As regular readers may know, I worked for Woolworths until it closed down in January this year. You can read the series of articles I wrote in the aftermath of its closure.

In one of my articles, I wrote about the poster that appeared in the staff area this time last year. It announced:

Remember Remember the 5th of November!

In just less than a year, on the 5th November 2009, we celebrate our 100th birthday!

Watch out for more details coming soon…

Unfortunately we didn’t get many more details about the centenary celebrations. All we heard after that was stuff about trying to sell the company for a pound.

I regret not taking the poster to keep as soon as it was clear that Woolies would not emerge from the mire it found itself in through late November and December. Someone is selling one of these posters on eBay at the moment. The poster is a great piece of history — the 100th birthday that never was.

Or was it? Today, the new owners of the Woolworths brand have been celebrating the centenary nonetheless by putting on 100 promotions and giving away free Pic ‘n’ Mix with every order. That is what I like about the new Woolworths, owned by Shop Direct. Despite being a separate company, they are respectful of the name’s heritage. In fairness, they would be mad not to — the Woolies name must still have appeal, especially among those in a nostalgic mood.

Not everyone is so happy about it. The Woolworths Facebook page is often full of offended comments from people who feel that it is presumptuous and opportunistic of Shop Direct to cash in on the 99 years of Woolworths that preceded their involvement. There were, after all, around 30,000 workers made redundant at the original Woolworths last Christmas. Most probably aren’t in the mood to celebrate.

It is a matter of debate whether Woolworths is 100 really. Today is nothing other than the 100th anniversary of the first F. W. Woolworth store to open in the UK. The company had already been operating in the USA and Canada for decades before that. The UK company became separate in the 1980s when it was bought by Kingfisher. After that, Woolworths in the UK became a separate company when Kingfisher cast it off in 2001.

In the USA, the Woolworths name ceased to exist in 1997. But the original company still exists as Foot Locker, having decided to concentrate on sports goods. If the operation in the USA still counts, Woolworths is 131 years old.

You can still shop in bona fide Woolworths stores in Germany. These, like the British stores, were originally part of the American company and became separate in 1998. It declared insolvency this year, but struggles on.

(Supermarket chains named Woolworths in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have nothing to do with the original FW Woolworth apart from the name.)

There has been a fair bit of chat in recent weeks about the prospect of a televised leaders’ debate in the run-up to the next general election. This sort of chat always comes up in the run-up to any election, but there appears to be an extra momentum this time round.

It seems as though the promise by Sky News to televise a debate come what may — even if the debate was between tubs of lard — has forced everyone’s hand, broadcasters and political parties alike. It seems as though now it is going to happen, with the involvement of all the major broadcasters. It also appears as though the three main party leaders are on board (albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm).

The end of the issue? Of course not. This is just the beginning of the matter. More details will need to be fleshed out. What format should such a debate take? Will there be a number of separate debates? And what about the role of smaller parties?

I am normally fairly ambivalent about calls for televised political debates. Those politicians who call for such a debate usually do so because they perceive that it would advantage them.

Someone like David Cameron will go for it because he is a confident performer, the momentum is behind him and the media appears to have declared him the winner already. Someone like Gordon Brown will reject it because he does not come across so well on television. This time he has been forced into it, partly because of Sky News’ promise to “empty chair” him if he didn’t, but also because refusing to appear would further the idea that Brown is a coward with poor leadership qualities.

The prospect of a televised political debate fills me with dread rather than excitement. I doubt it does much for democratic accountability. Part of me suspects that vain politicians just crave appearances on the television.

No doubt we will be served up a rather unedifying spectacle, like PMQs on steroids. I predict Punch and Judy politics a-plenty. Most likely, as with Question Time, it will be a platform for the most appalling demagoguery, complete with an audience that will clap like seals at any old nonsense.

Most of all, I think the idea of a leaders’ debate just misses the point. While it is useful to know what the major party leaders think, focusing on leaders too much is damaging to the health of our parliamentary democracy. Once again, there is a clamour to bring to Britain a feature of US politics which is a square peg in a round hole.

