But at £1 per day – the current price of the printed daily – how many people are going to pay to access the website? Wouldn’t they rather just buy the newspaper if they want to read it in depth? On the other hand, many of the visitors to the site will be browsers who just dip in for a few minutes, or people following a link to a particular article. Are they going to pay a pound just for that? Somehow I doubt it. I remain to be convinced of the case for charging for online content, but if charging is deemed necessary, surely this should be though micro-payments: small payments that are charged for each page view. That way, people can still browse the site casually, and the publishers benefit from receiving a small amount of money from a large number of visitors, while still retaining a large reader base and disseminating their editorial line further.

Why does Rupert Murdoch sell newspapers? Is it to make money, or is it to gain influence? Even the printed edition of The Times is loss making, and is cross-subsidised from other publications such as The Sun. If money making was the object, surely closing the paper would be the answer. I’ve always assumed that Murdoch’s aim is political influence, in which case drastically cutting the number of visitors to the newspaper’s website does not seem to be a good idea.

The sad thing about any restrictions placed on online content is that it limits the ways in which it can be accessed. News International have already accused Google of stealing their content. Yet Google News is a fantastic service in the way it allows readers to find the same story in different publications to see what is being said about it in different countries or in journals with a different political bent. The BBC similarly link to articles covering a story on different news sites. People from all corners of the globe still respect The Times and consider it the definitive British newspaper. But for how much longer if they can no longer access it freely? And as with the “legal” sites for downloading music and video content, charging for online news is a huge step backwards in the efforts to remove borders between nations and make different countries a little less insular. It will also seem a little odd if I am able to read a story about British politics for free in the Taipei Times or the India Times but not in The Times of London.

The BBC had an interesting table of statistics in their article, and I’ve reproduced the figures for the four main broadsheets here:

The table shows that all of the newspapers have seen a drop in readers of their print editions, but all except The Times have seen rises in the number of online readers. The Guardian, whose editor has vowed not to charge for online content, has seen a huge increase in online readers. Whatever the exact reason for the figures, it shows that most of the publishers have been quite successful at encouraging people to visit their websites, whereas The Times is losing readers of both its formats. Perhaps policies such as restricting how much content can appear in Google have had a detrimental effect. It does give an indication as to what will happen to reader numbers once charging is introduced.

But maybe the reason for the drop in readers of The Times is that people are tired of the newspaper’s style and political slant, and of the Murdoch editorial line. The newspaper is no longer the revered publication it once was. It seems people simply don’t want to read it any more, and forcing them to pay extra for the privilege certainly isn’t going to improve readership figures.

I came as little surprise to discover on the programme that Griffin is racist, admires Hitler, denies the Holocaust, is friends with Ku Klux Klan members, is Islamophobic, etc. But what people may not have realised, and which was revealed so spectacularly on the programme, is what a political lightweight he is. He was completely out of his depth, his arguments were feeble. He exhibited all the signs of someone who is nervous and unused to speaking in public, with the way he smirked and laughed nervously throughout and how he attacked Jack Straw right at the beginning, when the debate had barely even begun. Racists and bigots will always vote for parties such as the BNP, that’s a fact. However, the party’s recent gains have been due to them presenting themselves as a respectable party with a range of policies on different subjects. Hopefully people who may have been temped to vote for them will now realise that there is no depth to the party at all, nothing behind the racist venir. No policies, just prejudice.

Realising that the programme was a disaster for his party, Nick Griffin is now complaining about the make-up of the studio audience, and the questions that were put to him, claiming that it was “not a genuine Question Time”. I don’t think his claim is valid at all. A few members of the audience did clap following Griffin’s contributions, and a couple of those who spoke voiced opinions at least partially similar to his own. This reflects the population as a whole, where only a small minority agree with the BNP’s views. Certainly, if the programme had been recorded in Burnley, as he suggested, he might have found the audience more supportive, but that’s becasue it’s one of the small minority of areas of the country where his party have had any electoral success. Question Time is a national programme, so having an audience with such a high proportion of BNP supporters, not at all reflecting the rest of the country, would have been the type of extreme bias the BBC strives to avoid. As with certain other obnoxious minority organisations, the BNP and its followers like to delude themselves that everyone in the country shares their view. However, outside of their meetings and online discussion forums, this is simply a fantasy. Apparently, after the show, the Question Time website was flooded with support for Nick Griffin. This is hardly surprising. No doubt they were mobilised by websites, forums and messages, and encouraged to write in support of their leader. Again, they do like to delude themselves and say, “Look, everyone agrees with us!”

