I was going to say that it is not a surprise that The Jeremy Kyle Show should be compared to bear-baiting. Modern-day freakshow is how I usually describe these programmes. The predecessors to Jeremy Kyle (Trisha and Vanessa) were mostly the same. Some — interestingly enough, mostly the American ones — can be sympathetic to the programme’s participants. But Tampon Teabag’s summary suggests that Jeremy Kyle is by far the most despicable example of the genre.

Most of the time these programmes pluck out the most grotesque failures of humanity and plonk them under the spotlight for the rest of the nation to point and laugh at. I suspect the main reason for these programmes’ success is that it allows the utter failures that watch daytime television feel slightly better about themselves.

For me, though, the interesting aspect of this story is the fact that the programme’s sponsors only felt the need to pull out of the deal after District Judge Berg made his comments. Some are revelling in the fact that it was a publicly-funded organisation — Ufi’s Learndirect.

But let us be fair here. Most of Learndirect’s target audience probably watches Jeremy Kyle, because it is a programme for thick economically inactive people. So this was probably the most cost-effective way to get their message out.

But it’s the hypocrisy that gets me about it. Ufi’s response has basically been: “What? You mean to say that The Jeremy Kyle Show is a modern-day equivalent of cock fighting, but with chavs instead of cocks? I am shocked, just shocked!” Nobody who has seen these programmes before should be so surprised.

The real reason Ufi have pulled out is, of course, because the spotlight turned to them. The same happened when Carphone Warehouse pulled out of sponsoring Celebrity Big Brother in the wake of the Shilpa Shetty / Jade Goody controversy. They said they pulled out because they couldn’t condone racism. So did this mean that they took the blame for all of the other bad behaviour that went on in the Big Brother house in years gone by?

The same goes for this year’s debates about “trust in TV”. Hypocrisy from top to bottom. When it isn’t feigned horror that premium rate phone-in competitions are indeed in existence merely to fleece viewers, it is the Daily Mail treating some set-up shots in Bargain Hunt or Nigella Lawson’s programme as heinous crimes punishable by hanging. That would be the Daily Mail, a newspaper well known for its rigorous honesty and integrity!

Learndirect knew full well what they were sponsoring before Judge Berg made his comments. As Jonathan Calder says, The Jeremy Kyle Show didn’t suddenly become inappropriate because a District Judge said so.

But I don’t think they should have withdrawn their sponsorship. As I said, this was probably the best way to get their message out. I just wish Learndirect would have the honesty to say so.

Bishop Hill is a blogger who often criticises the BBC. So it should not be a surprise when he takes any opportunity to have a pop at them. But his complaints about the BBC’s coverage of the Alan Johnson [sic] kidnapping are wide of the mark.

When you think about it, isn’t it just wrong that Alan Johnson got a slot on the BBC news and on the front of the website, pretty much every day for the last four months, while the other hostages were all but forgotten? It rather nicely encapsulates the problem with the BBC, or even the public sector as a whole.

It’s run for the benefit of its staff, rather than for the public who pay for it.

First of all, it is hardly as if the BBC was the only media organisation that was covering the kidnapping of Alan Johnston, the BBC’s Gaza correspondent (as opposed to Alan Johnson, the Labour MP). In fact, quite a diverse range of news outlets covered it.

When I heard the news on the radio when it broke at around 2 o’clock yesterday morning, I switched on the television to find that Sky News was covering it just as much as the BBC was. The Telegraph had buttons prominently displayed on its blogs. I doubt there was any major newspaper or broadcaster that didn’t cover the story.

Terry Lloyd, who was an ITN — not BBC — journalist, was also given similar coverage upon his death.

The comparison to the five British hostages being currently held in Iraq also does not make sense. Of course, on a purely personal level, the kidnapping of any individual is every bit as despicable as the kidnapping of a journalist. The trauma and anguish that the individuals and their families must go through will be exactly the same. But beyond that, it has no real effect on the wider world.