Televised debates are highly popular in the USA. But that is because the format is practically ready-made for the US political system. For one, the US system is a Presidential system, meaning that voters actually do elect the country’s leader. The US system is also a truly two-party system, with two Leviathans totally overshadowing any minority candidates. This makes it easy to adopt a one-on-one, head-to-head debating format.

Even though the televised debate is more-or-less a perfect fit for a US Presidential election, the format’s success is a matter for debate. In years gone by it may have provided some election-defining moments. But as I recall, the debates involving Barack Obama and John McCain, and Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, hardly set the world alight.

So what on earth makes anyone think that this gimmick will suit British politics? It seems like just another outcome of politicos’ obsession with America. It seems like the idea of someone who has mistaken his DVD box set of The West Wing for real pornography.

Our Parliamentary system doesn’t — or at least shouldn’t — place so much focus on party leaders. Very few voters will actually have any sort of say on who the Prime Minister is. I will have the option to vote for or against Gordon Brown, but only because I happen to live in his constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. I will have no say whatsoever on David Cameron or Nick Clegg.

And what of the smaller parties? In the UK, broadcasters are required to be impartial in the run-up to an election, meaning that legally broadcasters will find it difficult to lock out the small parties. Even if these other parties have little or no chance of forming the government. Even if most viewers will not be as interested in hearing from these parties.

The most noise is being made by the SNP. They are threatening legal action if an SNP representative is unable to play a part in a televised leaders’ debate.

The SNP may have a point. Even though they have only a handful of MPs, and are only contesting seats in a portion of the UK, they have a lot of support in that portion. They are not a loony fringe party. They are in fact in government in the UK. Viewers north of the border will certainly be interested to hear what the SNP have to say in the run-up to the election.

At the same time, their presence may be a distraction from the real purpose of the debate, which is basically to watch the potential future Prime Ministers partake in a spot of verbal mud-wrestling. It is, after all, a “leaders’ debate”. Despite all his ambition, Alex Salmond is highly unlikely to be the next Prime Minister, as is Angus Robertson.

Yet, what if there is the prospect of a hung Parliament? The collapse in Labour support has not been met with a real surge in support for the Conservatives. With so many parties having moderate levels of support, it is conceivable that a party like the SNP could play a king-maker role.

There is no easy answer. This is the core problem with the idea of a televised debate. It might be good for a simple, true two party system such as the USA’s. But for the UK’s more subtle and diverse politics, it won’t fit quite so well.

I’ve been thinking about getting involved in podcasting for a while now. So when I saw a favourite blogger of mine asking for contributors to a new podcast he was setting up, I thought it was the ideal opportunity to dip my toe in the water.

The podcast is the idea of James O’Malley, a fine chap with a jolly good blog. His thinking is to have a number of contributors chipping in to a weekly podcast which will be around 15–20 minutes long. The podcast will be along the lefty / liberal / atheist / skeptical / rationalist lines. Read James O’Malley’s explanation for more.

What was missing was a name for the podcast. A bit difficult to come up with a name for something that only exists in your brain. But with the vague template in mind, I set to work, along with the other contributors, to think of a suitable name.

Suddenly, it came to me. After I had been lying in bed literally unable to sleep for hours, it suddenly came to me: The Pod Delusion. Yes, I know. I’m a genius. Not quite a living legend like James O’Malley though. Nonetheless, the fact that I came up with the excellent name means that The Pod Delusion is definitely my podcast. The fact that I put no effort whatsoever into creating it, producing it or commissioning pieces for it is frankly neither here nor there.

Anyway, I am quite excited about The Pod Delusion. With the stellar line-up of contributors, it seems like it’s going to be ace. If everything goes to plan and this week’s pilot goes down well, you can expect a new episode every Friday. My plan is to publish all transcripts of my contributions, or an accompanying article, on this website as and when each podcast is published.

