Archives for October 2010

I've been drowning in a quango quagmire this week. Bogged down trawling through a long list of NDPBs - Non-Departmental Public Bodies as they're officially called - to select three worthy of inclusion in my mini series which ran this week. The idea was to find three typical, enlightening, but relatively low profile examples of the 192 which were being advertised as earmarked for abolition.

But what I found trawling through the rest was that a fair number of them are not really going at all. Check yourself (if you've already read the paper and there is nothing on TV).

The functions of around 30 quangos will be transferred to a committee of experts. OK they will no longer be non departmental public bodies but these committees will serve similar functions and still need some kind of funding.

And then there are two bodies which will be "declassified": The advisory committee on the government art collection and the advisory committee on national historic ships. It all sounds very cold war doesn't it? Will the organisations be telling all about closely guarded state secrets? Perhaps that the Cutty Sark was used to spy in Russian waters?

No that's not what declassified means. But finding out what it does mean proves rather more difficult. We asked the committees' parent body the department for culture, media sport. And were given a rather unenlightening reply: "It means the status of the Advisory Committee for National Historic Ships will change. It will no longer be an advisory NDPB."

I asked assistant producer Luke (I don't usually have an assistant but there were a lot of quangos to look at!) to go back and ask how the Advisory Committee for National Historic Ships would change as a result of being declassified.
"Its functions will either transfer to an existing organisation in the cultural sector, or remain as an organisation without advisory NDPB status, in such a way that continued support to the historic ships sector is ensured and that the necessary expertise on ship preservation and funding priorities is preserved."

We couldn't pin the government down on which option would go ahead but the director of national historic ships Martyn Heighton told us the body will remain, and has the same funding, the same staff and the same role as before. The difference is its committee will not be appointed by the government. So why change it? Well we were rather cynically told by one expert in public policy that it looks good to be seen to be cutting back on the UK's quangocracy.

But it's more serious if the Government is relying on achieving heavy reductions in public spending through this policy because, certainly in the case of the historic ships committee, it doesn't spend much money in the first place and it's hard to see how it will spend much less after declassification, than it does now.

Melanie Abbott is a reporter on You and Yours

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The National Historic Ships is to be declassified. What does it mean?

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Having stayed at my mum's in Bath - before heading off to record a feature for You and Yours at the Roman Baths - she looked me up and down and - as is customary, provided full subtitles to her raised eyebrow: (my mother hates to be misinterpreted when criticising. Crystal clear comprehension is her sole aim.) "Is that what you are wearing?" she asked. "To go and do an interview?

I looked down too. (Up is harder when you are both the subject to be appraised, and the appraiser. Try it if you don't believe me.) Shoes? Check. Tights? Check. Skirt, top, cardie? Check, check, check. Massive rucksack with recorder, notebook and three months worth of detritus? All present and correct. Still finding the looking up trick, well, tricky, I patted my head in case my hair was missing. Nope. All there. I looked back at her and raised my own brow. "It's just not very smart." she said. Then she softened a little, like an iceberg which had been attacked with a hair-dryer (i.e. not much.) and added "for a top-level reporter, (pause) Darling." Leaving aside the top-level thing, it did start me wondering about the dress code at work. Were we all hideous scruff-bags, in need of a brisk shake down and an iron from my mother, or not?

To be clear: there are no rules that I am aware of, which dictate what we should wear for work at Radio 4. I personally avoid denim, as my first ever boss at Radio Cambridgeshire told me to. I still stick to that rule because she was so frightening, that if she ever caught me wearing jeans now, I would still have to escape to the loos for a little cry. It also makes me feel a bit more professional when I'm out and about meeting people. In the office, however, there is a sliding scale from lycra cycling gear (which gets changed after a cool down) to chinos and jeans, to jackets and sharp little skirt suits. Nothing crazy. Just clothes.

Apparently it was very different forty plus years ago. Thena Heshel devised the original 'You and Yours' programme. As part of her contribution to our anniversary celebrations, she wrote to tell us about the sartorial advice she received when starting out in radio production in 1964: "I was expected to arrive very formally dressed. " she typed "it was even suggested that it might be appropriate on some occasions to wear a hat!" Evening dress for evening recordings was recommended, and Thena recalls wearing "a suit skirt jacket and gloves to produce a weekly live programme called 'Week's Good Cause'. She did point out though, that by the time she joined the BBC, the young ones had started to ignore such advice, which came from "the older generation of producers who were then retiring".

Now it has completely changed. Obviously. In fact, the dressed down approach took on a whole new meaning a few years ago when a new reporter jogged to work and kept on his extra brief running shorts for the morning news meeting. He would then sit in a typically bloke-ish fashion with his legs up on the table requiring everyone else to look primly away, or face a very human exposé. What would my mother have said to that?

Back to her then, and to me in the hallway in Bath. I defended my outfit, reverted to being a teenager, got a bit grumpy and stalked off for my interview. When I arrived, the beautifully dressed woman from Bath and North East Somerset Council looked me up and down and uttered a soft "Oh.." I am still not sure why, and whether it had anything to do with what I had on. I hope not. After all, surely the whole beauty of radio is that no one knows what most of us look like, and no one should really care. That's part of the reason I love the medium, and as my mother has often remarked - probably part of the reason they still let me work in it.