The kidnapping of a journalist — particularly one like Alan Johnston — has a real effect on the rest of the world. The job of a journalist (even if it is employed by an organisation that you don’t particularly like) is to tell people what is happening in the world.

Alan Johnston was the only Western journalist who was based in Gaza. The only one. In a sense, he was the world’s only pair of eyes and ears in Gaza.

The kidnapping of Alan Johnston was not just an assault on an individual’s freedom. It was the attempted blindfolding of the world.

The Devil’s Kitchen likes to describe himself as a libertarian (as he did in a self-congratulatory post today) and makes much of his support for free markets — albeit almost always in terms of how much tax he has to pay.

But yesterday all of that talk about free markets was thrown out of the window when he approvingly posted a video of Swivel Eyed Farage on Sunday AM.

DK says:

And, on current showing, there is simply no major party that supports the libertarian agenda (I believe that UKIP are the closest that we have, hence my support for them).

Ukip libertarian? I hardly think so. Here is Swivel Eyed Farage in action.

I read one person somewhere (sorry, I’ve forgotten who) complaining that the amount of time Ukip was given on Sunday AM wasn’t enough. Having now watched the clip, I can understand why. If it continued for much longer it probably would have counted as a Party Political Broadcast. How Farage could get away with making such glaringly inconsistent statements almost in the same breath without anything less than fawning deference from Huw Edwards is beyond me.

Farage said:

Should somebody who’s interviewed as a school teacher and then changes faith midway through be allowed to teach a class of children when they can’t see her face? I wouldn’t have thought so, no.

Immediately afterwards, when Huw Edwards asked about the British Airways worker who was asked to cover her cross, Farage’s response was the exact opposite! One rule for Muslims and another for Christians.

Well I find that amazing, I mean British Airways are one of those companies that have consistently been anti-British… So I’m not surprised at all by BA’s behaviour.

Later on he says:

The underlying philosophy that runs through every single Ukip policy is that we want less government interference in our lives.

But predictably, just one minute later, he advocates the view that governments should be able to tell people where they can and can’t live. The reason why? As DK says:

His point about differing GDPs is a good one, I think, and forms the basis of my reservations on the unfettered free trade of peoples between countries. It seems to me that, inevitably, should you allow this, many more people will flow from the lower GDP countries into the high GDP countries and, realistically, that there will be far fewer emigrating to those lower GDP countries.

The fact that different countries have different GDPs is not a good argument against “the unfettered free trade of peoples between countries”. GDP is a measure of all of the income earned in an economy. So if you say that a country has a lower (per capita) GDP than another, that just means that the average income of a citizen of that country is lower.

Different people have different incomes. That is a fact of life. These differences in income exist within Europe. They also exist within the UK. They also exist within Kirkcaldy.

If this is so much of a problem that the government has to set some kind of limit to immigration, then it must also be enough of a problem to set a limit to the amount that people move within a country. There would be quotas on the number of people who can move from the Highlands to the Home Counties. They would build a moat around Ferguslie Park.

But they haven’t. That’s because the economy can cope with people of different economic backgrounds moving around the country. It is a fact that Scots prepared to move to England and English people prepared to move to Scotland in search of work will make more money than if they just stayed where they were born.

The economy as a whole benefits from this free movement of people. If Mr S from Scotland is really good at making widget X which is made in England, Mr S will move to England to work in job X because that’s what he’s good at, so he’ll make the most money there. And because he’s really good at his job, he makes widget X more efficiently than the average Mr E from England would have. Because Mr S is better at his job, firm X’s costs are lower and the benefits are spread to the economy as a whole.

Just because the line on the map has moved doesn’t make this fact untrue. And this isn’t just some pie in the sky economic theory. I am sure that everybody can think of several people who have moved long distances to get a job because they could see the clear benefits of doing so. DK himself is an Englishman living in Edinburgh for crying out loud! Just imagine how much of an economic shithouse the world would be if nobody ever moved away from their place of birth.

