AM GLASS BOX FOR MONDAY
Welcome to the AM Glass Box - your chance to help shape tonight's PM.
You may have read your morning paper and listened to the radio, and have some ideas you want to hear on PM tonight.
Perhaps a question about something in the news you would like answered - or better still, direct experience of something topical. Or maybe there's an aspect to a big story you haven't heard explored that you would like to hear.
Just as the PM Glass Box emulates the meeting we have AFTER the show, the AM Glass Box will be like the real meeting we have every day at 11.00, in that all ideas are welcome.
Just like the real meeting, most ideas that are suggested will not make it on air. But we would like to try this to see how it works. It's best that you make your suggestion before 10am.
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The king stood at the top of a long line and was troubled. 790 Quangos he thought?
Something must be done!
He looked down at the next man in line and said, Something must be done. The man was startled because the King had finally spoken after centuries of pondering Quangos. But now he was instructed and turned to the next man in line and said, Something must be done. The next person passed the words to the next person and the next person and on and on for millennia until the word came down to one called Alderman who was it was admitted distracted having just been handed the MG Rover brief.
He listened to the man next to him but was having the word about MG being whispered in his other ear by Lord Foy allegedly and when the one called Alderman passed the message on he said Nothing must be done and the original message passed out of mind and memory.
But when the King next was informed - there were 791 Quangos - one looking into why we had so few Quangos?
The King sighed. Contempt of his Court had been enacted.
He sighed again and decided that "something must be done" and turned to the man next to him.................
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Whats worse than MPs expenses or Quangos its
Expenses and Quangos or How to make MPs look like Saints!
I have complained to the Information Commissioners Office that the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) has refused to supply a report under the FOI into the finances of the University of Wales Lampeter by consultants Haines Watts, a similar request by BBC Dragons Eye who I understand are investigating these issues was also refused.
Under the Local Government Act 2000, the Auditor General for Wales could intervene to take over a Higher Education Institution (HEI) on the grounds financial mismanagement. However, these powers were removed under the Public Audit (Wales) Act 2004.
As the law stands, experts advise that the only way to bring these issues to light is to publicise the matter, assuming of course you can get it published.
I complained to HEFCW that the payment of expenses were contrary to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) guidelines on the Company Act 2005. They replied that DTI guidelines were a matter for them
They are also a matter for the Charity Commission who refers to these guidelines in the proper governance of exempt charity companies or charcoms such as universities with regard to the payment of expenses to office bearers.
Because of a complaint to the Charity Commission, the role of regulator for Welsh Universities under the Charity Act 2006, will (unlike its English counterpart HEFCE) now be undertaken by the Charity Commission itself later this year. They will receive a complaint about expenses in due course involving sums of up to twenty thousand pounds.
Given the recent High Court rulings over MPs expenses, I expect the report to be made public in due course as its contents are clearly in the public interest as defined by the Information Commissioners Public Interest Test.
These matters have also been brought to the attention of the Chair of the Audit Committee at the Welsh Assembly, the question is do Assembly Members think that the new rules and sanctions on MPs and AMs expenses should apply to other public servants? If they do then we will need a change in the law to impose them, that in turn will raise issues about their law making ability under then terms of devolution.
It will also be interesting to see what they do about HEFCW now that its role of regulator for such issues as expenses is now being done by the Charity Commission.
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Is Roger Federer Quentin Tarantino's love child?
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Carolyn and Team,
You have lots of material to cover in tonight's PM: Biden's veiled threat to Iran; Honduras; USA-Russia treaty; 150 deaths in China.
Perhaps unwittingley, this morning's 'Today' programme highlighted the major problem, and that's the dependence of any economic policy on the environment. David Cameron put much effort into his sophistry on cutbacks and quangos, only to be overshadowed completely by the Tony Blair interview on climate change that followed. If we don't divert from the environmental abyss to which we're heading, the economy won't exist, as many of the quangos he wants to shut down are trying to tell him.
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4. Richard_SM
Now Blair has belatedly discovered climate change, I suppose everyone will have to take it seriously... pity he wasn't aware of it when raining down high explosives and depleted uranium on Iraq.