As for the questions, these are always chosen by the Question Time studio audience. If this time the audience wanted most of the questions to be about the BNP and its policies, it isn’t the programme’s producers’ place to prevent that. If the programme wasn’t a genuine Question Time, that’s because one if its panellists wasn’t a genuine politician, and the audience knew that.

Various and figures and statistics will now be twisted to suit the agenda of whoever is writing about them. The BNP will claim they gained extra members. Others will claim it was a disaster for them. I can’t really see that it will do the BNP any good in electoral terms. Eight million people watched, but that means the majority of people didn’t. So who did watch? Probably people who either support the BNP already, or who totally oppose what they stand for and wanted to see Griffin made a fool of. Even if some of the former group have now decided to join the BNP, they would have voted for them anyway. As for all the working-class people in places such a Burnley, they probably have little interest in politics, so will have been among the 40 million or so adults who didn’t watch. So their votes won’t have been influenced at all.

In conclusion, I don’t think this programme will have much effect on people’s voting either way. A more serious issue is that more people are voting for the BNP (in most cases, uninformed people who don’t watch Question Time) simply because they are disillusioned with the mainstream parties. Some of the senior politicians, in particular in the Labour Party, should try concentrating their energies into doing something about this, rather than protesting about a TV programme. That’s the real way to beat the BNP.

Imagine if a documentary series that usually draws a small audience showed a programme about a religion which some followers objected to. With the power of the internet, they could soon persuade plenty of others to send in complaints. Also, outside of broadcasting, suppose for example that I object to neighbours being allowed to disturb each other with excessive noise. If I read about such a case in the newspaper, can I then complain to the Environmental Health department about it, despite living in a different town and never having experienced the disturbance for myself? As much as I might hate noise, even if I heard a recording on the radio, I wouldn’t know what it sounded like above the ambient noise, and I wouldn’t know any background to the case. Clearly people should only complain about things they’ve experienced first-hand.

What had probably driven such a large number of people to complain is the sudden realisation of the sort of content that it being paid for by the Licence Fee. So why didn’t any of the original listeners to the show complain? It seems the mainly young audience don’t see anything wrong with swearing and making lewd remarks on the phone to an elderly man, or with publicising sordid details of a woman’s private life. And why don’t they see anything wrong? Because they are continually exposed to this sort of behaviour every day on TV and radio.

When Andrew Sachs appeared in Fawlty Towers in the 70s, John Cleese played Basil Fawlty, a hotel manager who was rude and unpleasant to guests, for its comic value. However, not only was it fiction, the character of Basil Fawlty was a good model of how not to behave, and not to be a good hotel manager, which was what made it so funny. Today, however, so-called comedians see the need to be foul-mouthed and rude to real people, but they are not laughed at as fools because they are behaving improperly, but rather their victims are laughed at. The likes of Ross and Brand are considered role models by young people, who will go on to copy them when they are out in the street. No wonder our society is becoming what it is.

The BBC needs to stop paying what is effectively public money to the likes of Brand (£200,000) and Ross (£6 million). Brand has already resigned. I’ve never seen what’s so great about Jonathan Ross: he’s an untalented and irritating presenter at the best of times, who seemingly got where he is simply through having a speech impediment, so this latest incident would be a good excuse to get rid of him. A lot of the blame must also fall on the editor who decided to broadcast what was a pre-recorded show. And if Ofcom does fine the BBC, how about subtracting the fine from next year’s Licence Fee, rather than it going to the treasury? The fact that each household would only receive a rebate of a few pence just illustrates how pointless this sort of fine is when any big organisation is involved, but at least it would eliminate the often-raised complaint that Licence Fee payers were effectively paying the fine.