I really don’t see how it can be consistent to support a free market within a country but then advocate that the free trade — which is supposedly so beneficial to all — should end at the line drawn on a map.

Given that DK is such a “libertarian”, I am sure he will be familiar with the section of libertarian poster boy Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations dealing with protectionism (Book IV, Ch II). Smith might be talking about goods, but I cannot see any reason why what he says does not apply to labour aswell. If anyone has any reasons I would love to hear them.

Saying that the fact that countries have differing GDPs is a problem for a free trade area is a bit like saying that having firms of differing sizes is a problem in an economy. It is not. DK is probably right when he says, “there will be far fewer emigrating to those lower GDP countries,” if free trade of peoples is allowed.

This kind of thing is usually celebrated by libertarians. It’s freedom of choice, you see. So when there is competition, firms that don’t match the expectations of their customers have to adapt in order to survive. It is exactly the same for countries. When people can pick and choose where they live, governments are forced to take a long, hard look at the way they are running their economies. Sometimes they might even reform.

If, as libertarians suggest, it is the case that cutting back on welfare benefits, lowering corporate tax and so on improves a country’s economy and living standards, then open borders will force governments to adopt these policies as they try to attract jobs to their economies.

I thought that was what DK wanted? But by opposing the “free trade of peoples”, he could well be supporting the continuation of the welfare state.

Idents are neglected. Most people don’t pay much attention to them. But over the next few years these short films used to introduce the programmes will be watched by far more people than the most popular television programme could ever hope for. And most people will have an opinion on them.

An awful lot of people decried BBC One’s current ‘dancer’ idents for being ‘politically correct’ because they had the audacity to show black people doing a dance. I know I’m in a minority here, but I actually quite like the dancer idents, although they are getting a bit tired. But how cool is Capoiera (Realplayer link; nabbed off TV ARK)! There were a few truly cringeworthy ones though, like Festival. Eurgh.

So it’s time for some new ident action, and here they are. MediaGuardian also has a full video of one of them — Bikes.

It certainly looks very slick and the music is pretty cool. But I can’t really imagine it being used into a programme. It would work with a sport programme, but anything else? I guess you will only be able to tell when you see it in its context.

I quite like the logo as well. It’s much better than the current restrictive box which is hidden away in the corner as though it’s unwanted.

As for the circular theme, some people are suggesting that it is meant to be a subtle nod towards the globe, BBC One’s traditional symbol. I never liked the idea of the globe being used as BBC One’s symbol. It’s not as if there’s anything particularly global about BBC One. Does BBC One own the world?

Digital Spy has more images of the idents.

Update: And they’re A snip at just around a pound a second.

Loads of people still say Czechoslovakia, which particularly annoys me because I can actually remember Czechoslovakia existing but I still manage to remember that it is now two separate countries: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It seems to me as ridiculous as still saying Austria-Hungary, or saying Yugoslavia instead of Croatia.

But as I get older, I guess I’m realising that old habits die hard. The other day I walked in to a room with football on the television and I said, “Is that the Charity Shield?” even though I know it’s now called the Community Shield.

Place names are always changing, and often it is difficult to keep up. I’ve just about got to grips with Peking changing to Beijing. That seems to be official, done and dusted, and everybody accepts it.

But sometimes a place changes its name, yet it doesn’t seem to quite be official. Or worse still, it has two different names, both of which are acceptable! I saw in a recent issue of The Economist, “Timor-Leste, formerly East Timor…”

“Right,” I thought to myself, “I’ll have to remember that from now on. I might even write a blog post about that and everything. Mind you, that would probably be dreadfully dull.”

But has East Timor actually changed its name? Wikipedia redirects Timor-Leste to East Timor. The article introduces the topic as “East Timor, officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste…” Later on it says:

The Portuguese name Timor-Leste and the Tetum name Timor Lorosa’e are sometimes used in English.

Well now I just don’t have a clue what this place is called any more. It has an official name but it doesn’t really seem to be widely recognised. And to further confuse matters the native language calls it something different again. The CIA World Factbook doesn’t really help matters.

