The Glass Box for Monday.
Be your own radio critic! Tell us here, frankly, what you thought of tonight's programme. In the PM office we meet every night at 1800 in the Glass Box you see above.
We talk about the content of the programme and try to give an honest assessment of what worked and what didn't...the things we missed and the places where our ambitions were not met. THIS virtual glass box you are looking at is where you are invited - indeed encouraged - to be your own critic. Comment on our hour by clicking on the comment link. Members of the production team will read the comments, and the editor should comment too. Click on The Glass Box link on the right of the page to read previous entries.
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I was trying to locate a live webcam feed of the Hurricane Gustav - does anyone know if one exists?
Perhaps a live feed from New Orleans?
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Ahh - just found Lousiana's local TV station with a live feed :-
http://tinyurl.com/5vzqug
I think it's due to hit New Orleans when PM is on.
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We need more on snobbery and reverse snobbery.
Eddie's joke reminded me. Gustave indeed!
I remember when Linton Quesi Johnson and his mate Benjamin Zephania went to talk to C L R James telling him what they thought of Shake-a-spear.
'Shake-a-spear?', he asked in his RP voice, 'Where did you learn to say his name like that?'
It was a cameo! 'Cos it might be that dear William DID call himself that - or even Shakeshaft.
And Linton and Benjamin now talk about as Afro Caribbean as Eddie Mair.
The bit I like is when people change their accents to get on down or up.
My aunt used to answer the phone sounding like Joanna Lumley.
Then when she knew it was me reverted to her cockney sparra' English.
One time, I called without saying it was me and poshed up my voice. Hers began to fall apart, the longer the conversation went. Eventually she said 'I'll get Margaret' in a voice visibly morphing from Lumley to Barbara Windsor.
There's still a thing about voice and intelligence.
Posh voice = Intelligence, people seem to think, despite Bea Cambell's.
It affects broadcasters in reverse sometimes.
They think they're bright as buttons. Must or wouldn't be on the box. And anyway, have lots of clever friends whom they make clever jokes with that ordinary people wouldn't understand.
In OCTU my dad was the only non - graduate in his unit. He left school at 13. The others would make jokes in French to each other. (And get him to dig the slit trenches, 'cos their hands weren't up to it)
So inteviewers drop the posh vowels when they're talking to ordinary people who wouldn't get our posh way of talking. And aren't very bright, like us, you know.
It's a strange world they must live in.They have it in common with most academics that they think they're better than the rest of us.
And they think of themselves as down with the people, with whom they have lost all contact years ago.
Snobs in broadcasting. Pretending not to be better than the rest of us is snobbery.
They remind me of teachers who have forgotten that 'Intelligence' is a stupid ideological myth and that the worst pupil in their class could get a first class maths degree if only they were taught properly and the teachers stopped thinking of them as thick, without ability.
Which is why I like PM. It's only Mair really who KNOWS that there is not one among us, anywhere, of who it can truly be said that they are more intelligent or more stupid than any other.
So why do the same people have to do the manual work generation after generation?
Why is there economic inequality at all?
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Oh, sorry, I thought you were talking about Holst at the Proms.
Well, stet, anyway.
'Cos there is so much intellectual snobbism at the BBC and in music !!!,it needs talking about anyway.
So much classical/ baroque music is for people with too much time on their hands.
Interminable waiting for one second rate theme. Lie Ode to Joy. Bobby Shafto, to which it is musically related and which Ludwig heard and knew, is a richer melody than the Ode to Joy theme.
But I got caught out on Sunday I heard some Christian Forshaw (sic) in Coventry Cathedral.
'Blimey,' I thought 'two steals, one from Nights in White Satin, the other from Baker Street'
Actually, two steals, yes, but the chronology was first, Nights, then Forshaw's Evening thingy then Gerry Rafety.
So much classical/baroque is nice and that's about all. A lot of it is deeply boring and only survives by subsidy.
And only kept alive by the advocacy of a snob profession and our gullibility.
And why is it the intergenerationally idle who listen to it?
isn't it 'cos it supports their ridiculous view some, they consumately, are a cut above the rest of us?
They, the classic music vested interests are what makes music so difficult to learn formally.
Becuase nothing much appears to depend on it (its not like arithmetic or learning to write) they get away with the effects of their snobberies, their arcane and esoteric attitudes (designed to keep them in employment)
As bad, their effect is to make some observers, Sid on this blog for example, condemn some of what little good in the music there is, as bad. (Cf The Lark)
Actually, we the people, did a job on that music, 10 -15 years ago. Nessun Dorma, the Pearl Fishers Duet, 20 -30 other pieces, and then MOVE ON!!
The mystiques (How very hard it is to play! and How very subtle the music is!) are what allow and support the artificial barriers to entry that comprise the world of musical education.
Sing up, Fifi, let's hear the excellent 'A bridge too far'!!
