The PM Glass Box.
In a real glass box every evening at 18.00, the PM production team meets to discuss the programme that's just finished. You're encouraged to do so here in this virtual glass box. Tonight's editor Amanda Lewis will read the comments and may well add her own.
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Are you busy re-writing your script to include the Karzai story?
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On 19/10/2009 11:52, "PM" wrote:
> and debate whether fathers should be present when their children are born. Got
> a view on that?
I'm expecting my first baby on 19 November. I'm expecting to be present, and looking forward to it... I think! My partner seems to want me there. I'd be interested in hearing from fathers who've been there already.
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If I'd had the option of 'not being there' for birth, I might have embraced the idea of parenthood instead of avoiding it all my life.
Given the physical agony I understand mothers go through during childbirth, I think it's only fair that the other perpetrator should attend in order to see the consequences and share in something of the extra cost to the mother.
It's never seemed quite fair to me.
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#2. bigbuzzard
I am one of the first generation of fathers who were allowed into the delivery room.
For our first child:
The older midwives kept advising "best go home for now, nothing will happen for ages" or "go home and rest, then give us a call in a couple of hours and we will tell you how things are progressing".
The young woman Doctor however kept saying "great" fathers should attend. The young pupil midwives made no comment.
It was comfitting for my wife and when the baby was born it was so emotional and magic.
when our second was born a couple of years later. Well it was expected that fathers should attend and I was more welcome. The older midwives had either moved on or accepted the fact.
Now however, it seems that you have to have a film crew captureing the moment.
Be there, it will stay with you for the rest of your life.
You never know when those memories come back. In my case both me and my now ex-wife sat at the bedside of our daughter while she was in a coma. The same hospital that 28 years earlier she was born.
She pulled through and for the past 4 years has been back to her annoying self.
Once again be there for your partner, be there for yourself and best of all be there for the child.
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#3. Fifi
I must admit it did look painful.
I am choked as I write this as the emotions have come back.
A cup of tea is required I think.
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Fifi, childbirth for me was not 'physical agony' at all. It is unfortunate that women hear all the bad stories and rarely the good. I always make a point of telling first-time pregnant women my experience was straightforward and that I had an 'easy' three hour labour, which I was well able to cope with and didn't need any 'pain-relief' assistance. Plus I got an absolutely wonderful blond, blue-eyed, baby boy at the end of it!
That fathers/partners should be there and support their partner in the early stages is a good thing but I don't necessarily agree with fathers/partners actually witnessing the birth. Childbirth is a fairly mucky business and there is a school of thought which says it can have a detrimental effect on subsequent sexual desire [how can I put this delicately?] due to the memories that are subsequently associated with the birth canal/vagina as witnessed during delivery.
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#6. Lady_Sue
I'm sorry but I do not remember the "mucky business".
As far as being put off - No way, we did go on to have another.
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Looternite, I was pleased to read your comments and hear that, for you, it had been 'magical'. It goes without saying it is a wonderful experience, very moving, emotional, verging on miraculous, all those things - but there are cases where subsequent sexual intimacy has been severely effected. It would not be appropriate to quiz you too closely on this but I will be interested to hear what questions PM asks and of whom, later.
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In Bristol in '64 husbands could be at home births, with their cameras, catching midwives smiles.
By '68 husbands were allowed in at Southfields Hospital, there, but not fathers. Doctors walked out and left couples to it if bloke wasn't hubby.
My first was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. He was blue.
Whne he said his first words was as remarkable, it was the birth of his mind into the world, an equally perfect perfection.
I knew he was there, both times, but the real manifestation was still a personal exquisite surprise.
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Fantastic the Shakespeare quote on the radio just now.
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#8. Lady_Sue
I think that being at the birth, for the fathers increases the father/child bond. This improved bonding can only be a good thing and I think that the child will grow up to be the better for it.
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Looternite: While I appreciate that father/child bonding is extremely important and it is certainly an honour (for want of a better or more apt word) to be at a birth (something the adults never forget) - surely paternal bonding develops over time as a baby/toddler/child develops, irrespective of whether or not a father was present at the birth?
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I sent a very appropriate Glass Box about the Post Office strike, but it didn't get used. I give up.
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Looter, I got quite misty-eyed reading your posts.
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I wonder about the Royal Mail senior management.
They seem to either: inept and inadequate for the job and doing everything wrong out of testosterone fueled arrogance; or too close to the competition and deliberately using the union idiotic obduracy to manipulate them into actions which are then capitalised on. An in-depth piece on the main players, with their CVs and any connections to the big courier companies would perhaps clinch it.