Not long afterwards, this was posted on the BBC Editors blog:

Mumbai/Bombay?

One caller to the BBC complained that in the coverage of the bombs in India, the name Mumbai was used without an explanation that it was formerly known as Bombay.

There is no BBC rule about using Mumbai, just guidelines. It is up to each individual programme to decide what to say. Most use ‘Mumbai’ and nothing else; a few use ‘Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay’. The thinking is the city has changed its name (some time ago) and Mumbai is now well known to most, if not all, the audience.

The post has an interesting discussion in the comments about the matter. That is, until the inevitable nutjob wades in with a completely unrelated and bonkers point about the Taleban. And then we have the inevitable Biased-BBCers claiming that the BBC referring to ‘Mumbai’ is to do with political correctness (!!). That is what I like to call political correctness gone mad gone mad. As Ally said,

It WAS called Bombay. It is NOW called Mumbai. This is not a question of political correctness. Many Indians may still call the city Bombay, just as I sometimes call a Snickers a Marathon, but it has changed.

I have to say, I think you must have been living in a cave if you had never heard ‘Mumbai’ before last month’s train bombs. But I can kind of sympathise. I never really noticed the Indian place names changing. It was only a few years ago when I saw the placename ‘Kolkata’ for the first time. Nevertheless, it was hardly difficult to work out what city it was referring to.

But who decides when a place name actually changes? Is it technically correct to say ‘Pa-ree’ instead of ‘Pa-riss’ even though it will make you sound like a pretentious bumhole? Is it technically correct to write ‘Köln’ instead of ‘Cologne’ even though it means going to the hassle of finding the ‘ö’ character on the keyboard?

Who decides this? Does the media do it unilaterally? I doubt it. Does the Foreign Office release a list of places that the British government officially recognises as having changed its name? Or is it just down to local bureaucrats? If some bored paper-pusher at Fife Council decided to re-name Kirkcaldy ‘Winky Bum Poo Jizz’, would BBC journalists suddenly find themselves reporting from ouside Winky Bum Poo Jizz Sheriff Court?

When in doubt, I turn to The Economist, famous for its clear writing style.

Use English forms when they are in common use: Cologne [etc]… But follow local practice when a country expressly changes its name, or the names of rivers, towns, etc, within it. Thus… Mumbai not Bombay…

Seems fair enough.

From Armando Iannucci’s late-1990s satire-a-thon, The Friday Night Armistice, broadcast on BBC Two.

I actually have vague memories of this. Brilliant. What a fantastic programme it was.

Images snaffled from James O’Malley, via TV Forum.

There is some pretty weird logic going on about this. Apparently Simon Hughes should be condemned — not because of his homosexual relationships, oh no!, but because of his lying. But if you want to know why he felt the need to lie about it, just look at The Sun story that broke it. It was filled with homophobic jibes about “Limp Dems” and “another one biting the pillow”. And if you think that’s just me having a sense of humour failure, do you really think any newspaper, even The Sun, would get away with calling, for instance, a black Tory a “Coonservative”?

The thing is, Simon Hughes did not reveal that he was gay. He did something far worse — he admitted to being bisexual. Because being bisexual opens you up to prejudice and attacks from both straight and gay people, it’s a pretty big step for Hughes to take. It also means that he was right when he said that he didn’t lie, although it could have been misleading, when he denied being gay.

People say, “oh, why couldn’t he have used the Cameron defence?” They forget that the Cameron defence happened in 2005 and drugs are cool things that Average Joe uses. Apparently the 1980s were quite a hostile time — even more hostile than it is right now — to be gay. I wasn’t around in 1983 so I can’t say, although I have no reason to doubt that. If in the early 1980s he was asked if he was gay and just batted away the question without denying it he would have been accused of being evasive, and people would probably have said he was gay anyway (not that denying it helped Hughes on that front anyway).

