A small record company has announced a cunning plan for world domination: give its entire back catalogue away for free.

Independent label Captains Of Industry (slogan: "this isn't some fucking indie label") have what they call a "five year plan":

A plan to change the world, or if not the world, then our worlds. So cast aside your 21st century cynicism and get in touch with your idealist side - because we are selling nothing other than an ideal here.

Which is all marketing bollocks. But then we get to today's press release:

After some thought, we at the Captains Of Industry record label are proud to announce our decision to give away all of our music completely free as downloads. This includes our entire back catalogue.

Music will be given away via free monthly compilation albums, complete with artwork. For obvious reasons we're calling the series 'Liberation Music'. In the days of cheap downloads sites and illegal file sharing this may not seem like a major move, but as far as we know we are the only record label prepared to take this commercial risk.

Imagine if Coldplay decided to give everything away for free - starting with the Africans. Well it wouldn't happen, would it. So why do this?
Because we're not Coldplay.
Because we have nothing to lose.
Because we believe in economic karma.

They also believe in the power of italics, it would seem. It's a bold move, although your interest may be dimmed once you find out which bands are part of their back catalogue. The track listing for volume one of "Liberation Music" is as follows:

1. Gay For Johnny Depp - Hey Sailor / No Teeth, Thumbs Up Taken from their mini album - Blood The Natural Lubricant (Apocalyptic Adventures Beyond Sodom and Gomorrah)

2. Peace Burial At Sea - Eye-Heart Logic
Taken from the album - This Is Such A Quiet Town

3. Marmaduke Duke - The Kiss & The Consonant
Taken from the album - The Magnificent Duke

4. We Will Be Pilots - We Are Not The Doctors
Taken from the album - This Is What You Fight For

5. Future Ex Wife - Ebony
Taken from the album - Miss September

6. Coyote Men - Monkey Glands
Taken from the album - The Illegal Movers vs Los Coyote Men

7. TEAM - 50,000
Taken from the album - The Penalyn L.P.

8. Kinesis - Everything You Thought You Knew To Be
Taken from the album - You Are Being Lied To

I have vaguely heard of Gay For Johnny Depp, more on the basis of their name than their music, and that's it. The rest? It's anyone's guess. But if you're interested or you just like getting free music (a phrase which ought to rack up a few more Google hits), click here to go to their website. And let me know which tracks you like.

The BBC are carrying an article on a new traffic centre that would have been dull as dishwater, but for this quote from traffic camera controller Matt Kirby*:

"We had an odd one the other day," he says, "200 starlings fell out of the sky, dead, onto the M65. We thought it was bird flu but they'd just flown too near a power line or something. Luckily the delays weren't that bad."

[source: BBC News - 'Sights set on cutting traffic jams']

* Could it be the very same, OJ?

It's a deserted LCC newsroom this lunchtime (I'm in here trying, and failing, to fix some online audio links - all the audio's disappeared off the system, which is always a blow), so I've put Radio 2 on. First thing I heard? Fenella Fudge reading the news, which was very pleasant since she came to give us LCC folk voice coaching last term, and was very good at it too.

And on the news she read, mention of the Electoral Commission wanting one-to-one meetings with the treasurers of both the Labour and Conservative parties over these allegations that they've both been taking dodgy loans in return for favours. What's the point of a meeting with the Labour treasurer?! He's already bloody admitted he didn't have a clue!

"Hello Mr Dromey, glad you could make it. Have a seat."
"Thanks."
"So, what can you tell me about your party's operations with regard to these loans."
"Nothing."
"Can you give us any information on this?"
"Not a bean."
"Thank you very much for coming Mr Dromey, I'll show you out."

Missing: one grouse (famous). Last seen a few years ago in a variety of mildly amusing adverts based on plays on words. Feared dead at the hands of a Famous Grouse marketing relaunch. What the hell do they call this:

Our rather more famous grousey friend seems to have been relegated to the 'goodbye' page of the company's website and the advertising annals contained within.