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PML - I really don't know why you're having a go at me again. But for what it's worth, if you think I condemned anyone or their music, you obviously didn't understand what I wrote.
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pml 3, Paul Bowtang (Boateng) has become Paul Bwa-teng.
Joanna Lumley used to welcome people to a well known internet provider and tell them they had email.
Barbara Windsor lives around the corner from me.
Sorry about the short paragraphs.
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pmL 4, He was talking about Gustav Mahler's unfinished 11th Symphony, The Hurricane.
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Welcome to the PML show, for insomniacs everywhere..
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Tbird 8, Or was it Mahler's 12th....
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Absolutely wonderful to hear an intelligent person today on PM. The ex-burglar whose every word was as full of hard truths as the alphabet.
Such a wonderful change from listening to the drivel that emanates from politicians and think-tanks.
I only wish that ex-burglar could compensate his history by giving back everything he ever stole in his lifetime, and more. It is sad that the only sense we get in the world comes from the mouths of ex-burglars.
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What a pile of horse manure the blog is.
The glass box seems to be dominated by a smart arse thickly discussing Holst instead of Gustav and another idiot who spent 6 minutes asking if anyone knows of a live gustav webcam and 6 more minutes finding one.
Rubbish, total rubbish. The blog has gone the way of all blank walls near idiots with paint sprays.
Knut
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Why give any time to 2 mad theorist wanting to cure CO2 rise.
Seeding of clouds over the Ocean is the quickest way to destroy the environment completely.
They are correct though by looking at the water cycle, which is way more important than the CO2 cycle.
The whole world system relies on the evaporation and rain onto land. This flows into major rivers and alters the salinity of the Oceans, and thus fuels the Ocean currents, and modifies the Weather. Hurricane GUSTAV just moderated because of a cold area below the Mississippi. Rain in the polar and mountain areas controls the Glacial ice thickness. We rely on this rain arriving over the land and falling in the mountains. Why moan about Glacial retreat then remove their source of growth! Madness.
So dropping the water before it gets to land will defeat this cycle. Just in the same way as drinking all the rivers dry by irrigating massive areas of land is actually one of the biggest changes humanity is forcing on this poor world. Diverting major rivers to enter different Oceans/Seas leaves me cold.
As with the deep sea pumps "idea" I will do anything to stop these insane ideas. It is like 1800's doctors experimenting on a sick patient. They don't yet know even how the blood flows.
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Knut (11) Don't beat around the bush.....Tell us what you think
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Knutkase
You're not following.
Believe me, someone talking about snobbery and music on this thread by mistake, is a step up.
Usually, the posts are about little photographic insets, that appear in the picture of the Glass Box itself, of presenters, producers and correspondents in the programme and of various animals - cats in the main.
Doing various things, including playing tennis and indulging in (what used to be) Helen Mirren's favourite star dust.
That's why I decided not to remove it when I realised I'd stuck my head up a horse's rear end.****
****The usual disclaimers. No fellow blogger, alive or dead, possesses the rear end referred to.
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Apologies Knutkase, yes that was me ..
I should not have posted that - but at the time of the first post was really interested in looking for some live feeds.
Apologies...
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To my mind, you've no need to apologise, Jonnie. The website you found is really interesting, and I for one wouldn't have known where to look :o)
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Thanks for the reassurance BigSis - though I admit it was totally off topic - but on this blog I presumed common sense would prevail and the non interested people would ignore it and not get too flustered.
Either we will all have to be very well behaved - which seems to limit the fun factor we used to enjoy - or limit posts to the friendly beach from now on?
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I meant I should limit myself. Not (WE)
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Linton Kwesi Johnson.
btw.
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Benjamin Zephaniah.
Pronounced the same, though, probably...
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Tbird 13, I find that horse manure makes a very good fertiliser.
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Four pounds a bag! Take it or leave it.
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Round here, you can get stable manure for 50p a bag. I find it so much more reliable than the unstable stuff.
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Sid 23, I can never understand why people in hospitals in GB are in stable condition. That's the NHS for you.
What did you say on the Mirren thread that got deleted? I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours. Knutty doesn't need to read either.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Sid (23) - You ain't seen the size of my bags!
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Organ donation.
Check out the online NHS register, there appears to be absolutely no verification that you are who you say you are and nothing to stop you registering someone else! And there is no way of checking if you are already registered! And why is it restricted to donation of specific organs? I suspect this is just the NHS wanting to be seen to do something rather than a serious process! It is actually too easy to be taken seriously!
I want simply to declare that I leave my body to the NHS. They can freely use any part of it for transplantation, medical research, education or any other useful purpose. I do not mind if pathologists retain any part that might be useful in the future. But I do want a robust and single process for registering all this so my relatives do not have to be faced with the gory details necessary to give "informed consent".
Is this too much to ask?
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