire Night.’

He isn’t alone in seeking to defend the traditional election night festivities; Jonathan Isaby of Conservativehome has launched a Facebook petition devoted to the issue.

Good luck to them and shame on the Town Hall penny pinchers who want, as usual, to spoil the fun.

Seriously, it may not rank up there with seeing the Grand Canyon or sailing down the Nile, but everyone should attend at least one election count before they die.

As an event it is somewhere between a farce and a thriller with boxes being rushed in from the polling stations and, once the counting is under way people, most of whom you don’t know and may never see again rushing around passing on results from constituencies around the country that have already declared their result. You’re up by five percent, no you’re down by three; your party is set to form the next government, no its out of the game and heading for an embarrassing leadership race before the conference season starts.

The whole thing ends with the candidates, at least in a general election anyway, stepping up onto the podium to make their victory speech or to try and get at least one sentence of their gracious concession onto the local news.

It is all pure theatre and of a decidedly amateur dramatic sort, and all the better for it. Election night, when careers are made or made to founder is one of the few moments when politicians cannot duck making contact with the most important people, the voters. I am on the side of Eric Pickles, Jonathan Isaby, the massed ranks of Facebook and anyone else fighting to save our election night.

Should the BNP appear on Question Time?

This week the BBC confirmed that it may invite BNP leader Nick Griffin onto its popular discussion programme Question Time, which may cause problems for the three main political parties all of whom refuse to share a platform with the far right party.

How does this make you feel? Angry that an oafish man representing a party that shamelessly trades on misery and ignorance has been given a platform on national television? So do I, however, I also find it hard to disagree with the BBC’s chief political adviser Ric Bailey when he points out that the BNP has ‘demonstrated evidence of electoral support at a national level’, meaning that under its own rule our national broadcaster has to treat them with due impartiality.

This is not, necessarily, the disaster it at first appears to be, by refusing to share a platform with the BNP the three mainstream parties are, unwittingly, protecting their most dangerous rival from having its policies exposed to public scrutiny.

Far from excluding the BNP from appearing on national television Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems should be taking every opportunity to pick their policies apart on national television, exposing them for what they are, racist thugs who neither understand or truly love this country.