Of course, don't worry that the grouse will disappear forever if the worst turns out to be true and he's been dumped as official mascot. When search engine Ask did that with Jeeves, Dayorama stepped in and gave the old geezer a new home here - he's one of our forty-odd rotating banners at the top. I've got a Dayoramous Grouse banner waiting in the wings, so to speak...

This is the advert I was going on about yesterday (got round to it eventually):

I just found it amusing. If this really doesn't mean anything to you (and it took me a while, I didn't bother reading the text at first), these guys may have some involvement.

I had the laminate flooring in my flat replaced today. Do you know how much dust it creates? Incredible. Everywhere!! Even my poor avocado plant needs the attentions of a feather duster. Poor thing!

I've managed to nick the very last possible driving test date during my "window of opportunity" before I go on placement in Manchester. It's Friday 21 April at 2:30pm, at the Minehead centre in Somerset. That gives me eleven days from the start of my lessons, on Monday 10 April, to get this driving lark knocked on the head.

Going back to the theory test, this was the sign I mentioned earlier:

Which refers, it transpires, to the ending of a minimum speed zone. You live and learn.

You'll be delighted to know, I'm sure, that I passed my driving theory test. 34 out of 35 on the theory, 65 out of 75 on the hazard perception. As OJ put it, I am theoretically a safe driver.

The question I got wrong: there's a blue circular sign on which "30" is written in white. There is a red line diagonally through it (I'd put a graphic up but I'm on Vodafone wireless right now and have trouble with image quality on it). What does this sign mean?

Your options are:
- A: minimum speed limit
- B: maximum speed limit
- C: end of minimum speed limit
- D: end of maximum speed limit

I've still got no idea, I'll look it up later and supply the answer along with that advert scan I promised earlier.

Music recommendations this week: new singles from Editors and Secret Machines. Buy them for the B sides (oft-overlooked, trust me, they're the whole point to buying singles), particularly Editors' "The Diplomat" and Secret Machines' "Another Minute Standing Still". Also note the release of Guillemots' single "We're Here", Guillemots being one of the bands I tipped for the big time in 2006.

And elsewhere on the web today:

- Ken Livingstone in 100%-correct-about-something shock: "When British troops are putting their lives on the line for American foreign policy, it would be quite nice if they paid the congestion charge," quoth he. Couldn't agree more. Possibly should've stopped short of the "snivelling little crook" comment though regarding the US ambassador.
- Life On Mars is being rewritten and remade for US television, no doubt on the basis this was how Starsky and Hutch should have been done.
- And Google's official blog found itself deleted last night. By Google. Employee Jason Goldman explains:

We've determined the cause of [the] outage. The blog was mistakenly deleted by us (d'oh!) which allowed the blog address to be temporarily claimed by another user. This was not a hack, and nobody guessed our password. Our bad.

A big part of the media law exams I sat last week had to with reporting restrictions - what we can and can't say when filing court reports in a variety of situations. For example any alleged victim of a sexual offence, from the moment they claim to have been a victim of a sexual offence, cannot be named by the media for the rest of their lifetime (with the notable exception that they can if they're later found guilty of something like wasting police time over it).

Youth Courts are another one. These exist to try people under the age of 18, and under the terms of the Children and Young Person's Act 1933 we can't name any child or young person who pops up in one of these, no matter if they're the victim, the accused, a witness, whatever.

But - we can if these restrictions are lifted, as they occasionally are by either victims seeking to clear their name, or the courts in seeking a fair, unprejudiced trial (e.g. appealing for more witnesses to come forward), or in the public interest. And it's on the grounds of the latter that The Times' Steve Bird has been able to name names in this fantastic report of yesterday's events at Newbury Youth Court:

Britain's youngest drink-driver attacked a lawyer and threw a jug of water at magistrates yesterday as she was sentenced for her second offence of driving while drunk.