Here is the first episode of The Pod Delusion. I have just listened to it myself. Since it’s the first ever attempt, it is a tad ramshackular, but that will get better over time. All-in-all, I think it’s a fine listen.

Hopefully sometime soon it will be available over iTunes too. You can follow @poddelusion on Twitter.

My first little piece for The Pod Delusion is about product placement. When I first set about doing it, my intention was to try and make it serious. I had actually been planning to write here about the product placement hoo-ha, but then decided I could kill two birds with one stone by making it my Pod Delusion contribution too.

Unfortunately, I got a little bit carried away with the fact that I was working in an exciting new audio medium. I inserted a few audio jokes which won’t work in writing. From then on, the whole thing became just a collection of bad jokes about product placement, strung together by the flimsiest of wafer-thin serious points.

So, bearing that in mind, here is my contribution to this week’s Pod Delusion.

It was announced last week by Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw that product placement will soon be allowed on commercial channels. I suppose there was an inevitability in this. After all, commercial broadcasters finding it harder to sustain themselves through traditional advertising in a multichannel world. Plus, we are living in an era where so many people use PVRs to fast-forward through the adverts anyway.

There has to be some way to fund commercial television. After all, what would we do without ITV? Okay, that’s a bad example. But what would we do without Channel Five? Well okay, but you get my point.

Many worry about the effects that product placement will have on the viewing experience. With product placement, there will be a question mark over the purity of the programmes we watch. Will our programmes be peppered with subliminal advertising that attempt to brainwash us into changing the brand of soap powder that we use?

I’m not so sure that will be such an issue. After all, we are well used to product placements in major films. Television programmes from other countries are filled with product placements already. I am sure that most people are savvy enough to tell what’s going on.

For instance, it can be disconcerting to watch an episode on Neighbours when one of the characters decides to open the fridge. Inexplicably, the fridge is filled from wall to wall with nothing but cans of Sprite! That is obviously a nonsensical scenario. It would have been far more realistic if the fridge was filled from wall to wall with cans of tasty Dr Pepper — “what’s the worst that can happen?”

The odd thing about imported programmes is that due to the stricter laws in the UK, our broadcasters have to blur such product placements out. But this only brings attention to the fact that there is an alien blob floating around on the screen.

Focusing on the blobs on American Idol, for instance, you can clearly see that the judges have large cups on their desk. These cups are predominantly red but with a distinctive white swirl that can only be associated with Coke. Mmm… fresh, ice cold Coke.

The new product placement rules do not affect the BBC. But it would be interesting to consider what it might be like if one day the rules were relaxed for the BBC too. After all, is there anything more ridiculous than the slightly awkward attempts to avoid using brand names during makes on Blue Peter? Referring to “sticky back plastic” may be quaint and traditional, but it is also distracting and sets off a klaxon in your brain that sounds something like: “SELLOTAPE! SELLOTAPE!”

I once saw a Blue Peter make where you had to use a “crisp tube”. What on earth is a crisp tube? Crisps come in packets don’t they? What they were talking about was a pack of Pringles. Given that Pringles are the only make of crisps to be sold in that style of tub, you can more or less guarantee that sales of Pringles went through the roof anyway — all because of the BBC’s massive abuse of power.

Well I think I have said all there is to say about product placement. I think what I will do now is take off my Specsavers glasses and shut down my Asus Eee PC. Then I think I will listen to my Apple iPod, while eating a fresh sandwich from Subway.

Or perhaps I will just go for a piss in my Armitage Shanks toilet.

Last night I was a bit bored so I indulged in a spot of channel surfing to see if there was anything decent on. There usually isn’t. But even with my lowered expectations, my jaw literally dropped when I saw what STV were broadcasting — STV Roulette.

Yes, if you thought dodgy gambling programmes were the preserve of the arse end of the Sky channel list, think again. It is right here on Scotland’s Channel 3 franchise, a public service broadcaster no less. You will be delighted to know that STV plan on broadcasting this tat three days a week, for three hours a day.