Reports also say that contestants will compete daily for a cash prize, with the winner returning the following day to defend his or her title. Part of the genius of the original series was the way the contestants – even ones who didn’t win – returned in subsequent programmes to have several attempts at winning, which also meant that viewers got to know the contestants and could follow their favourites from day to day.

The format may have been tweaked from year to year, but it worked something like this. A series ran for 19 weeks. A week would start with seven new contestants, and there would be an initial qualifying round to choose four contestants to play in that day’s programme. The winner of the programme went through to a final on the Friday, while the losers reappeared the following day. On the Thursday, there would be four remaining contestants so they all had a chance to play without there being a qualifying round. On Friday, the four winners then competed against each other, and the winner went through to the semi-finals. The following week started again with seven new people. (I’m using the terms Monday to Friday quite loosely, as often the schedule slipped so it was not aligned with real weeks. Instead of saying “tomorrow” or “next week”, Henry Kelly always said, “When next we play Going for Gold” for just this reason.) After eight weeks, it was the first semi-final week. Starting with eight contestants, this had no weekly final, and was simply five standard programmes, with the winner of each going through to the finals, and the losers returning the following day, with five chances to go through in total. The following week, the entire process was repeated, taking another nine weeks. The finals week followed the format of a standard week, but starting with 10 contestants instead of the usual seven. The Friday was a grand final featuring the winners of the four programmes that week, with the overall winner taking the holiday prize.

The minimum number of programmes on which a particular contestant could appear was two (if they won the first programme of the week then lost the weekly final) and the theoretical maximum was 15 appearances (work that one out for yourselves!) It was a very clever format, because once viewers were familiar with the contestants, it increased the tension throughout the week as the viewers waited to see if or when the ones they were following would win.

While Channel Five deserve some credit for bringing back a decent quiz that has at least some intelligent content, it seems they have lost the two features that stood Going for Gold apart from other similar programmes. So I’m afraid that, instead of a gold, I can only award them a bronze.

• Going for Gold at UKGameshows

I only have vague recollections of the series, but the one part that had stuck in my mind was where the presenter, Ken Campbell, visited the CERN tunnel, then home to the LHC’s predecessor, the Large Electron-Positron Collider. I can remember that the fire alarm sounded while he was there, and along with everyone else, Ken had to climb the stairs to return to the surface – all off which was shown in the programme.

While I could remember the name of the programme, I couldn’t recall the presenter’s name, and just remembered him being quite an eccentric character. I looked the series up about two weeks ago, and subsequently looked up Ken Campbell, and discovered he had a distinguished career in the theatre, both as an actor and writer, with some of his productions seemingly rather avant garde. He even appeared in an episode of Fawlty Towers, and was also interested in science fiction, the paranormal and popular science, hence his presenting several TV series.

As an occasional Wikipedia editor, I decided Ken Campbell’s article should be located directly at Ken Campbell rather than Ken Campbell (actor), his namesakes being rather more obscure. The article was moved last Wednesday night.

On Sunday night, Ken Campbell died suddenly at the age of 66. Of course, my thoughts are with his family and the colleagues who worked with him on his many varied projects. I doubt that reading up on a TV presenter after 13 years only for him to die less than two weeks later would be paranormal enough for Ken himself to investigate. Rather, I think it’s just an unfortunate coincidence. At least everyone now looking for information on him won’t have to read about a Canadian evangelist or Scottish goalkeeper.

By the time I finally visited CERN, I wasn’t able to go down into the famous tunnel as the LHC was already under construction, so the closest I could get was the top of the shaft into which one of the huge, new detectors would later be lowered.

It’s sad that Ken Campbell didn’t live to see the switching on of CERN’s new machine. As a rare example of someone who at least made an attempt to cross the divide of C. P. Snow’s Two Cultures, he made many people happy, and, quite possibly, as an actor inspired more young physicists than most physicists will do in their lifetimes.