Leanne Black, 14, screamed obscenities and kicked over a chair before lunging at the prosecutor and punching her in the back. As the three magistrates who had sentenced her to four months in a young offender institution tried to flee, the teenager picked up a two-litre jug of water and hurled it at them.

Black, wearing a shiny white tracksuit and fake gold jewellery, was eventually grabbed by security guards and bundled out of Newbury Youth Court, in Berkshire ... Mrs Bates [chair of the magistrates' bench] took the unusual step of allowing the child to be named moments before the violent scenes. She ruled that the public interest in the case outweighed the court’s duty to protect a young person.

...

The disturbance in Newbury was not limited to the court. As Black arrived she had hurled eggs at photographers as her mother stuck out her buttocks at them. As the family left, there were further scuffles.

[source: The Times - 'Girl, 14, gets new drink-drive ban, then hits lawyer']

There's something a little galling in reading, on the same day I only sit my driving theory test, that a 14 year old is being banned for the second time! I know I'll hardly be the first person to raise this issue, but what purpose does a ban serve on an individual already banned by virtue of their age?

Also in today's Times there's a great advert that I'm going to have to scan when I get home for Dayorama purposes - stay tuned.

That's my friend and coursemate Clare Dutton in full training regalia - she's running the London Marathon on behalf of Bowel Cancer UK next month.

If you have a bit of cash to spare, anything from a pound or two upwards, please take five minutes to sponsor her!

From Clare:

Running this year's London marathon is a massive undertaking for me and I really want to do a good job and raise loads of money for Bowel Cancer UK - a great charity.

If you're on the LCC course and know Clare then you'll already have every reason to give the wee girly some of your hard-earned cash, but if not, think of it this way: donate now and next time you see one of those heartbreaking, phenomenally guilt-inducing cancer-related adverts on TV, you'll be able to think you've at least given a little something to the cause and sleep easier for it...

If anyone wants to go down on Sunday, 23 April and get some photos of our own adopted marathonette to put on Dayorama, I'd be much obliged (I'll be on the way to Manchester otherwise I'd love to be there). Good luck Clare!

Email from a PR representative to me this morning:

Subject: The Times Saturday March 25th

Ollie,

I hope you are well.

I am writing to you to make you aware of 3 important mistakes in the article on Saturday. The article which [company] is featured in has the wrong details for it! The price, telephone number and website address are all wrong. I did send over all the relevant information to you and I cannot understand why it was printed so wrong!!
Please enlighten me on this situation.

Kind Regards.

Reply from me:

Subject: Re: The Times Saturday March 25th

I'm afraid I can't really give you an adequate explanation. This may be because my work was for the Daily Telegraph and our piece is due to run on either 1 or 8 April in the Telegraph Weekend magazine, not last weekend in The Times!

Best wishes - I hope we do a better job for you.

A quick round-up of a few things I've been meaning to mention:

Commiserations to my dad, who failed his driving theory test last night. Happily for him the swine got his licence aeons ago, so falling one mark short of the pass percentage on the mock version I've got on my PC wasn't the end of his world. My stepmum then getting two extra marks and passing it might have been, though. My exam's tomorrow, so I note with a wry smile that OJ has succeeded in booking lunch with me in Oxford just before it starts, allowing him plenty of opportunity to sow the seeds of schadenfreude that will no doubt blossom if I fail it.

On that note, if you never did the Hazard Perception tests, think yourself lucky. You have to click every time you see a hazard, potential or developing, on the screen. One hazard for each clip shown gets marked for reaction time between hazard first appearing and click, from a maximum of 5 marks down to 1. But each clip has around 15 hazards in it, so you don't know which hazard will get marked. Things like cars parked half on the kerb and half off it are losing me marks because I'm more worried about the eighteen-wheeler with its hazard lights on in heavy rain, around which a man with a guide dog is walking.

