The Glass Box.
Above is a Glass Box with a hen inside, sitting next to Brian Cant, in 1974.
It's got almost nothing to do with the Glass Box the PM team meets in at 18.00 every weeknight to discuss the content of the programme.
We try to be honest with each other, but not hurtful, as we talk about what worked and what didn't...what met our expectations and what fell short.
This virtual glass box is where you're encouraged to take part in the same spirit. The editor of the day reads your comments and may well add her/his own. Please do not allow hens into this virtual glass box.
Listen to PM
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~59~RS~)
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Upshares, downshares. What fun!
Mittfh, this blog's own Robert Peston, says we should stop commenting on the FTSE until it reaches a new equilibrium. Does he incluude 'trend' in that?
Personally I think FTSE daily movements no joke at all.
I warned that real attempts to re-bubble the index would be made. That daily criticism of market sentiment was required. Now we have another Nils, one a little less tickled by Egdie's sense of humour, telling us the future may already have overtaken us.
See the first paragraph of http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/01/viewpoint-stockmarket-economic-recovery
Why should spending power in the economy be determined by these inequitable market processes?
Had there been more daily vigilance and fewer silly puns from PM we might be in a position to spend the 175 billion pounds created by the FTSE bubble (from 3,800 to 4,500) on things more socially valuable than the yatchts, caviar and gas guzzlers that the profit takers spend their money on.
Again, private ownership implies public injustice. For this new spending power crowds out worthy government expenditure on schools. colleges, hospitals, housing, etc.
Public ownership of Britain's industries and capital is what is needed.
Edgie Mair's silly jokes are what ie NOT required. Instead we need(ed) hard analysis, analysing whose hands our wealth SHOULD be in.
Is Nils right?
Should our capital BE in private hands? Will Edgie tell us, please, and PM examine the issue?
In the Equal Society there would be no huge winners or losers in these irrational market movements.
Those who connect the future of the real economy with the FTSE have sold long ago. Now we have markets PURELY designed for private money creation, by asset holders who simply bid up the price of their OWN assets to......whatever level the rest of us let them get away with.
That rip off, that scam, needs daily monitoring, not silly giggles from Edgie Mare and Bythe.
Apparently it takes 400 dead for Edgie to assume a 'serious broadcaster' voice.
I have four (non-rhetorical) questions for PM.
1. Why do we not back a ONE state solution in Palestine, with Jewish people presently in 'Israel', accepting themselves as one of the ethnic groups in a Greater Palestine?
2. Why has rich oil Arabia not helped the Palestinian and Jordanian poor? For too long they have been wage slaves at the rich tables of Kuwait, etc.
3. Pinter is praised, qua Jew, for criticising Israel. Should Jews in the public eye who support the slaughter in Gaza, correspondingly be brought to (a different) account?
4. Were Saddam still in power, would belief that he had weapons of mass destruction have deterred Israel?
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Shouldn't that be Brian Can't?
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pmL 1, 1-Because. Possibly goes for 2-4 as well.....if I read them.
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Way to go Ken L. Keep yourself on the news. You are disproportionate.
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Eddie, Why didn't you interview some of the other people who wrote that letter along with Ken L? Not as good a catch?
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pmL - Happy New Year to you too
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Gill 6, Did pmL say something?
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'It starts with Hamas' You what? Have you studied the history of this region or do you take your 'facts' from the Israeli Ministry of Misinformation Eddie?
You just dropped hugely in my estimation, shame on you to take the Nazi's view. In fact I think a complaint to the BBC is in order, I don't expect this kind of partiality from the BBC.
For your information, again as you seem incapable of taking it in, Hamas held a ceasefire for 6 months while Israel slowly squeezed the life out of Gaza [were you awake for the last six months?]. They cut off electricity which included hospitals, they cut off water, guaranteed to cause health problems, they prevented people leaving and prevented humanitarian supplies getting in. Settlers continuously, on a daily basis, insult and assault Palestinian people, often old farmers working in their fields, which of course the Zionists want to grab like they have grabbed so much already. I have seen it all on video, there are plenty on youtube, you could spend some time profitably finding out the kind of people these are.