Ken Campbell (1941–2008)

In the week, I’m only really able to listen to the station in the evening. Changes at this time of day include the scrapping of the 6:30pm Classic Newsnight programme. While this was not the best news programme imaginable, it was the only news bulletin I could catch after work, having usually missed most of Radio 4’s news. Instead, Smooth Classics at Seven has been extended by an hour, becoming Smooth Classics at Six. Smooth Classics, presented by John Brunning, was always one of my favourite programmes. Unfortunately, they have now pushed John out in favour of Margherita Taylor, who apparently used to present a programme called Easy Jazz at Six on theJazz. I’m afraid I am so far unable to get used to Ms Taylor’s voice. I don’t know if she’s supposed to be a celebrity because she’s been on TV; I’m not interested in celebrities. I liked John Brunning’s smooth voice presenting this programme. Margherita Taylor appears to have a “trendy” voice with an end-of-sentence intonation I don’t appreciate.

In turn, John Brunning has displaced Nick Bailey as the presenter of the Evening Concert programme, which has been renamed The Full Works. For around five years, Nick has presented the programme live, enabling him to read out listeners’ e-mailed comments as he received them (including several of mine over the years!) This gave the programme a much more personal touch, and meant it was better company for anyone listening alone. Early indications are that The Full Works is no longer presented live. Nick Bailey has now been pushed into the overnight slot, starting from 2am, displacing Mark Griffiths who has now left the station. I’m quite certain Nick isn’t happy about losing the Concert and having to present overnight.

One aspect of the new schedule that has proved most controversial is the introduction of two hours of jazz each night, starting at midnight. The programme is presented by Helen Mayhew, who is also a refugee from theJazz. Lisa Duncombe, the young violinist who was given a job after complaining that the station didn’t promote young artists enough, has also been given the axe. Classic FM used to promote itself as the country’s only 100% classical station, as opposed to rival BBC Radio 3, which has always played jazz. That distinction has now been lost. I should probably go to bed at midnight anyway, but I have to say that, despite my reservations, the jazz programme is the change I mind the least. The music is still quite relaxing, and at that time of night the music is only background to reading or whatever, rather than being for serious listening.

The station has responded to complaints about the introduction of jazz by claiming:

Radio stations periodically change their programming line-ups and our research shows that there is a very strong cross-over between listeners to classical music and jazz.

That is implying that they introduced the new schedule as a result of careful audience research. I would contend that they have done no such thing. The new schedule was introduced in a hurry after GCap decided to pull out of DAB. The evidence for this is clear. In the past, new schedules on Classic FM have been the subject of much fanfare and promotion for weeks beforehand. Now they are calling this the biggest change in 15 years, yet there was no mention of the new schedule until just before it started this week. In the just-released April issue of the Classic FM magazine, they have just managed to get the new schedule in there. But there is a detailed listing of the music that will be played on the Evening Concert in March, with an accompanying article by Nick Bailey who it says, “presents the Classic FM Evening Concert every weekday night from 9pm”. That shows these changes to the schedule weren’t carefully planned as the result of audience research. They were rushed through for commercial and contractual reasons as a result of theJazz closing, after much of the magazine had already been produced.

The jingle that accompanies the new programmes can only be described as naff. I don’t believe it was created by David Arnold, the composer of the famous Classic FM jingle, and of the many arrangements that are heard on the station. It was no doubt recorded in a hurry, again because the schedule change wasn’t planned very far in advance. And what on Earth is the slogan “We raise you up” supposed to mean?!

It seems GCap needed to find a job for Margherita Taylor as a matter or urgency. Perhaps she had some sort of contract that would have been expensive for GCap to terminate – more expensive than sacking Mark Griffiths anyway. Perhaps the contract also specified that Ms Taylor’s programme should be at a time when decent numbers of people are listening, not in the middle of the night. So to make way for her, they have shunted along two long-standing presenters on the station who had presented their respective programmes for many years extremely successfully. The same may be said for Helen Mayhew replacing Lisa Duncombe, although there the motivation is probably also an attempt to appease jazz fans: they can still listen to jazz, as long as they don’t mind staying up until 2am!

I am quite unimpressed with the changes to Classic FM’s schedule. Because of what are ultimately business decisions by the owners, they have spoilt my favourite station quite a bit. Now I can’t listen to the news, I can’t hear “Mr Smooth” present his classics, and I can’t enjoy listening to the concert with Nick Bailey. I hope some of these changes can be reversed when theJazz’s former presenters’ contracts expire. I know that other listeners are unhappy, particularly with the jazz programme. Yet they are unlikely to abandon the station as there aren’t many alternatives. Unless, that is, GCap’s own internet broadcasting strategy turns out to be the way forward, in which case people may well discover that there are many good classical music stations around the world (from countries without draconian copyright laws) and so they can consider abandoning the station that puts business before its listeners.