How is it that a person who has shown himself to be a war-mongering liar, and totally unaware of the real issues in the world, still gets listened to and interviewed as if his views are worth something? Which isn't to say any other politicians have a better grasp of reality.
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Carolyn and Team
BTW - it's "Team Green Britain" day this Friday. Pop in your list of ideas for Thursday evening's programme.
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Yes, 'Team Green Britain' supported by [supporting?] the French nuclear power operator, EDF, which has had a lot of complaints made to the ASA about their use of the UK national flag as a logo in TV ads. But then Brown's brother is an executive at EDF, so it's to be expected.
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7) hear hear. I shouted the very same at the TV last night. PM Team get your newsthirsty hounds onto this and make everyone aware.
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I frequently hear comments to the effect that children are encouraged to grow-into adulthood, too quickly.
But where's the evidence..?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/5752182/Michelin-starred-baby-food-created-by-chefs.html
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EdF; I hold no liking for a state monopoly which is protected against competition at home being allowed to buy up parts of our energy sector over here. As a general rule it stinks. Their over-reliance on nuclear was thrown into sharp relief last week when so many of their nuclear plants couldn't generate in the heatwave that they were buying electricity from us.
But they DO own London Electricty, SEEboard and South-West electricity, so as they supply electricity to a substantial minority of British people their use of the Union Flag isn't entirely unprincipled. They've also bought up existing UK sites to use as places to build and run reactors to supply electricity here. So they do have a substantial business interest here.
Far worse, to my mind is the use of the Union flag on meat raised abroad but packaged in the UK, which can then be passed off as 'British Meat'.
invisibleatheist; You're presumably underwhelmed by the notion of Blair becoming the first president of Europe, if the EU constitution (by another name) is passed into British Law?
Suggestion for a news item?
As of today the Codex Sinaiticus has now been fully translated and published on the Web in 4 languages (including English), accompanied by digital pictures of the original Greek manuscript.
Given its divergences from the modern New Testament, such as the total omission of any mention of the Resurrection, (an occurence which the Archbish of Canterbury has declared is central to Christianity), is there any chance of you talking about this profoundly important document. It also includes a number of Books which were omitted from the Bible, once the early Church had sanitised it.
You could discuss the differences from the modern Bible and the meaning of those differences for Christianity today. How some books were left out entirely and why? The implications for both Christianity & Judaism if they had been left in (because of the notorious 'Blood Guilt' which legitimised persecution of the Jews throughout history was far more explicit in the Codex). Or how about the ways that this document, as well as the Modern Bible, varies from other ancient texts such as the Gnostic Gospels which should have been included, if the Bible were unexpurgated. That basically modern Christianity was built on the basis of a politically edited set of documents, which this Codex reveals.
WR.
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4.
What Biden said seems to justify Iran attacking Israel!
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WR (10): The early evolution of Christianity is very complicated...
It started off life being governed by the "inner circle" (apostles) from Jerusalem, and it's no secret they had several disagreements with Paul - which makes it really ironic that Peter and Paul are commemorated together (oh, never mind the lack of evidence for Peter moving to Rome)...
Paul was pretty much the first to tweak the foundling religion so it fitted in better with the Roman way of doing things, as opposed to the bolt-on to Judaism it started off as. Skip forward a few years, and Constantine declared the new religion the official religion of the empire... even now, it could be argued the Catholic church is the last remaining outpost of the Roman Empire...
Of course, the fact most of the population were illiterate meant the church hierarchy could get away with promoting any message they saw fit, as their congregations were unable to put up a well-reasoned argument.
Never mind the fact that the terms "Son of God", "Son of Man" and even "Abba" originally had different meanings to what we're encouraged to believe...
(The wonders of having a sister who studied theology...and often hired me to type up her essays...)
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IA (7): EDF are Britain's biggest energy supplier, and also own British Energy (the people who run our nuclear plants). Upholding the flag complaints might be tricky because although it has the same patterning as the Union Flag, it does use a different colour scheme...
Then again, it's another company's ads that really irritate me - "Since we lowered our prices, we're the cheapest UK electricity supplier." I can't help but think in the scene where someone's shaving off a rather bushy beard that he grew that while he was waiting for them to drop their prices...