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#14. Frances O
Thanks: I was a bit more than misty eyed writing it, but they were happy memories and I would not have missed the birth and subsequent child rearing for anything. The teenage years were a trial for us however.
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Crumhorns! What a delight!
I wonder if we'll ever hear a harp version?
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Ln 16, I've been present at the birth of many kittens. One cat used to come and get me when she was ready to give birth.
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Schools should stick to teaching children things that they need to learn. This would include: maths, English, sciences, and foreign languages. Children should of course learn a bit about various religions, atheism, agnosticism etc; but more school holidays to celebrate religious festivals is not the right way forward.
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What a splendidly sensible interviewee on the subject of religious holidays: balanced, intelligent and thoughtful - unlike the silliness of some education authorities.
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Low number matching DNA proves that Saddam had the WMDs, and what's more it can determine that his finger was hovering over the button.
Low number matching DNA proves that Ben Bradshaw loves the BBC really?
The EU Court of Human Rights ruling the retention of DNA from those not charged, or guilty of any crime by the authorities of England, Wales and Northern Ireland was unlawful was discussed in Parliament last week.
Was it Lord Cracknell who said as a simple policeman he could point at crimes where DNA had convicted people?
This bad science low number DNA, and prosecutors embellishing risks undermining the validity and reputation of DNA.
When DNA can be misused perhaps those that aren't aspiring ne'erdowells have every right to worry about why this Country is intent on retaining DNA of those not guilty of any crime?
We're fighting in Afghanistan so we can have a DNA database of those that have committed no offence?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/8305209.stm
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Well, Well, the idea that all school children should celebrate muslim sikh and hindu holy days. Then the BBC, Guardian, Times and Independant wonder why the BNP and now the English Defence League are able to get so much support!
Wake up smell the coffee and get real. We are sitting on a time bomb. Be careful, very careful.
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Eddie would you interview a fox after he had broken into a chicken house and had eaten the chickens to explain why the security should not be repaired....because in essence that all Kenneth Clarke is/was and still is a man who would not know what it is like doing a low paid crap job like working for Royal Mail...here or anywhere in the Universe...Here is a man who while working for BAT was paid 2000 pounds a week part-time while getting his pile from being a MP and other places. I should know because I worked for RM for 5 years part-time (week-end nights - 2110 2006) and it was not a very nice experience...and most weeks I worked 4 hours overtime to pick up a grand total of 300 pounds...Adam Crozier last year according to Private Eye (1247) picked up a million pounds with two bonuses and they made a profit of 321 million....interview the chickens next time Eddie before they get eaten...for the truth ....and not the Fox for a pack of lies....
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Sitting on a time bomb? Well that is going to go off unless the timing mechanism stops for some reason. And the two named Parties are the answer? I think not. I just read the story and it is not necessarily as paraphrased above! ALL school children. And perhaps in the two areas of the capital it has perhaps been going on since the 1980s? A fact if true - mentioned only in the second Internet posting I read? Hmm as I hear a FiveLive presenter is fond of saying. I wondered where I stole it from - hmm - I mean. Being a pilferer off unconsidered trifles.
No bat away such "stories" because whilst they may be real - when we have them spotlit as if it the "norm" - spotlit might I suggest deliberately - allegedly - the discontentment again allegedly sought will just mount up.
Time Bomb? Since the 1980s? I think that is the wrong analogy. It is Gunpowder Plots all around and goodness knows who has the tinder boxes and flints - allegedly.
But I bet they all allegedly look a bit like - eh - me? Handsome that is of course? lol
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Where's the serving suggestion box for the moral maze?
These new FSA guidelines on peddling debt and helping us soon to get back on the track of boom help people make money from thin air. Does the monetary rewards for those that do little beside stoke unrealistic property prices and debt undermine the remuneration and rewards, and esteem proper jobs are held in by the wider society?
People bellyache at the wages of Premiership soccer players but they don't help bring about global economic catastrophes do they?
As someone that didn't buy into the bubble and finds themselves as shafted as rest of society why are those in charge so intent on reinflating the bubble again so soon?
Will they ever learn? And Brown was supposed to be some financial guru of the highest order?
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Just on the subject of "gurus" - only a few years ago the usual term was "pundit" - this time a correct use of Hindi picked up in British industry. The word "guru" - "one who passes the light" is by contrast an incorrect usage, apparently gaining purchase in 60s California.