That was the gist of a recent series of adverts on Classic FM, promoting DAB digital radio. I had grown increasingly annoyed by these frequent and repetitive adverts, which usually told listeners about all the extra stations they could receive (although many, like me, are loyal listeners of Classic FM so would probably not want those) and also said how much easier it is to tune a digital radio (but only slightly easier, particularly if you have an FM radio with RDS…) They used to advertise the “crystal clear sound”, but more recently, that has been changed to “digital quality sound”, which doesn’t really mean a lot.

The reason for the continuous advertising of DAB was that GCap Media, owners of Classic FM, held a 63% in Digital One, the national commercial radio multiplex. Naturally, it was in their interest to persuade people to buy digital radios.

Yesterday, however, it was announced that GCap are going to sell their stake in Digital One and to pull out of DAB, closing their digital stations theJazz and Planet Rock in the process. Instead, they are going to concentrate on FM and broadband radio. Funnily enough, this item didn’t make it onto Classic FM’s Classic Newsnight programme, but there has been a notable absence of digital radio adverts since.

I have never bought a digital radio, mainly because I have doubts about the sound quality. DAB is already an out-of-date system, using the inefficient MP2 codec (yes, that’s one before MP3!) It is capable of delivering good quality sound, but only if the bitrate is high enough (at least 192 kbits/s). Unfortunately, in order to squeeze all the extra stations into the limited bandwidth allocated for digital radio by the government, both the BBC and commercial operators have reduced the bitrate to as low as 64 kbit/s in some cases, with an average bitrate of only 128 kbit/s. The result is that digital radio can sound worse than FM. It’s true that you don’t get the background hiss that is associated with FM, but then if your DAB reception is poor, you can end up with silence. Not only have they reduced the bitrate to insufficient levels, but in order to accommodate the extra stations, some music stations, including the aforementioned theJazz and Planet Rock are even broadcast in mono! While most DAB radios so far have been small portable sets, it’s clear that the system would not be sufficient to replace the tuners in hi-fi systems.

Hopefully, GCap’s dramatic change in strategy will now result in a rethink of digital radio, and speed up the adoption of the far superior DAB+ standard, which uses more efficient audio codecs.

Unfortunately, though, Classic FM listeners still won’t have escaped from GCap’s self-advertisements. A few weeks ago, they launched “My Classic FM”, which provides six internet radio stations. With hindsight, we have to wonder: was this an early indication of GCap’s new policy of focussing on broadband radio? Sadly, the adverts for My Classic FM are just as irritating and repetitive as the ones for DAB, but that’s the price we have to pay for listening to commercial radio.

digitalradiotech.co.uk has a lot of information about digital radio, in particular sound quality and bitrate issues.

Today, it was announced that the BBC has signed a deal with Adobe to provide Flash versions of their video content, including the iPlayer. This will allow users of other operating systems to access the last week’s programmes, but only to watch it as live streams. It still won’t be possible to download the content to watch later. The BBC Trust quickly responded to say that the BBC must still provide the full download service on other platforms.

Flash on websites used to be nothing but a nuisance. Sites would have annoying intros, or even worse, the whole site navigation would be slow and virtually unusable. Happily, with the coming of Web 2.0, far more sites use standard HTML and realise the importance of search engine optimisation. Flash has been given a new lease of life as the technology behind sites such as YouTube. Flash is ideal for this. In the past, streaming video embedded in news sites often didn’t work on people’s computers as they would be lacking a plug-in or codec. But where a Flash player is used, all people need is the Flash plugin. It’s only since the invention of Flash-based video players that watching streamed video online has really taken off.

As some people will know, Flash-based video players actually play video that is streamed in FLV format. There are numerous websites and downloadable tools that allow users to download the FLV content, meaning the content can be watched while offline and kept for posterity. If the BBC use Flash on their website, this will most probably mean that the content can be downloaded – without Digital Rights Management to delete it after a month. Some video sites attempt to obfuscate the actual URL of the stream using multiple Javascript calls, but this is quickly figured out by hackers. A site as popular as the BBC will soon be cracked. But then, we are often told the BBC aren’t he ones who want the restrictive DRM: they don’t own most of the content, so are forced to add DRM by the programme makers.