Catherine Carr is a reporter on You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

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"It was in the mid-1970s and I was at home with my two young sons contemplating a return to work, listening to You and Yours, as usual. An item about careers mentioned the Institute of Accounting Staff (now the Association of Accounting Technicians).

It was a stepping-stone to a career in accountancy. I followed it up and enrolled. I took a correspondence course and was delighted to pass the exams first time with credit and started work as a trainee clerk with a local chartered accountant.

In 1980 we heard of an international school in Pakistan that needed a bookkeeper and a music teacher. As my husband was a music teacher, and it was a school that our sons could attend, we applied, were accepted, and spent three years working up in the Himalayan foothills.

Just as we were leaving the Himalayas, we were invited by the Bishop of Hyderbad to go to Sukkur in Sindh to nurture a newly founded hostel for disadvantaged boys.

In addition to the work at the hostel, I was asked by various institutions to visit and advise or audit their financial systems. As a result, I travelled throughout Pakistan, meeting some wonderful people along the way.

In 1989 we returned to the UK. I worked for Oxfam and added to my qualifications with a BSc from the Open University and an MSc in Audit and Management Consultancy from what is now Birmingham City University. Working for Oxfam, I spent six months in Kabul, Afghanistan, at the time of the civil war when Kabul was being heavily bombarded, and a more relaxed six months in Mozambique. I also visited the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, and worked throughout the UK and Eire.

I am now retired having had a most enjoyable career, and with the help of a professional writer I am now writing a book about my adventures "Salaam Mrs Ellen". Thank you, You and Yours!

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Elizabeth Smith

We pioneered new ways of public participation such as phone-ins, and used letters and vox pops, and did many more interviews with members of the public than most other programming. This gave it all depth, and a fresh and interesting appeal. We also pioneered consumer programming, particularly through one consumer edition a week on You and Yours and the marvellous investigative sister programme Checkpoint. The programme was sometimes sneered at by the grandees of Broadcasting House, who preferred a narrower agenda, covering diplomacy and politics.

The technicalities of delivering radio have changed in 40 years - though not as much as you might think. The BH hierarchy was initially very sniffy about us interviewing people on the telephone, claiming the quality was too poor to use. Well, sometimes it was poor, so we did not use the interview, but sometimes it was fine. Face to face interviewing is best, but for immediacy and for accessing people who cannot get to the studio eg in remote locations, stuck up a tree, or whatever, there is nothing to beat the mobile phone.

Ministers were often interviewed in the early editions, and they would generally come to the studio. And there were fewer PR people in those days, getting between the interviewee and interviewer, so it was easier to speak to the real person. So in some ways the content has got better and in other ways it is worse!

But we felt there was more to life than politicians and we plunged into everything, from bringing up babies to exposing maladministration by - in particular - what was then the Gas Board and other monopoly suppliers such as BT. Crooked lawyers also came near the top of the complaints list. We would have loved to have had e-mail and blogs and websites, but they have now come into their own, and make radio into a truly participative experience. Keep up the good work!

Elizabeth Smith was one of the original producers on You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

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Having stayed at my mum's in Bath - before heading off to record a feature for You and Yours at the Roman Baths - she looked me up and down and - as is customary, provided full subtitles to her raised eyebrow: (my mother hates to be misinterpreted when criticising. Crystal clear comprehension is her sole aim.) "Is that what you are wearing?" she asked. "To go and do an interview?

I looked down too. (Up is harder when you are both the subject to be appraised, and the appraiser. Try it if you don't believe me.) Shoes? Check. Tights? Check. Skirt, top, cardie? Check, check, check. Massive rucksack with recorder, notebook and three months worth of detritus? All present and correct. Still finding the looking up trick, well, tricky, I patted my head in case my hair was missing. Nope. All there. I looked back at her and raised my own brow. "It's just not very smart." she said. Then she softened a little, like an iceberg which had been attacked with a hair-dryer (i.e. not much.) and added "for a top-level reporter, (pause) Darling." Leaving aside the top-level thing, it did start me wondering about the dress code at work. Were we all hideous scruff-bags, in need of a brisk shake down and an iron from my mother, or not?

To be clear: there are no rules that I am aware of, which dictate what we should wear for work at Radio 4. I personally avoid denim, as my first ever boss at Radio Cambridgeshire told me to. I still stick to that rule because she was so frightening, that if she ever caught me wearing jeans now, I would still have to escape to the loos for a little cry. It also makes me feel a bit more professional when I'm out and about meeting people. In the office, however, there is a sliding scale from lycra cycling gear (which gets changed after a cool down) to chinos and jeans, to jackets and sharp little skirt suits. Nothing crazy. Just clothes.