Presumably this is part of of STV’s much-hyped strategy of promoting “home produced content”. However, STV Roulette and the STV Casino website are produced by NetPlay TV, whose studios are in London.

In recent times, STV has increasingly pursued a strategy of turning down the opportunity to broadcast some of ITV’s best programmes in favour of showing dodgy local clip shows, American imports and… oh, “home produced content”. But the identity of this “home produced content” remains a mystery to viewers. That is probably because it simply doesn’t exist.

I suppose Fitz — a cheap American import — is supposed to count. Apparently it has some kind of vague connection to Cracker. So the trailer tells us anyway. In fact, “Fitz” turned out to be a description of what STV viewers go through every time they realise that their favourite programme has been ditched in favour of some kind of low budget michty-me, jings, crivens and help ma boab bunch of SHITE.

Oh, and apparenty South Park counts as “home produced content” because, in the words of STV’s Managing Director of Broadcast Services, Bobby Hain, it is “mischievous and cheeky”, just like Scottish people! Huh?!

This new found love for “local” programming really is rich coming from STV too. This is a station that, just a few years ago, would do anything to avoid showing locally produced programmes. It blatantly reached its quota of regional programmes with cynical late-night repeats of Weir’s Way and extra editions of Scotland Today Interpreted For The Deaf. As if the ploy wasn’t blatant enough, these showings were ramped up a bit towards the end of the year as well, presumably because the quota needed filling.

I think a lot of people assumed that STV had already been taken over by ITV plc, which sadly is not the case. Any bosses who think people tune in to watch STV are living in cloud cuckoo land. They press button 3 to watch ITV, and expect to watch ITV programmes. That is because regional television is an anachronism that viewers do not care about. This is why STV’s odd strategy has proved so controversial.

STV’s plan wouldn’t be so laughable if it wasn’t based on the totally bogus premise that anyone actually likes regional variations. As I have written before, regional variations are always rubbish, as this excellent clip from The Armando Iannucci Shows ably explains:

I know plenty of people who have mentioned in passing how upset they are that STV refuse to broadcast their favourite programmes. Among the programmes missed by Scottish viewers are showings of the FA Cup, The Bill, Midsomer Murders, Kingdom… I could go on.

New episodes of Lewis are not broadcast, but repeats are fine. New episodes of Poirot are bumped in favour of repeats of Poirot. If those have run out they will show a series of South Park. Other gaps can be filled with cheaply-sourced American imports, Irish (!) imports or films.

That shows up the policy for what it is. This stunt is nothing to do with locally produced programming. This is no favour to the Scottish viewers. It’s all about money. Or so you would think. Quite how STV intends to increase advertising revenues by showing a load of cheap C-grade crap in place of what the viewers are actually expecting is a mystery to all.

STV Roulette is a prime example of STV’s clueless desperation to make money. It is not as if ITV plc has a better record in this department. A couple of years ago it fell in love with the then-fashionable “quiz television” fad, where late-night viewers would be goaded into phoning a premium rate number to answer a question with no proper answer. ITV even set up an entire channel, ITV Play, dedicated to the genre. That was until the public realised they were being hoodwinked, bad publicity ensued and the whole quiz television industry backfired on itself.

At least ITV have got over the fad however. STV seems not to have noticed that it’s bad form to put on this sort of programming. It apparently has no qualms about dedicating 9 hours per week of its channel towards encouraging late-night (i.e. drunk) viewers to gamble.

Sometimes I wonder if STV’s real strategy is to deliberately drive itself into the ground. That way it wouldn’t have to bother with all of that pesky “catering to the viewers” or “making money” business like other commercial channels. Instead it could rely on subsidies for its eternal existence. Genius.

It is already going cap in hand asking for a £5 million subsidy in return for carrying out one of its obligations as a public service broadcaster. Apparently five mil a “reasonable sum”. I am not sure how many people would agree with that, though I reckon a lot of people would be more receptive to the request if they actually showed any sign of wishing to serve their viewers rather than going on some odd crusade of apparent self-destruction.