The announcement suggests that Flash is to be offered for all video content in the future, including video clips on the BBC website. At present, these are offered in either RealPlayer or Windows Media format. There were nasty rumours a while ago that the BBC were planning to scrap RealPlayer, and move over to Windows Media-only. The addition of Flash will mean that, even if RealPlayer disappears, the content will be available to everyone. (Hopefully it won’t be too much harder to download the clips, should you want to, than it is at the moment.) In fact, Flash video on the BBC website isn’t a new thing. They have been trialling it on their technology pages for a while. If you watched the clip about the iPlayer above, you’ve already tried it! If you click through to the BBC website, there is a link to “Watch in the News Player”, which shows the same video in RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. This is the shape of things to come! From this clip about the $100 laptop, is also seems the quality isn’t bad. Now all we need is a decent size for the video…

P.S. You can download the video about the iPlayer in FLV format (yes, the streaming-only Flash video!)

First, to fill in the background: the two companies couldn’t agree on the price that Virgin pays Sky to show Sky’s “basic channels” (Sky One, Sky Three, Sky Sports News and Sky Travel). This resulted in the channels being withdrawn from Virgin’s cable TV service when the previous agreement expired at the end of February.

Now, Virgin Media customers who had signed up so that they could watch Sky One will understandably be angry. But to the outside observer, it’s surely Sky who are to blame for the situation. I know Virgin are not offering a reduction in price as a result, but they have said that customers wishing to leave won’t be held to any minimum contractual period, which seems fair enough.

It’s hard to know exactly what happened during the price negotiations. However, Virgin claim that Sky was asking for double the amount they had received previously. One other point that isn’t highlighted so much in reports is that, as part of the deal, Sky were insisting that customers on Virgin’s cheapest “Medium” TV package should no longer be able to receive their channels anyway. So any Virgin customers on that package would have lost out whether Virgin had agreed to the deal or not, simply because Sky didn’t want them to receive the channels.

Having forced Virgin to give up the Sky channels, BSkyB have launched a campaign of negative advertising and publicity. For example:

• Adverts on Classic FM telling Virgin Media customers they can no longer watch Sky One, and telling them that if they switch to Sky satellite TV, they will be able to catch up on Twenty Four, Lost and The Simpsons in a special “catch up” weekend.
• Newspaper adverts comparing TV, phone and internet prices from the two companies. While the price given for Sky is a special bundled package, they quote the total prices for individual services from Virgin, making it seem more expensive

This week, Virgin Media announced their new 20Mb/s broadband service, a product that has been in the pipeline for some time, and which had nothing to do with the Sky dispute. They described the new product in a press release. While they do say they their competitors can’t match the service, there is no mention of Sky (or any other competitor), and anyone who understands broadband will realise that Virgin’s technology is superior as they have a purpose-built fibre-optic network, rather than squeezing broadband down copper phonelines using ADSL. But Sky responded straight away, issuing a statement accusing Virgin of pushing up prices in the broadband market, and making dubious claims about their own service. Anyone who doubted which side is most “behaving like children” should take note that one company’s press release promoted its own product, while the other criticised the rival’s.

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, it seems Sky News even launched a subtle smear campaign against the Virgin name. I’ll add the caveat that I don’t see Sky News myself, but a poster on the BBC website claimed that in the aftermath of the Cumbria train crash, Sky’s report was heavily biased towards blaming Virgin Trains for the accident, at a time when the rest of the media were concentrating on a faulty track as the likely cause.

It was time someone stood up to Rupert Murdoch. He controls both one of the main broadcast platforms (satellite TV), the channels, and even many of the programs such as Twenty Four and The Simpsons (which are distributed by 20th Century Fox). His competitors are also his customers, and as has been seen, he can use his position to name his own price for his channels (which have the programs and movies people want to watch because he owns those too) safe in the knowledge that if they refuse to pay up, he can remove channels then poach the customers by urging them to switch to his platform. If Virgin hadn’t stood up to Sky, next time around, the price could double again. I’m not even going to touch on Murdoch’s control over other parts of the media such as the newspapers.