Apparently it was very different forty plus years ago. Thena Heshel devised the original 'You and Yours' programme. As part of her contribution to our anniversary celebrations, she wrote to tell us about the sartorial advice she received when starting out in radio production in 1964: "I was expected to arrive very formally dressed. " she typed "it was even suggested that it might be appropriate on some occasions to wear a hat!" Evening dress for evening recordings was recommended, and Thena recalls wearing "a suit skirt jacket and gloves to produce a weekly live programme called 'Week's Good Cause'. She did point out though, that by the time she joined the BBC, the young ones had started to ignore such advice, which came from "the older generation of producers who were then retiring".

Now it has completely changed. Obviously. In fact, the dressed down approach took on a whole new meaning a few years ago when a new reporter jogged to work and kept on his extra brief running shorts for the morning news meeting. He would then sit in a typically bloke-ish fashion with his legs up on the table requiring everyone else to look primly away, or face a very human exposé. What would my mother have said to that?

Back to her then, and to me in the hallway in Bath. I defended my outfit, reverted to being a teenager, got a bit grumpy and stalked off for my interview. When I arrived, the beautifully dressed woman from Bath and North East Somerset Council looked me up and down and uttered a soft "Oh.." I am still not sure why, and whether it had anything to do with what I had on. I hope not. After all, surely the whole beauty of radio is that no one knows what most of us look like, and no one should really care. That's part of the reason I love the medium, and as my mother has often remarked - probably part of the reason they still let me work in it.

Catherine Carr is a reporter on You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

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Our 40th anniversary programme on four decades of telephony has generated a good deal of response. It didn't seem like the kind of subject to inspire poetry but it seems one extract may now be studied at secondary schools.

Listener and writer Esther Menon was one who got in touch, prompted by Steve Punt's column on the frustrations of the automated switchboard.

Esther is writing a chapter on poetry in a textbook designed for Year 9 pupils studying English. "I am keen to find lively interesting poems to support the work on form, language, structure etc that will prepare students for GCSE," she writes. And apparently Steve's effort fits the bill. You can't just put BBC material in a book without permission and we're currently being advised, before, hopefully, we give Esther the go-ahead.

Alan Windsor wrote us a happy birthday song

And we heard from Elizabeth Smith who was "one of the producers* on that first ever edition of You and Yours. She's now secretary general at the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association. We're hoping for some reflections and recollections about the early You and Yours from her, on this blog soon.

Any use of the superlative on You and Yours is calculated to provoke "Oh no it's not" correspondence and there was no sign of slack being cut for us on our birthday. Julian said, not unreasonably, that the art gallery, installed in a phone box in Yorkshire was the smallest in Britain. But no, said Rebecca Birch, she has an art gallery on her - wait for it - on her window sill. And she's sent us a link to her Ledge Project. And before you ask, no Mark Lawson hasn't interviewed her yet. It's a You and Yours exclusive! The phone box story also prompted Mark Illingworth to send us his photograph of a Swiss version converted to a shower (click on the image to get a closer look).

I've just been told Radio 4's Feedback may be doing a piece on the anniversary and Daily Mail columnist Craig Brown couldn't resist the landmark as a chance to have a laugh at You and Yours' alleged fixation with safety.

Though the impact was softened when I turned a couple of pages to find the Mail covering Toasted Skin Syndrome. Which apparently occurs when you balance your laptop on bare thighs for hours at a time. Thankfully none of our producers suggested we include a piece on laptop burns on You and Yours.

Finally I should say that the Comprehensive Spending Review has forced a re-jig in our schedule next week. The Anniversary edition on disability has been moved from Wednesday October 20th to Friday October 22nd. And we'll be looking at the implications of Government spending plans over two days, starting on the 20th.

Andrew Smith is the Editor of You and Yours, In Touch, Fact the Facts and The Media Show on BBC Radio 4.

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I was seven in 1970, and can remember the one telephone in the hall and the excitement that accompanied the arrival of the second slimline one in my parents' bedroom. When phones first went cordless I can remember the frustration I felt at the promise of freedom this new gadget would offer, only to discover that the reality was rather different. Walk more than six feet away from the main machine and the voice at the other end would at best crackle, and at worst disappear altogether. And I'm sure I'm still nursing the shoulder pains from lifting my first 'mobile'.

There's always a risk with anniversary programmes. Archive material is often intoxicating, and once we start listening to it the danger is that we overuse it, delighting in telling you too much about the past and too little about the future. I hope you'll agree that the archive material we used in the 'telephone' anniversary programme set the tone very nicely. The excerpt from Any Questions?, as panellists debated the merits of writing a letter as opposed to making a phonecall, was a lovely snapshot of the time, and then there were presenter Joan Yorke's instructions to listeners who wanted to get in touch. Suffice to say the system wasn't as spontaneous in the early 1970s as it is today.

So we looked ahead in the 'telephone' programme as well as indulging in a little bit of nostalgia. When I rather naively asked our contributor from the BBC's 'Click' programme if there was realistically anything else he wanted our mobile phones to do, it was someone else's turn to sound 'wide-eyed'. His enthusiasm for what may lie ahead was undoubted. You won't necessarily like everything he looked forward to - I confess I wasn't convinced - but it did suggest that when celebrating You & Yours' 80th anniversary we'll have plenty to talk about.

Julian Worricker presents You and Yours on BBC Radio 4

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