Watch STV? I’ll opt out, thanks.

A deal has been struck between Max Mosley, Fota and Bernie Ecclestone, and the threat of a breakaway series has been averted. I think there were a lot of people out there who quite liked the idea of a breakaway series. Indeed, given the choice between Max Mosley’s rotten vision and a Fota-run series, I would have gone for the Fota series every time.

But a split would have been a calamitous situation. The new series, despite having all the big names and probably some decent circuits, would still have taken some time to find its feet. Plus, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Fota series would have got good television coverage. Don’t forget that for the vast majority of fans, television is the only way we can consume the sport that we love, so this is an essential element.

In a lot of ways, the roots of the current problem in Formula 1 lie with Bernie Ecclestone. Or, to be more precise, CVC. They are the ones who suck the money out of the sport in order to pay the interest on their debts. That is why F1 ends up visiting sterile circuits with minuscule crowds — because those governments will pay huge sums of money for the privilege of holding an F1 race. That is probably also the reason for the fervour over cost cutting. If the teams spend less, Bernie can get away with giving the teams less of the sport’s revenues, and giving CVC more of them.

But despite that problem with CVC, I can’t find it in myself to be too angry with Bernie Ecclestone. In truth, he has done a great job of promoting the sport, and F1 may never have appealed to me were it not for Bernie’s efforts. Sure, there are a lot of areas where he can improve, particularly on the dire online offering.

But under Bernie Ecclestone, the television coverage of Formula 1 has been revolutionised. He got his fingers burnt with the adventurous F1 Digital+ endeavour. But while those innovatory days may be no more (and it is notable that F1 is still not broadcast in HD), today’s FOM-produced World Feed (used for all races except Monaco and Japan) is based on many of those innovations and television coverage has improved immeasurably over the past fifteen or so years.

We seldom have to deal with relatively amateurish efforts from the host broadcasters. Just compare these two videos of the same incident as it unfolded live. One is from the FOM F1 Digital+ World Feed, and the other was from the host broadcaster. (To view them side-by-side ‘as live’, start the second video when the first video reaches 17 seconds.)

The difference in quality is massive. F1 Digital+ caught the accident live so viewers knew immediately what happened. This was no coincidence. It happened because a system of sensors around the circuit could detect when cars were running close together, and coverage automatically switched to those cars in the expectation of some kind of incident unfolding. Later, replays from multiple angles enhanced the viewer’s understanding of the incident.

Meanwhile, the host broadcaster cut to Ralf Schumacher climbing out of his car ten seconds after the incident originally started. And it was a long time until viewers found out that the accident also involved Jacques Villeneuve — and there was only one angle of the incident. Note also how Martin Brundle had to rely on the superior coverage which he could see outside his commentary box window to tell viewers that Villeneuve was unhurt.

The Australian host broadcasters were not dummies. They just did the best job they could with the resources they had at their disposal. “Bernievision” was only good because of heavy investment and years of experimentation.

Bernie’s television operation was pretty impressive even in 2001, though not all of the innovations remain in today’s coverage. But it is thanks to Bernie Ecclestone that today’s coverage is more like the first video than the second one. A Fota-run championship would not have had such a slick operation going from day one, and the fans would have been worse off for it.

(For more on the amazing “Bernievision”, check out these decade-old articles on GrandPrix.com: Inside Bakersville and Inside the F1 digital television centre.)

Then there is the question of whether it would have had any coverage at all. The BBC would have been scared off, and television executives would have been confused. They want the World Championship, whether or not an alternative series is better in the eyes of the fans. Take, for instance, the Intercontinental Rally Challenge, which I hear is better than the FIA’s World Rally Championship. Not that I’d know, because the former is ghettoised on Eurosport while the FIA’s weak WRC gets terrestrial coverage.

