- From Our Own Correspondent Archived Message
Posted by scrabb
on February 4, 2019, 4:58 pm
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A news item last week on the steep increase in violent crime in the UK (since 2010) and a comment by somebody on the radio that the media on the Continent is far more left-wing friendly than here put a thought into my head. It's this: I would love a programme that invited experts living in different countries (either British living abroad or natives) to compare the actual difference between the UK and other countries. For example, the violent crime statistics for a start. How does the increase in the UK compare with that in France, say, or Germany, or Italy or Spain? Have their figures also increased by the same amount over that period? Or decreased? Or stayed the same? There must be ready access by professionals to a statistical data base which could answer this question. Or the statement about the media being more left-wing friendly in Europe than here. I have no idea if this is true, partly true, a downright lie, or simply invented. But people who know both the UK and have lived abroad must have informed opinions about the actual differences. (As an aside, I have a friend who worked in Germany for over a year. I remember him telling me that he used to have drinks with friends and then walk home late at night alone through the park. I asked him if he wasn't scared to do such a thing. He said no, he felt perfectly safe. And straight off, I realised that he'd given me an insight into another country I never could have guessed or learned about without first-hand experience.) There are dozens, scores, if not hundreds of things I don't know about living in Europe compared to living here. And I thought, wouldn't it be a great idea to have, say, a radio programme in which skilled communicators living abroad pointed out the differences (and similarities) of the two places. Of course, silly me, there already exists such a programme, fronted by the fragrant baritone Kate Adie -- From Our Own Correspondent. Except it never DOES any of the things I want it to or tells me anything really important about those places. Instead it's a cosy BBC "human interest" mash-up where correspondents share personal anecdotes like bloody holiday snaps of the exotic places they've been to or lived in (at our expense). I want to know if knife crime is such a burning issue in Berlin and Madrid and Lisbon as it is here. And if not, why not? What are the reasons? Any BBC producers listening? Or would they even be allowed to produce such a programme anyway? Too dangerous, perhaps, too subversive. |
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