I do not think it is incumbent upon us to junk correct language in favour of incorrect slang just because it is "in" in the USA. Better, indeed, to set a good example. So can I also point out that the words "disadvantage" and "drawback" exist as possible alternatives for "downside" and that (again until recently) normal usage is "it's up to you" not "it's down to you"?
Please, BBC, do not imagine that, in adopting such usages, you are reflecting spoken English as it exists in the streets, even among the "dumbed down" (the word is "stupid") - that would not be clever ("smart"). You may be reflecting the jargon - oh sorry -
"what you may be reflecting is, you may be reflecting the jargon of some little hermetic world of "chattering Westminster"."
You are probably alienating millions more. You are certainly reducing the accuracy and integrity of the language.
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It surprises me, by the way, that such foreign linguistic modifications as the above pass without question here on the blog, whereas the possibility of some token observance of the various religions of British citizens provokes "rivers of blood" posts (above passim).
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Do write and let me know how the above affects you - blast! - how it impacts you..... Impacts upon you.... oh never mind.
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(28): Affects you? I think you were right the first time, Red!
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Was I, Fifi? I had thought the language had been rewritten and nobody told me. I went to check the dictionary - oh, there I go again - I went to check-out the dictionary about "impact" and found it was indeed transitive (not requiring "upon") so BBCspeak is double wrong. So I have won out and the BBC has lost out. Over and out.
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#26, #27, #28 redheylin
No idea what you are going on about. The language I speak, English, is known for it's ability to constantly update itself.
Still what do I know, as I was not educated proper.
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....Squire.
Blast where are my manners.
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31-2 Looternite - By whom is English known for its ability constantly to update itself? Every spoken language updates itself. In order to communicate with you I have to be familiar with a large number of neologisms such as "blog". But these particular "updates" are the products, not of popular usage or necessity but, of advertising departments, political spinners, would-be media trendies, retarded vocabulary and simple ignorance. They are by no means universal; I do not hear local people asking each other to "check out how the downside impacted on me".
You go on, in fact, to make the same mistake the BBC has made, out of the same inverted snobbery. There was a time that everyone on the BBC spoke with an affected East Midlands/Oxbridge accent - that ugly dialect often referred to as "posh". Like you, they seem later to have made the assumption that, along with the welcome introduction of regional accents, in order to ingratiate themselves with the commoners, "strong language" (that is, gratuitous obscenity), bad grammar and self-invented language-abuse is necessary. Along with this has arisen a new "common media argot" that sounds like people TRYING to be posh by never saying "yes", for example, but only "Absolutely!" They betray their poor posh-credentials by aping the linguistic errors of the Simpsons, (which were supposed to be funny) and misusing words. There is no evolution of language involved in any of this, and the fundamental assumption that ordinary people cannot and do not want to speak good clear English is a good deal of the complaint. So I'd be grateful if you'd desist from it.
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EG (from recent PM programmes)
There is no word "incentivize" - the word is "incite".
There is no such thing as "brokering a deal" - "broking a deal" is perfectly good.
There is no such action as "truanting"
I find myself at liberty to ignore such misuses. I do not know why anyone should feel the need to fit in by adopting such usages reflexively. When the BBC does it for years on end, people get the idea it is correct. It is not.
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And let's hear it for that old favourite "to mitigate against" - this strange usage, seemingly originating in an inability to distinguish between "mitigate" and "militate", reached a peak around a year ago but seems to have fallen out of favour, possibly even because somehow the news reached Medialand-upon-Thames that the rest of us DID know the difference. Still, whoever made the mistake first, soon the error was all over the radio. Just the herd-instinct of an insulated, semi-educated clan, not an evolution, not a groundswell - never heard the mistake EXCEPT on the radio, where I heard it many times.
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34 If a language style has been used for years and people get the idea that it is correct (ie accepted and understood) then it is indeed correct. That is how language evolves.
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Still, at least the PM presenters do not keep saying "let's be clear about this"!
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37 Red
I'm sure even you wouldn't be able to adhere to your strict linguistic code when presenting live radio. It's not like writing poetry you know.
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And as far as US influence is concerned, I'd far rather that PM sounded like South Park than the wholesale import of world domination, sectarianism and race hatred that has dominated our recent lives like a case of cancer. It is now twenty years since we were all told "you no longer hate the commies: you now hate the muslims". A generation has been brainwashed and the result was shown tonight on Panorama. Can we get back to the commies? There are fewer of them here to get their heads kicked in.