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mittfh;
It's quite fascinating to see the vast array of known texts which were culled out of early Christian teaching, leaving just a remnant to form the New Testament purely because they were, in the modern idiom, 'on-message'. Most Christians have no idea this material even exists.
IMHO to really call yourself a Christian (which I don't claim for myself) you must read all of the available material, not just the stuff that a Roman Emperor thought fitted his personal message. The Apocrypha and the material found at Nag Hammadi casts the person of Jesus and his life in a quite different light to the conventional one. This is not to denigrate the Bible at all, but it's like reading a book with every 2nd chapter stealthily removed. And which was written by a ghost-writer who never met the subject in person.
Most of the NT was supposedly written by a man (St. Paul) who never heard the message of Jesus at first-hand and is written in the form of his own personal opinions to leaders of the new church, his interpretations as to what Jesus would have thought about this, that or the other. It's remarkable that a substantial minority of the Earth's population follow a bowdlerised religion based on one single man's hearsay and his speculation on the opinions and life of another man.
How about a couple of quotes from Thomas Jefferson;
About the NT; "The whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills." (Jefferson was absolutely scathing about St. Paul)
Or about the person and teachings attributed to Jesus; "the doctrines which he really delivered were defective as a whole, and fragments only of what he did deliver have come to us mutilated, misstated, & often unintelligible. They have been still more disfigured by the corruptions of schismatising followers, who have found an interest in sophisticating & perverting the simple doctrines he taught by engrafting on them the mysticisms of a Grecian sophist, frittering them into subtleties, & obscuring them with jargon, until they have caused good men to reject the whole in disgust, & to view Jesus himself as an impostor.
Notwithstanding these disadvantages, a system of morals is presented to us, which, if filled up in the true style and spirit of the rich fragments he left us, would be the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught by man."
Now there's a thought.
WR.
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Courtesy of Douglas Adams (intro to H2G2): "This planet has...a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy..."
"...one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change..."
Take the current Gospels, strip out most of the waffle and tie-ins to prophecies, and you have a wandering preacher who hung out with society's outcasts and condemned the extravagant words and rituals used by the religious authorities of the day (who often failed to heed their own advice, believing that the sheer fact they'd been born into a priestly family made them "holier than thou" so were presumably exempt from some of what they ordered their congregation to do!)
Strange to think that 2,000 years later, and Christianity is in a similar state to Judaism was back then...
Religious (and political!) leaders seem to live in a separate plane of existence to the rest of us, instructing us to do one thing whilst doing the exact opposite themselves; latching onto societal outcasts (immigrants, jobless, benefit claimants) as the root of all evil...
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If you cover Darling and the proposals for public sector pay freeze, interview Professor John Seddon.
John Seddon would say scrap the Audit Commission and other inspectorates. This would save millions and replace compliance with innovation and improvement across all public services. John is a public sector hero - with nearly 1100 public sector managers, academics, unions etc backing him to become Public Services Tzar on the No.10 Petition site.
It would be great to hear a debate betwee Professor John Seddon and Steve Bundred, Chief Exec of the Audit Commssion.
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Green energy company Ecotricity is threatening to take legal action against French energy giant EDF over its use of artwork showing a green Union Flag to promote its Green Britain Day on Friday. EDF had until 4pm this afternoon to respond to Ecotricity's complaint or risk legal action accusing it of misleading customers by appropriating marketing images commissioned and owned by Ecotricity. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=106171060780&ref=ts
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As an ex civil servant, I know statististics can be used to mean whatever you want them to. Hence the different perceptions in the 'immigrants jump the housing list' story. What is relevant is not solely that 2% of the total in social housing was born abroad. To see the effect you need to look at each local authority and see the percentage of housing stock allocated to different groups over, say, the last 5 or 10 years. You will probably find that the percentage allocated to immigrants over recent periods is much higher than 2% and this is what gives rise to strong local feelings from the white working class population which seems to feel its concerns have been ignored.Those behind the '2%' report on the World at One appeared to be disingenuous with the statistics.
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