No matter if it has all the current teams and good circuits — signing up to show a new series is a risk which television executives wouldn’t want to take. The prospect of the best F1 series being on some pay channel and having no terrestrial coverage was a real one. That aspect of the breakaway scared me.

On the other hand, the proposed breakaway presented the opportunity to create a great new version of Formula 1, unshackled from the financial needs of CVC or the warped politics of Max Mosley. Fota had some crazy ideas, but they carried out market research and were far more receptive to the views of fans than the FIA have ever been.

I particularly liked the idea that the new series could have been particularly focussed on attracting an American audience. The FIA Formula 1 Championship has dumped on US fans time and again, and today there is no race in North America even though it is a major market for the manufacturers.

There would also have been a careful look at ticket prices and the fees circuits have to pay to hold an F1 race. No-one (apart from Bernie apparently) likes to arrive at sterile circuits with a dozen people in the grandstand. It comes across on television too, whether or not FOM’s cameramen are instructed to avoid shots of empty grandstands.

I could feel the atmosphere of the passionate British crowd on the television. The difference could hardly be more stark from the previous race at Turkey, where the crowd was around 10% of the size. And Silverstone is a circuit that Bernie wants to move away from.

Even the little things that are wrong with F1 could have had the magnifying glass applied to them. Such as, why can’t a driver keep the same number for his whole career. In other categories such as Nascar or MotoGP, a driver’s number becomes part of his legend, every bit as important as, say, his helmet design. Even in the history of Formula 1, the number 27 car is almost synonymous with Gilles Villeneuve. Imagine the marketing potential too. But in the clinical world of Formula 1, driver numbers are determined by the positions of last year’s Constructors’ Championship.

In short, the breakaway could have been a great opportunity to fix everything that is broken with F1. I doubt the breakaway would have been a true ’split’, and it probably wouldn’t have had the same consequences as the Cart / IRL split. It was pretty clear from the fact that the FIA never released a finalised 2010 entry list that the FIA didn’t have a 2010 F1 Championship to speak of, and Fota’s would have been the only show in town.

That, I think, is why the deal must be seen as a victory for Fota. It has turned out to be a powerful organisation that did after all have the ability to at last stand up to Max Mosley’s dictatorial authority.

There is a part of me that suspects that the FIA as an organisation simply isn’t fit for the purpose of overseeing motorsports. We will eventually see how things develop with Max Mosley’s successor. I think today is just the starting point though, and we will see some more loose ends being tied up in the coming months. There will be power struggles there too, I am sure.

It looks like these negotiations will in fact be handled by Michel Boeri. That in itself is interesting because he is the promoter of the Monaco Grand Prix. It was reported that he would take the Monaco GP with him to the Fota camp if the breakaway went ahead.

What we need now, most of all, is someone in charge of the FIA who is not a glorified politician, constantly interfering. I remember Maurice Hamilton making the point once that everyone knows who Max Mosley is, and many people can tell you that Jean-Marie Balestre was his predecessor. But not many can tell you who Balestre’s predecessor was (for you history buffs, on the Fisa side it was Pierre Ugeux, and in the FIA it was Paul Metternich). Yet the sport still ran.

It sounds like from now on there will be more checks and balances in place, with the F1 Commission being given more of a say from now on. No doubt Fota will continue to play its role too, and I think it would be best for everyone if Williams and Force India re-joined and USF1, Campos and Manor all joined too. That way the teams, who create the sport, can have a say in its governance too.

Speaking of the new teams, I think as we sit here today, with much of the damage repaired, the biggest shame of this episode is that two capable teams have been denied a place on the entry list as a result of Max Mosley’s petty politicking. I think many of us can’t wait to see Prodrive finally get a chance to enter F1, and Lola were a promising prospect too.

No doubt the FIA actually had a tough choice to make, as according to Joe Saward at least the Manor Grand Prix team is actually a seriously strong prospect. With costs set to be cut and a more stable future for F1 promised, and with that troublesome Max fellow out of the way, at least we know there are capable teams that are ready to fill any potential gaps that appear.