After spending a lot of years looking for something half-decent to listen to in the morning, I have settled for GMS. I don’t have a problem with the humour attempts. All breakfast programmes are like that to some extent or another — I think you’d have to go to the World Service to avoid it.

You do make Radio Scotland sound a bit gaffe-tastic, though in fairness it doesn’t sound like anything that wouldn’t happen from time to time on, say, Radio 5 Live. Witness Stephen Nolan.

I agree that the overall quality of Radio Scotland is average though. My comments about GMS and Newsdrive are more about the format of the programme. I think these programmes demonstrate that a news programme with international, UK and Scottish news hosted from a Scottish studio can work.

We now have the likes of the execrable ‘Garry’ (talks at a hundred miles an hour, seems incapable of asking a serious question without it dripping in either sarcasm of boorishness) whilst he and ‘Gillian’ leap upon the slightest possibility to inject what they and their producers seem to think is humour and ‘expressing their personalities’.

I can still recall a while back when they disastrously tried out ‘Gary’ on the serious Sunday morning political slot. He quite ineffectually interviewed some junior (and now gone) Government Scottish Minister. This was followed by Michael White and Mathew Parris down-the-line from the London studio whereupon they had much fun over derisory weak interviewing; they not unreasonably argued that only the supposedly tough Jocks could have got away from that one. If they had so performed they would have been derided as Blairities or Government sycophants.

On the odd occasion when they have McWhirter or Taylor in for a discussion, these intelligent, credible journalists must wonder just how seriously to take the existing BBC Radio Scotland current affairs team.

And what is it with this team’s collective lack of decent speaking; endless starting of questions with “Ah mean”, “Ah mean”, “Ah mean”, or “Do you not think”; and let’s not forget the jingle that tells us that Radio Scotland is on ‘meejum’ wave.

More recently I felt almost insulted by the lightweight frontman they have on the Saturday morning political slot. This is another who just has to go for the supposed humour or the (unintended?) sarcasm regardless of context. Recently, the competent and entertaining sports presenter Beattie, with some candour, was expressing how he somehow still felt uncomfortable at a recent shooting event in the wake of the Dunblane shooting tragedy. The response of this frontman was to jest that Beattie was becoming ‘a big Jessie’ (or perhaps it was a ‘big softie’); Beattie at least had the dignity to allow a momentary silence, ignoring the buffoon’s remarks and then carrying on … and this is our national broadcaster?

I don’t mind Newsnight Scotland too much. I actually quite like it. But it would be good to be able to watch all of Newsnight.

I have always thought that a Scottish Six would take the format of Ch 4′s news. Ie a news show with analysis aswell- so if you like a Scottish news covering UK/World matters and with a newsnight Scotland esque bit aswell. Ive never been sure exactly what it is meant to achieve however, though i would really enjoy not having the interesting bits of newsnight cut off to go to newsnight Scotland who will cover the same story again from earlier or some non story talking of reporting Scotland being parochial, newsnight Scotland is worse.

It would be interesting to see if having a Scottish news covering the world would seem like we were engaging more or if abandoning the UK news would make us all seem like nats?

Graeme’s comment is good, and the point he makes about GMS and Newsdrive is important for me. Surely a Scottish Six would be closer to the GMS / Newsdrive template which is so successful, rather than simply be an extended version of Reporting Scotland.

The populism of the Six may make it difficult, but if they could cover politics in a bit of depth and strike the balance that Newsdrive strikes, I think a lot of people would come to prefer the Scottish Six. Perhaps if Holyrood was covered in depth during the Six, there would be no need for Newsnight Scotland either (although I think the late-night slot suits Newsnight Scotland).

Your school in Indiana has just been shot up but your granny once flew over Scotland so we need to interview you.

Of course Holyrood should be covered properly. But Graeme, I wouldn’t say the Beeb’s failure to do this “holed their own campaign”. It wasn’t their campaign. The BBC has always opposed this idea.