Best Of

Nick Robinson blames listeners for Radio 4’s Today program losing over a million listeners in the last 12 months.

Blame the audience. A sure fire way of winning them back.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/26/nick-robinson-bbc-radio-4-today-programme-ratings-slump/

I am a lifelong listener to R4 Today. I remember Jack de Manio well, he finished in about 1971.

I sometimes turn it off. Too matey, too dull, too magazine programme like, too much trivia, too many boring single issue people, too bland. In the current USA crisis - in some ways the biggest story since WWII - its coverage is too timid, too little, insufficently analytical and compares spectacularly badly with USA internal coverage and to some extent Times Radio and LBC.

It has this massive 3 hour space, and the entire resource of BBC contacts worldwide to be both deep and properly global.

I still listen to it, but it needs to rethink, deepen, sharpen, avoid all luvviedom and use the BBC resource properly.

It’s the “Radio 5isation” of Today that’s really pissing me off. Hearing the presenters say “we want to hear from you, our WhatsApp number is xxxxxxx” really depresses me. And Emma Barnett really would be better off having a show where she just interviews herself so it’s either an hour of insane constant interruption or she actually stops to listen to the one person she wants to hear.

They’ve also managed to cock up the 5am to 5.45 slot by stopping the news from Workd service etc and replacing it with Today in parliament which is super tedious at theat time of day especially.

TBF to R4 Today, I have enjoyed the recent spate of five year olds with names like Allegro explaining how much they are enjoying rereading Middlemarch during the Easter holidays. I bet their mothers are scary.

Children called Allegro should be reading Austen.

Nick Robinson blames listeners for Radio 4’s Today program losing over a million listeners in the last 12 months.

Blame the audience. A sure fire way of winning them back.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/26/nick-robinson-bbc-radio-4-today-programme-ratings-slump/

I am a lifelong listener to R4 Today. I remember Jack de Manio well, he finished in about 1971.

I sometimes turn it off. Too matey, too dull, too magazine programme like, too much trivia, too many boring single issue people, too bland. In the current USA crisis - in some ways the biggest story since WWII - its coverage is too timid, too little, insufficently analytical and compares spectacularly badly with USA internal coverage and to some extent Times Radio and LBC.

It has this massive 3 hour space, and the entire resource of BBC contacts worldwide to be both deep and properly global.

I still listen to it, but it needs to rethink, deepen, sharpen, avoid all luvviedom and use the BBC resource properly.

If we HAVE located life on one random planet, then statistically it must be all over the Universe. (So will say the Drake equation.)

The idea of it just being us was always Humanoid Exceptionalism taken to the nth degree.

Life on our planet includes, inter alia, us, plankton and squids. There's a good chance that life in another galaxy, far, far away, evolved or developed in an entirely different fashion.

The sheer diversity of lifeforms here on earth is staggering enough. What life developed on a different planet would be like is simply mind-blowing.

It is quite possible that if we stumbled across a life form on another planet that we wouldn't actually realise it was a lifeform. Just because life on earth is all carbon based doesn't mean there aren't other options such as silica based life forms

Interesting times we live in. A coalescence of international trade is occurring before our very eyes - one which is going to include China and not include America.

The moron fodder in the US are being told to shout and scream that MAGA will MAGA (cf Brexit means Brexit). That the inferior foreigners are being brought into line and into their place - subjects of the Great America. That tariffs will bring not only manufacturing to the US but that US made goods will be global.

That the reality is so starkly opposite presents challenges. The US would need to remove Trump and publicly disown him for global former partners to trust them - and we all know that isn't about to happen.

And so we have countries seeking to understand exactly what Murica is doing. Trump then screams SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT because the Japanese are here to kiss the ring. But no ring is kissed and they depart.

A world with an isolationist America propagandising its population whilst the world gets on with business without it. Interesting times indeed.

