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Friday 5 September 2008

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A ray of hope for television

The end of the ‘noddy shot’ is a ray of hope for television

Rod Liddle

Wednesday, 5th September 2007

Channel Five is leading the way to greater transparency

Nobody much likes television, especially not the people who work in it. They think it’s a cretinous medium, a sort of institutionalised con-trick, the cultural equivalent of a McDonald’s Happy Meal — processed excrement which everybody, including the consumer, knows to be dumb and bad for you. I suspect that this has always been true. It wouldn’t surprise me if John Logie Baird was gripped by a feeling of revulsion and self-disgust shortly after transmitting images of his fingers wiggling up and down back in the 1920s, the first ever TV show — and, you have to say, a suitably banal and metaphorically appropriate debut for the medium. Television: a sleight of hand, which will tell you nothing. It’s just fingers wiggling.

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Labour’s punishment freaks are hounding honest citizens

Ross Clark

Ross Clark says that far from keeping our streets safer or cleaner, the government’s new force of amateur policemen are ignoring the worst offenders and pursuing law-abiding innocents instead

‘Whoever killed Benazir wants to kill me’

Christina Lamb

Christina Lamb interviews the husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali Zardari, who hopes to be named President of Pakistan this Saturday

Never mind the Olympics — get set for the Jubilee

Robert Hardman

Free and open to everyone, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012 will eclipse the London Games, says Robert Hardman — an unforgettable tribute to the monarch

A pilgrim’s progress for the 21st century

Mary Wakefield

Mary Wakefield talks to the author William P. Young, whose self-published religious novel has astounded the publishing world and sold nearly two million copies

In defence of David Southall

Theodore Dalrymple

Theodore Dalrymple examines the evidence against two much-vilified British paediatricians, Professors Southall and Meadow, and finds it sadly lacking

Senior moments

Simon Hoggart

New Tricks (BBC1); Mutual Friends (BBC1); Masterchef: the Professionals (BBC1)

That was the year that was

Kate Chisholm

1968: The Year of Revolutions (BBC Radio 4); The Golden Notebook (BBC Radio 4)

Reading on the web is not really reading

Susan Jacoby

Susan Jacoby laments the intellectual crisis now gripping America and says that the torrent of digital infotainment is threatening basic literacy and news knowledge

Too much information

James Delingpole

Blood and Guts (BBC4)

Poles are the fall guys of the immigration debate

Dennis Sewell

The taboo on discussing migration has only been partly lifted, says Dennis Sewell. We pretend that all migrants are the same, whereas the statistics reveal some uncomfortable truths