Given that you apparently have to be married with kids to be accepted as a top politician (similar rumours about Gordon Brown’s sexual orientation continue to hound him because he left it until he was a bit old to have kids), it should be no surprise that Hughes wanted to keep it under his hat.

Look at this from idiot Lowri Turner (via Martin Stabe):

…I don’t think gay men make good party leaders or Prime Ministers. This has nothing to do with what they do in bed but everything to do with their lives in general.

Before I am accused of prejudice, I should say that not only are some of my best friends gay, but probably most of them are. I work in the media, for goodness sake. [aaaaaarggfghghghgh] It is precisely because I know such a lot of gay men that I can say that I don’t think many of them are capable of representing the interests of the vast majority of people.

Their lifestyles are too divorced from the norm. They are not better or worse, but they are different.

Gay men face challenges of their own, but they do not face those associated with having children which is the way most of us live…

What a grade-A idiot. And it’s because of these sorts of views, which are clearly still common in today’s supposedly enlightened society, that Simon Hughes had to deny that he was a bisexual.

Another reason why Simon Hughes is apparently fair game is because of the Bermondsey by-election. You know, that one where dissident Labour members launched homophobic attacks against the Labour candidate. There was a Liberal leaflet that called the election “a straight choice” — although it doesn’t say anything like “Simon Hughes is the straight choice” as most people are trying to make out. “A straight choice” is a very common term to use on election leaflets — even Labour used it last year, so it’s a bit much to be criticising the Liberals for using it against Labour almost a quarter of a century ago.

I was watching BBC News 24’s weekly political roundup last night, and this very issue was discussed. All of the pannelists condemned the slogan. The irony seemed to be lost on all of the guests — the programme they were on was called Straight Talk. So they were on a homophobic television programme, were they? Actually, they probably were. Paraphrasing guest Ann Leslie: “Haha, did you see The Sun? They called him a Limp Dem! AHHahahaah!” None of the other pannelists or the presenter suggested that the homophobia might be a bit out of order. Must be the liberal Biased BBC again, huh?

As for the “I’ve been kissed by Peter Tatchell” badges, have a read on Wikipedia — gay homophobes, eh? Obviously it looks a tad ironic given this week’s news about Simon Hughes’ private life. But since Hughes didn’t actually have anything to do with the badges, I think he can be let off on that front.

Commuting can really suck sometimes. Like today. Because of the time my lecture ends at, I always miss a train by less than a minute on Mondays and Thursdays. I’ve got to wait for twenty-five minutes until the next one. Despite the long wait, though, the train is already sitting there waiting for me to get on.

Today, though, there was no train to greet me. Infact, the whole area of the station I was standing in seemed incredibly quiet, although I don’t know if I was only noticing this because my train wasn’t there.

My train finally limped in, five minutes after it was due to depart. Everybody crowded on, but things didn’t look good, especially since the cleaner was trying to force the (electronic) toilet door shut. And the fact that the train appeared at least half an hour after it usually does. After having sat down for five minutes we were finally informed that “this set has been deemed a failure” — talk about jargon!

There’s an article on BBC News Online by a man on a Fife–Edinburgh rush hour train who refused to give up his seat to a woman. It’s incredible that somebody should think that they have more right to a seat on the train just because they’re female.

But does anybody know what the right to vote has to do with it, as Paul Anderson maintains? That’s just stupid (mind you, I think if most people were given the choice of either an automatic seat on the train or their vote, they would probably take the seat).

Then Anderson makes it even worse by pulling out this dreadully old (and clearly incorrect) cliche:

But, I suppose, being a member of THE most discriminated against minority (white, middle-aged, heterosexual males) that my opinion will be dismissed as male chauvinist claptrap.

Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

If I was asked to give up my seat for somebody for the sole fact that they were female, I would just say, “why should I?” and stick my headphones back in. Bringing the right to vote into it actually did turn Anderson into a chauvanist.

Via akatsuki.

More from Bloggerheads.

Take note: Just because a media organisation is commercial doesn’t make it independent of the government.