Lark Rise to Candleford.

The current BBC production of Lark Rise to Candleford is a welcome addition to the BBC’s collection of drama. The first episode of ten was screened last night. This production is brilliant. It’s been a good few years since I’ve read Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford, a novel first published in 1939; it chronicles life in a fictional Oxfordshire village and it’s neighbouring market town in Victorian England at the end of the 19th century. The cast selection is superb. Another recent good BBC production was an adaptation  of Jane Austin’s Sense & Sensibility published 1811. Good cast selection and filming. I hope that these productions will encourage TV viewers to go a find a copy of these novels and read them, they will find themselves enriched.

Electricity, Gas, Water and Rail.

There is a case that the above utilities and service industries be renationalized. The Tories sold of these previous nationally owned services at knock down prices and the purchasers have enjoyed nice healthy profits since.

Whilst, it’s true that the management of the old nationalized companies left a lot to be desired they had advantages. Constant price increases imposed by privatized companies and the shambles of maintenance programmes has led to public concern as to whether the current arrangement is the wisest choice.

In the case of electricity, gas and water supply profit, not meant to be a dirty word, has taken precedence over service. These industries are too important to the economy to be left in the hands of the current owners and should be renationalized although on a model better ordered than first time round.

Bad Example set by BBC Hack journo.

Adam Mynott, BBC hack, this morning, described a ship off the coast of Somalia as being “kidnapped” by Somali pirates.  At first I though maybe the use of this word “kidnapped” to describe the seizing of a ship by pirates was a silly mistake, but no, he continued to describe the incident as “kidnapping”. No wonder children get confused with language. Is it possible to “kidnap” a ship? According to our Oxford dictionary - No. The verb to kidnap relates to someone being illegally taken by force and held for ransom. Now, hasn’t Mr. Mynott heard of the word hijack, this would be the word to use and would be correct to say; Somali pirates hijacked a ship loaded with benzine, he could have, of course said, the crew were kidnapped.  If children get confused with language they can’t look to BBC hacks to use correct English.  

Silly headline of the week.

“Mucca mauls Macca” has to be the most dreadful newspaper headline this week; no idea what it means nor do we care. No other rag but The Sun.

No doubt they will return to complaining soon about poor English standards in schools.

Schooling…time to deal with spoilt brats…

The new school term has hardly begun and already it’s obvious truancy is as popular as ever - at home on television we see adverts for action aid - 120,000,000 children in the third world cannot go to school. A topsy turvey world. Here we spoil our children - ensure that get good, free state education. In the third world children want to learn, want to progress to improve their opportunities. Many no doubt would love to have the opportunities that so many spoilt brats have here, perhaps we should operate an exchange scheme, round up the truants plus parents pack them into airliners dump them in Africa and load the planes for a return journey with education hungry children.