And you say on air 'it starts with Hamas'?
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Vince Cable - the only politician with any grasp of reality about the credit crunch/recession/depression (delete as you prefer).
Can we have him on instead of Robert Peston, please, and when Nils is on holiday?
I suppose he's not allowed to, though, while an MP.
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Rather than comparing Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto like Livingstone, I would liken it to a large concentration camp. But the guards have just decided to do some killing because the inmates don't know when to stop showing defiance, so have to be taught a lesson. Hamas was created out of the Israeli state's brutalisation of Palestinians over seventy years. More recruits are created with every jet that drops its load.
Israel's is the fourth largest army in the world, for a country that size - about 8000 sq miles, doesn't that constitute a militaristic state?
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I'd feel a lot happier if Vince Cable was PM.
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I buy my milk and eggs from a shop that has never had a shopkeeper in. Just a big steel box for the money.
It has been going for a year or so and all seems to be OK. There is a notice about CCTV operating, but I have never seen the camera.
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Cable for PM! Great idea, someone who understands the economy to be our leader.
But... oh, dear, now everyone will say the Lib Dems can't be elected. So he'd have to be a benevolent dictator. And I bet he would't accept any dictatorship.
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Taliban using historian's website for 'propaganda' story.
Of course, the National Army Museum's exhibition isn't propaganda is it?
Is the BBC formally required to consciously help fight our wars, or is it just the inevitable result when a State broadcasting organisation reports any story related to them.
Just how do these stories make it on air I wonder...
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petepassword @10
The BBC has a nightmare reporting the latest Israeli outrages and the worse they get, the more difficult and ridiculous their reports sound.
For anyone, but the most partisan and myopic, Israel's behaviour is obscene, but still BBC journalists are forced to pick a path of intense and exaggerated impartiality which makes a mockery of the notion.
If these outrages were being perpetrated in a central African state (for example), reporting would be entirely different.
The sad thing is, most BBC journalists are fully aware of this abysmal situation.
Get used to it, as long as the Americans stand behind Israel on this, and we all continue bearing the misguided collective guilt of fifty years ago, nothing will change.
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Joseph Walker @ 15
Succinctly put and agree totally, but it still doesn't excuse Eddie saying 'It starts with Hamas' in his interview. That's either politically naive or utterly partisan, craven even.
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Bless the lovely Brian.
He has stayed with us over panto time for many years - alas not the last two. A lovely man!
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@1: "Mittfh, this blog's own Robert Peston"
Since when? Robert Peston pops up frequently on BBC News outlets to illustrate the latest developments in the credit crunch. I don't think I comment frequently on such issues...but I have a vague recollection of another contributor who does...
"we should stop commenting on the FTSE until it reaches a new equilibrium"
What I do remember saying is that daily movements in themselves are rarely worth commenting on, as they tend to wobble around a lot. The overall trend over weeks and months may be worth commenting on (e.g. the long-term decline, the recent 'bounce' from a FTSE value under 4,000 to over). But personally I usually pay little attention to the business news. Besides which, the FTSE-100 index is only one indication of the state of the economy.
"Had there been more daily vigilance and fewer silly puns from PM"
I doubt anything said on PM (and PM alone) could make a significant difference to the state of the economy...
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JW 15, When all else fails, blame the Americans.
I see you managed not to mention Hamas.
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FO 13, I just renewed my membership.
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That wonderful picture of the visually challenged balck and white TV owner came to mind last night. Thinking back on that Gas company spokesman from Russia.
It was the strange tuning out sound the TV might make if you waved it in the wrong direction.