It troubles me that the UK and US are apparently close to a trade deal. What's the point in doing any deal when we all know the US will pocket its gains and renege on its commitments?

I'd much prefer us not to make any commitments at all at this stage.

I genuinely doubt that we're anywhere close to a deal. Our government is not about to sign a "banned in the EU, allowed in the UK" deal which is what MAGA would insist on.

On Tuesday I met with a major American retailer who operates at scale in the UK. Despite their business being very US based in their outlook and philosophy, their UK buying managers are quite open that they cannot and will not look to just directly import foods from the US because "nobody buys them". They now want UKised versions made edible, something that even their "buy global" strategy has learned to accept.

There will be no trade deal where we get weevil-infested rice and Chlorinated chicken and ADHD-inducing additives rammed down our throats. Not only would that imperil any prospects we have of securing our trade with our major partner over the channel, British consumers simply won't buy that shit.

And this is what baffles and annoys America. The Greatest Country In The World. Period. So why don't people want to eat our food and buy our trucks? Why? Because they're shit, that's why.

Too low a quality AND too high a price.

@MrJCrouch

Just 35% of Brits now see the US as an ally, while 34% view it as a threat. A dramatic shift in public opinion in response to #Trump.
Here’s what the latest @OpiniumResearch polling reveals

https://x.com/MrJCrouch/status/1912793440615649564

That is reflected in a recent experience of mine. A friend of my family, a woman in her early twenties, recently flew to Central America for an organised holiday. Although not a political type and generally not particularly interested in foreign affairs, she flatly refused to fly there via the US because she was worried that something might happen to her while passing though. This seemed a bit over the top to me, but there are some people who, without particular reason, are sufficiently scared by Trump to avoid the US.

I think that's sensible given the destination was central America. ICE are deporting people for just being in the same room as suspected criminals. You'd be worried about something similar happening on the way back, particularly if she picks up a friend (or partner) on her travels.

If the risk was a tiny chance of deportation, I would take it without much thought.

But the risk seems to be more like a tiny chance of a few weeks in a fairly unpleasant prison followed by the deportation. No thanks.

My wife is american. We are both academics. We have cancelled all our trips to the states. Conferences (which are paid for my our universities), and family holidays. We are diversifying away from Amazon, Dropbox, products. Look at Harvard and Columbia. Researchers and grad students being deported. Lack of academic freedom.... that is a no thanks from me.

@MrJCrouch

Just 35% of Brits now see the US as an ally, while 34% view it as a threat. A dramatic shift in public opinion in response to #Trump.
Here’s what the latest @OpiniumResearch polling reveals

https://x.com/MrJCrouch/status/1912793440615649564

That is reflected in a recent experience of mine. A friend of my family, a woman in her early twenties, recently flew to Central America for an organised holiday. Although not a political type and generally not particularly interested in foreign affairs, she flatly refused to fly there via the US because she was worried that something might happen to her while passing though. This seemed a bit over the top to me, but there are some people who, without particular reason, are sufficiently scared by Trump to avoid the US.

I think that's sensible given the destination was central America. ICE are deporting people for just being in the same room as suspected criminals. You'd be worried about something similar happening on the way back, particularly if she picks up a friend (or partner) on her travels.

If the risk was a tiny chance of deportation, I would take it without much thought.

But the risk seems to be more like a tiny chance of a few weeks in a fairly unpleasant prison followed by the deportation. No thanks.

My wife is american. We are both academics. We have cancelled all our trips to the states. Conferences (which are paid for my our universities), and family holidays. We are diversifying away from Amazon, Dropbox, products. Look at Harvard and Columbia. Researchers and grad students being deported. Lack of academic freedom.... that is a no thanks from me.

My cousin, who is an Emeritus Professor at Simon Fraser, refused to travel in the US in Trump's first term. Said Trump was mad and bad in equal parts so you couodn't be sure what might happen.

He's a smart cookie - well ahead of the curve on that one.