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Do you care about the ethnic origins of the presenters you listen to on the World Service? The liberal answer to this would be of course no, on the perfectly valid grounds of non-discrimination. And anyway, you might say, this is radio - the ultimate equaliser where a direct relationship is built up between broadcaster and audience that relies solely on the gift of verbal communication. Ethnicity is irrelevant.

But that is not quite how listener Musaazi Namiti, who lives in Doha, in Qatar, sees it. He contacted Over To You to wonder why the presenters on the flagship news and current affairs programme Newshour were all native English speakers from the west. He stressed he did not want to make an issue of race here but his point was :shouldn't the team of presenters reflect the diversity of the World Service audience, the majority of whom are not native English speakers?

Well on this week's Over To You you can hear the editor of Newshour give a not unsympathetic response to this point - while of course stating that Newshour is a particularly demanding programme to present which requires the finest broadcasters. It is certainly true that other programmes do have non-native English speaking presenters doing a very good job so presumably it's just a question of time before Newshour follows suit. But how much time?

What do you think? Does accent matter? Do you prefer native English speakers presenting on what is after all the British Broadcasting Service? Or are you of the view that the current situation is out of date, conservative and unacceptable? Let us know.

Lyse Doucet is a presenter on Newshour. Are there too many native English speakers on the network?

Also in this week's programme - and staying with the non-native English speaker theme - we talk to the winner of the World Service playwriting competition for first-time writers for whom English is a second language.

And when it comes to bad language - expressed in the most rustic English - have a listen to our item about the documentary Africa's Forgotten Soldiers (indeed listen to the documentary itself if you can).

Commenting on food served up by the British army to African recruits during the second World War, one former soldier gives his honest view. You don't need to have English even as a third language to guess what he might be saying - the only thing is he's not allowed to say it. Find out why on Over To You this week - and keep those blog comments, emails and calls coming. We can't do this programme without you!

Over To You is your chance to have your say about the BBC World Service and its programmes. It airs at 10:40 and 23:40 every Saturday, and at 02:40 on Sunday (GMT).

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This week on Over To You you can hear about a new radio drama serial that has recently been launched in Afghanistan.

Called Old City, New Dreams, it's aimed at the many people who are moving into the cities and are finding the problems of modern life - unemployment, lack of housing, crime and so on - hard to cope with. There are some five million people who have returned to Afghanistan since 2001 from exile in neighbouring countries like Pakistan, as well as many people who are leaving their rural villages in search of a better life in the city.

Better life: the new drama follows Afghans returning to life and work in the city

Shafiq Hakimi - who is the director of the World Service Trust's Afghan Education Projects and the man behind the new drama - talks to Penny Vine, who's presenting the programme this week, and it's fascinating to hear how his team go about their research, finding out through interviews and focus groups what the real problems are, and then turning them into storylines that will capture the attention of the audience.

Shafiq talked to us from Kabul, but Penny was joined in the studio here in London by Felicity Finch, who knows Shafiq well because she's been over to Kabul twice to work alongside the cast of Old City, New Dreams, and the longer-established rural drama New Home, New Life. Some of you may recognise Felicity, either by name or by voice - she's certainly well-known to radio listeners in the UK, where she plays the role of Ruth Archer, in The Archers, a drama serial that has been broadcast in this country for nearly 60 years, which makes it the longest-running soap opera in the world.

Felicity's role was to work with the actors and give them the benefit of the experience she has gathered from years of working in radio. Many have had little formal training - and they all have some other occupation as well, finding the time to record Old City, New Dreams on Fridays and Saturdays. I should imagine it would be fascinating, as a relatively inexperienced actor, to be able to work with someone like Felicity, who has so much expertise.

You can also hear an interview Penny recorded with Steven Duke, who's the editor of One Planet. Regular listeners to that programme will know that at the end of each edition, presenter Mike Williams calculates the carbon emissions caused in the course of making the programme.  So here in the Over To You office we were intrigued to hear that the programme had set off on a round-the-world tour... which is why we invited Steven into our studio to explain himself.

You can hear what he had to say on this week's Over To You.

Cathy Packe is the Producer, Over To You

Over To You is your chance to have your say about the BBC World Service and its programmes. It airs at 10:40 and 23:40 every Saturday, and at 02:40 on Sunday (GMT).

• Listen to previous episodes of Over To You
• Subscribe to the podcast
  
• Send the team your feedback by email (overtoyou@bbc.co.uk), telephone (44 144 960 9000), SMS (447786 202006) or by leaving comments on this blog.

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A listener on a recent edition of Over to You claimed that the BBC World Service had "lost its soul".

This remark seems to have struck a chord as it's been picked up and debated by many of those who've contacted us since.

This week, Jonathan Snowden, listening in the UK offers his analysis of why that might be so.

New studio equipment saves costs, but is it at the expense of truly live radio? One listener thinks so.

He suggests the villain of the piece is the automated system which plays out the programmes! Having this technology, although obviously a cost-effective resource "requires an announcer to record live at only one point in the day so that the same announcement can be replayed as if new throughout the rest of the day" which, says Jonathan, "kills much of the live spontaneity that characterised the World Service for so many decades".

Even in live programmes, "presenters are having to battle to work around the precise timings of the machines that have effectively replaced the live announcer.

Pauses here, the cutting off of people in mid-interview there, all to bring us a recorded programme trail that we have already heard many times over".

He ends by saying that he believes the World Service's heart is still beating, but sometimes he wishes that beat were a little more irregular! What's your diagnosis? Do you agree with Jonathan about this?

Elsewhere on the programme this week we find out whether the BBC is reviewing its presence in Kabul following the announcement by the UN that it is temporarily removing around 600 of its workers because of concerns for their safety.

Rajan also speaks to the Head of the Somali service about the communication he's had with both hostages and pirates involved in the abduction of a British couple from their yacht in the Indian Ocean.

Looking ahead, we're planning a programme where we'll get a group of BBC foreign correspondents in discussion about their lives and the stories that have made most impression on them.

Have you got any questions for them? For example, are you interested to know how they became correspondents in the first place? What aspects of their life are the most interesting or difficult?

If you have something to ask, please get in touch!

Penny Vine is producing Over To You this week.

Over To You is your chance to have your say about the BBC World Service and its programmes. It airs at 10:40 and 23:40 every Saturday, and at 02:40 on Sunday (GMT).

• Listen to previous episodes of Over To You
• Subscribe to the podcast
  
• Send the team your feedback by email (overtoyou@bbc.co.uk), telephone (44 144 960 9000), SMS (447786 202006) or by leaving comments on this blog.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• NowPublic |
• Reddit
• - What's this?