Fortunately, not everything is quite going Sky’s way. As a result of pulling channels from Virgin, they have lost 10% of the audience for their basic channels, so advertisers have indicated they will ask for refunds. In a separate development, Sky had announced it plans to withdraw its channels from Freeview, the UK’s free-to-air digital terrestrial platform, and to broadcast pay-TV channels instead. This has angered the other Freeview shareholders such as the BBC and ITV, who have asked the regulator Ofcom to strip Sky of its share in Freeview. Sky is also under investigation by the Office of Fair Trading after it bought a 17.9% stake in ITV, in a move widely seen as intended to block Virgin from buying ITV. Let’s hope the tide will start to turn against Sky, but it’s going take a long time and many more battles before healthier competition can be introduced into the British TV market.

But now I see the sensationalist media have articles such as Crash is major blow for railways, with the front page of BBC News also carrying the lede “Trains on trial: How rail travel can recover from its first fatal crash in years”. So paradoxically, they are saying it’s a disaster for the railways as people will be too scared to take the train, while at the same time pointing out the truth: rail travel is extremely safe, to the extent that no-one has died on the railways for a long time.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I was incensed by a ridiculous comment on the BBC’s Have Your Say page:

It may be statistically less likely to be involved in train crash than a car crash but the fact of the matter is most train crashes are the result of a maintenance person not doing their job properly or a train driver being too tired. I don’t mind dying for my own negligence, but I’ll be damned if I’m to die for someone else’s. Call me old fashioned, but I avoid trains because I don’t like putting my life into the hands of train company’s employees. —Matt Marshall

Putting aside the fact that only one person has been killed in a rail accident in more than two years, compared to thousands of people who are killed in road accidents each year, let’s consider who is most likely to cause a road accident. If a car driver crashes into a ditch or a wall, it’s probably his own fault, although it could be a mechanical fault, faulty brakes, steering, etc. which could be down to negligence on the part of the manufacturer or mechanic. Other accidents will usually involve two vehicles, so statistically, it’s equally likely that a crash is going to be caused by another driver. In fact, if Mr Marshall is a reasonably competent driver, it’s far more likely any road accident he’s involved in will be down to someone else’s negligence – after all, there are a lot of bad drivers out there.

The last deaths in a rail accident in the UK were in November 2004, and on that occasion the crash was caused by a car that had been stopped on the track, apparently for the driver to commit suicide. The worst rail crash in recent years, the crash at Selby in 2001, was caused by a tired driver sure enough, but unlike the driver Mr Marshall imagines, the tired driver at Selby was a car driver, who lost control of his vehicle and stopped on the track, resulting in 10 deaths. (The guilty motorist, Gary Hart, was later jailed for five years.)

Returning to this week’s accident, while my consolations go to the victims and their families, I have to agree with what many of the emergency services and other commentators have said on seeing images of the crash scene: following a crash at 95 miles per hour, with carriages on their side, up in the air, or turned through 180 degrees, I’d feared the number of fatalities would have been far greater. But it appears that the design of the Pendolino train, with all its in-built safety features, meant the carriages remained intact, reducing the injuries sustained. In the past, I’ve heard criticisms of the Italian-designed Pendolino – that it is far too heavy and therefore inefficient – but following this crash, I shall certainly look on it in a new light. While we should of course be concerned that poor maintenance of the track could have caused such an accident, and insist that maintenance procedures are improved so that the likelihood of a crash are reduced, why must we consider this another “failure” of the railways? In fact, the performance of the Pendolino in a high-speed crash should be seen as a success, meaning some good decisions were taken in choosing replacement rolling stock. Nothing can ever reduce the risk of an accident to zero, as rail expert Christian Wolmar puts it:

[The Pendolinos] have a very high standard of resistance to accidents but one has to recognise that they go very fast and that nothing can prevent some damage happening when accidents happen at that speed.

It remains far safer to travel by train than by road. It is only the public’s lack of understanding of risk, and the coverage of rail accidents in the media, that cause people to think otherwise.