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Lucien - I cannot see how a radio studio can cause me suddenly to imagine that the words check, win and lose are somehow incomplete without adding "out", or cause me to lose the use of the words "yes" and "no", to begin to imagine that pundits are gurus or militate and mitigate are synonyms. This is not the heat of the moment; it is an established and self-perpetuating media argot to which the rest of us are exposed by listening and which we do not encounter in everyday life. It's a major part of the "touch" that parliament has "lost". And "newspeak" in its "political correctness" sometimes has dire consequences, as for instance when we learn to use the term "multiculturalism" instead of "ghetto mentality". Slack language yesterday, slack thinking today, slack action tomorrow.
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39 Red
What exactly does the wholesale import of world domination, sectarianism and race hatred sound like?
Tilbury docks?
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(This is not a "strict code" - I am not talking about grammar, for example, but the herd-adopted misuse of words in the jargon of a small circle with a large reach. It's a situation so recent that one cannot sensibly claim that, if a mistake becomes common in the media and endures for long enough to alter common usage, that makes it correct. But, as I say, this has not happened. Politicians speak double-dutch and commentators copy them has happened, but the rest of us live in another world, a state of affairs that the same political class has taken to bemoaning, still in double dutch.
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Another good example was the use of the Bush Admin's newspeak "The Quartet". This is a simple semiology for "There's the US, there's Europe and then there's the UN for the second-classes". It is deeply linked with the continuing efforts of the American right to de-stabilise the UN. Still, just place the term in a few press releases and the BBC adopts it.
What does a "balance of different opinions on any matter" avail us when the very terms in which the debate is couched have been pre-ordained in a language altered by spin-doctors? But, after a few years, everybody ends up speaking gobbledigook.
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41 - Please do not mention Tilbury. It reminds me of Gervase of Tilbury, a nasty piece of work. I do not know if you are old enough to remember the day we all heard that Russia was now ruled by gangsters so we ought to begin to hate all the people we previously could not invade because they were too close to Russia? Starting by hating the leaders of anybody next to Iran (because we will have made the case by drip-feed by the time we are established enough to contemplate an invasion)? That the people we were supporting, the bold Muhajedeen, were now the most evil, dangerous people on earth, who refused oil pipelines? Or of living through a decade of bombings only to be told that, now that the US was now getting it rather than paying for it, it was now necessary for us to give up our civil liberties? Or of being able to watch the atrocities of Viet Nam and SAY that they were atrocities without having to bear in mind that your young friend is out there?
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Mujahedeen! Bit slow with my neologisms.
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Mujahedeen is an arabic word which can be found in the hadith. Very slow with your neologisms, I'd say.
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#26, #33, etc. redheylin
Yeah whatever, ain't bovvered 'no wot I mean mate.
I'm an engineer, there ain't nothing wrong with my English usage. I have spoken to people from many countries and never had a problem with understanding.
Just because I have an accent don't make me inferior.
What you complain about is in fact management-speak that has infected the BBC.
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47 Ln
I blame John Birt.
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#48 lucien_desgai
Apparently, there is a rumour that Eddie Mair does not wear a dinner jacket when he broadcasts. Shock horror.
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l_d 41, I took the Stephen Batory (?sp), a Polish liner, from Tilbury to NY in the mid-1970's.
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Ln ESQ 32, Manners is/was (now Bob's) a chain of restaurants in the US, Big Boy.
http://westparkhistory.com/thennow/named/Manners1961.jpg
http://fastfood.freedomblogging.com/files/2009/06/bobbigboy_statue.jpg
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Ln 49, I heard that when he is sitting behind a desk, he wears no trousers.
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#52. David_McNickle
so he just sits there in just a Tee shirt.
Some of the ladies around here might be getting hot and bothered at that thought.
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I was at the birth of my beautiful son 22 months ago. It is always hard to witness the discomfort of childbirth, but something natural about it carries us through. Having said that 3 of my patients have all said that the pain of childbith was no way as bad as the pain of a fractured rib.
Who knows?...its sad though that us humans always have to compete about who has the hardest time etc.
The workplace is buzzing this morning with discomfort at the Panorama programme last night, no one condones racism here but such a staged transparent BBC set up has worked in the opposite direction.Anyone 'different' would have been attacked on that estate....the mob is not that disciminating , they just wanted trouble. Racism is so serious that this sort of manipulation is detrimental.