I thought back to last nights PM and had wished I heard that sound - the thunderbolt of retribution coming to claim the man who let the words "We never use our Gas product for political purposes" drop from his lips. I would have yelled "duck" to your hapless reporter of course, Eddie. lol
I don't know what sort of avenging deity would throw said thunderbolt for such a blatant porkie pie from one from present day Russia but maybe one who regularly divests himself of his shirt - allegedly - perhaps?
And this morning I was given the fuller background to the dispute between Russia and Ukraine and it sounded a little like the inter gang wars they use to have in Prohibition era Chicago.
What a way to run two countries I thought. Black and white is sometimes all that is needed to explain things.
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18.
We should be taking DAILY order with the price setters who determine the FTSE levels.
They seem to be permanently trying to raise the prices of their shares irrationally. In effect they WANT speculative bubbles.
That process of unreasonable price inflation happens day by day. It is 'day by day' that we need to criticise it.
By the time it's a trend a lot of the damage has already been done.
Silly jokes on PM suggest to us we should not to take seriously the DAILY scams and inflations that price setters create.
The distribution of wealth and the sort of spending these bubbles facilitate CROWD OUT equitable social spending.
Not taking things seriously seems Edgie Mare's main contribution to the economic inequalities, growing unemployment, in fact, economic illfare, that too many of us, here and in the rest of the world, face.
Happy New Year to you.
aka-pmL
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LEANING TOWARDS CANT
How apposite to feature Brian Cant, now that the 'Play Away' ethos has infected the majority of BBC output. News, current affairs, and even science is now just jolly fun, with Quentin Cooper of Radio 4's 'Material World', frequently interrupting contributors of gravity with a Cantian pun, so sad as to make toes curl. Abandon hope.
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Think Red Ken and Red Benn went for a bagel with lox after the Israeli protest? Hey, it keeps them off the streets.
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This is so spooky. I'd never heard of Brian Cant (remember I'm a foreigner) until Xmas Eve. Then I was doing some carol concerts conducted by Jonathan Cohen (whom I'd also never heard of, for the same reason, but obviously wouldn't let him know that...). Various people in the orchestra were saying they remembered Jonathan on Play Away, with Brian Cant. Now I see his picture!
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Annassee - I didn't know who he was either. The photo looks like that bloke from 'Robin's Nest' to me!
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A Rooster and Brian Cant?
As I do, Eddie - I just deconstructed the above photograph. And something just seen on a BBC TV channel.
"Putting the pieces back together again" You Know What I Mean?
One of the rounds in the American version of the TV programme "Whose Line is It Anyway?" running on a loop on the "Dave" Channel
And one camera shot. "Round objects" - protected - nearer home?
Brain cannot perhaps and "chicken" by the little read rooster. Too late to Crow today, Eddie?
Has anyone noticed that new Winslet film title, The Reader anagrams to "There, dear"?
I just imagine the patronising tone and pat on the head! lol
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Never mind Winslet - I caught 'A Man for All Seasons' today on 5. Wow! I'd forgotten how good it was. They don't make actors like Scofield any more.
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Sorry for this but it real got to me.
There has been talk on PM about Pirates etc. but there is another side of ocean life. One where authorities can dangle your life and liberty on their threads whenever they choose.
Our lives were endangered by our Navy on two serious occasions and I have been threatened by the gun touting chief of a police force on a ex-British island. But there is no means to fight back. When you go to sea you are defenceless against corrupt authorities. We have personally watched situations in Mexico, Egypt, Barbados, Australia, France were authorities abused their positions. The worst was where a boat was "stolen" by the army from some Americans because the old owner (drug lord) wanted it back.
Google: "Hebei Spirit Collision": Watch you tube video.
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I can hear it now - the fellow in the photo singing to the bird:
"I'm not a pheasant plucker, I'm a pheasant plucker's son
I'm only plucking pheasants 'till the pheasant plucker comes..."
(The Pheasant Plucking Song:
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mentor01/song.htm)
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