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#54. ingeniousCliff
I also saw part of the Panorama and I agree with you that "race" was not the only reason to be bullied on that estate. Remember the tragic case (not long ago) of the mother and her disabled child.
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Looternite, I agree that Birtspeak is a big part of it but not all. Simply put, there has always been a need to examine the words that are used in debate. If the reporter accepts the terms in which things are expressed discrimination has been lost. And if you will accept "guru" and managementspeak without demur, you will also accept loaded terms like "Quartet" and "multiculturalism" for example, which are insidious. Next, you will learn to salute whenever you hear "freedom and democracy" and accept these as gods in whose name the world must be conquered. Then you may start using doubletalk terms, forgetting, for instance, that "collateral damage" means "violent death" and "the brave, glorious fallen" means "violent death", and "friendly fire" means "violent death". All of these things happen when you are ready to fall into line with the herd and use the terms dictated. But this PM lot are quite intelligent and it is worth rattling their cage. Their glass box.
Nothing at all to do with class issues or personal insecurity over education. The people on the Bristol estate are doing the same thing in a different way. It's true that the same thing would happen, for example, to gays or the disabled. I cannot say that makes things better. But "we talk like this and think like this and you do not fit" - there's a powerful instinct to fit in and it can lead people to accept the unacceptable. This works in very subculture; gay, Etonian, sink estate, black, white, men and women, young and old. Just now, as I say, the "Westminster Estate" has become a subculture unto itself that speaks its own language and sees the people it is meant to serve as "other".
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"Mujahadeen" is of course such a loaded term in context: it co-opts the idea of "jihad" - fighting to protect your freedom of religion - and applies it to mean "fighting to keep your tribal chief and tribal mores" in order to claim worldwide Muslim sympathy for non-Islamic aims and values. Not that one should not fight - but Islam has nothing much to do with it.
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#56. redheylin
I'm not "extracting the urine" here but for some one who wants all to speak and write clearly. I have had to re-read your post more than once to work out what you are saying.
Management speak or Birt speak these are only jargon terms and sometimes they slip into everday language and some times they have a short "shelf life". Whoops let one through there, I do appologise.
As an electronic Engineer I use jargon all the time. What was our technical jargon once is now used by "arty farty" types now ie megabyte, RAM. LED, LCD, Etc.
Yes I had a cheapo Secondary Modern education, suficient to fight wars or work in a factory. However, I can and do read.
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58 Loo - maybe you have to read it twice because I am not saying any of the things that you expect I might be saying. Certainly I was not saying anything about your standard of English. That's partly what I was trying to say; that trendy usages can stand for whole clumps of ideas and values and lead to thought-cliches. If you swallow them whole you can end up thinking that people who do not use your familiar jargon are incoherent, foreign, not "one of us". Of course, I'd not claim to achieve perfect clarity in every post so sorry for any poor expression. But I'd rather make you read twice than use words as signs to tell you what gang I belong to.
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BTW, Looternite, what's your main branch of electronics?
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Matter of fact; it's one of the main problems of democratic politics: extremists can deal in simple ideas; "this is good; this is bad". That appeals to people; that there are simple answers, it is all somebody else's fault. People who offer a full critique sound boring and equivocal by comparison.
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#59 & #60. redheylin
My Dear redheylin,
Posh start you must admit anyway.
Thanks for the explanation, I don't think you were trying to use complicated language to express your superior education. I think that you do in fact talk that way. However I will say that I, like most people absorb the speech patterns and idioms from a variety of sources and for the past 40 years television/radio/cinema have been very influential.
You asked what area of the electronics industry I work in.
Well I originally worked as an apprentice technician in digital electronics 1960's and got my HNC (a good worthy qualification at the time). Then into telecommunications test equipment, signal generators etc (a company known to someone from St. Albans).
Then from 1978 scientific/medical instrumentation. I have been involved in servicing equipment that is at the cutting edge of scientific research. The medical equipment was analysers that were installed in hospital pathology labs all over the British Isles.
I have installed and serviced equipment in all the major universities and Pharmaceutical companies.
Yet I only have a HNC, nowadays I would need a degree for my job.
The scientists whether profs from Oxford, Cambridge, UCl, Imperial etc never have a problem with my language skills or accent. I know the technical terms and I am judged on my knowledge.
I suspect you have a different life path.
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Impressive! I was hoping you'd say audio, but.... impressive.
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I guess I have absorbed speech patterns from such a large pool that I alter my language to suit the occasion without having a "native" jargon. But when writing to many unknown people it is not possible to alter to suit.
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