A couple of good stories from today's MediaGuardian:
- The rise of "participation TV", i.e. premium phone quizzes promising big prizes. (Lovely screengrab of Richard and Judy with the word 'Cheese' above their heads in that article.)
- Peter and Dan Snow are coming back with another of their battlefield series, this time going all around the world.

Don't forget to watch the "Recommended Reading" box on the right of the homepage, below our prospects and the Dayoramap link, for more articles I think are worth a go. And thanks to old pals Bloggers Blog for using me as an example when reporting Google Reader's addition of that kind of "sharing" capability.

Finally, a website to keep you occupied if you don't have much to do - "Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About". Not my girlfriend, you understand, but author Mil Millington's - and he's made a couple of books out of this. If you've not seen this yet though, it's worth a quick look. It's one big, long page with loads of little girlfriendy anecdotes on it, so it's probably wise to pick and choose. This example's a long one, but I thought it rang true, stick with it...

It's Wednesday the 12th of February. It's early evening. Margret and I are sitting in the living room. Margret has asked me to do something the following day.
Mil: 'I can't, I'm afraid. I'm going into town.'
Margret: 'Why? What do you need to go to town for?'
Mil: 'Oh, I have to get some stuff.'
Margret: 'What stuff?'
Mil: 'Just some stuff... things.'
Margret: 'What things?'
Mil: 'Various things.'
Margret: 'What things?'
Mil: 'What does it matter?'
Margret: 'What things?'
Mil: 'It's not important what specific things, is it? I have to get things or I wouldn't be cycling into town, would I? All that's relevant here is that I have to go, not the details of the individual items I need to get - there's no point wasting time giving you a big list, when the only significant point is that I need to go to town.'
Margret: 'What things?'
Mil: 'Oh, for Christ's sake... Pizzas. I need to buy some pizzas, OK?'
Margret: 'We've got pizzas.'
Mil: 'We've got a pizza.'
Margret: 'So? How many do you need?'
Mil: 'Several. I want to have several in the fridge.'
Margret: 'Why?'
Mil: 'So that we have a stock of them.'
Margret: 'Why?'
Mil: 'So that we don't run out, obviously.'
Margret: 'What would happen if we ran out?'
Mil: 'I'd have to go to town.'
This flings itself out of my mouth while my higher brain is still racing along behind it frantically waving its arms and shouting, 'Wait! Wait!'
Margret responds with just the tiniest movement of her eyebrows. Absolutely minuscule. Sufficient in size, however, to make me wonder if I could get a UN resolution to have her bombed.
Mil: 'I have to get other things too.'
Margret: 'What things?'
Mil: 'What the bloody hell does it matter? Why can't I go to town if I want to, for God's sake?'
Margret: 'Why are you being secretive? What are you up to?'
Mil: 'I'm not up to anything.'
Margret: 'Yes you are.'
Mil: 'Like what?'
Margret: 'I don't know.'
Mil: 'Because there isn't anything.'
Margret: 'Yes there is - I can tell.'
Mil: 'There isn't.'
Margret: 'You bloody liar.'
Mil: 'You bloody mad woman.'
Margret: 'Tell me.'
Mil: 'Stop talking now.'
Margret: 'Tell me.'
Mil: 'I...'
Margret: 'Tell me.'
I think we've both risen to our feet by this point (it allows for better voice projection).
Mil: 'OK! OK! You want to know why I need to go up town, you relentless harridan?!'
Margret: ''Yes! You lying swine!'
Mil: 'So I can get your Valentine's Day card! So I can get your bloody Valentine's Day card and post it to here - so it'll arrive as a nice surprise through the post!'
A tiny flicker. It's the merest stutter of hesitation, though, then she's back on track before the beat is really lost.
Margret: 'You don't need to get me a bloody Valentine's Day card!'
(I can't imagine what makes her think she's going to get away with this move - she must be getting old.)
Mil: 'Too bad! Because I'm getting you a Valentine's Day card! And I'm posting it to you! Tomorrow! When I go to town!'
Margret: 'THERE'S NO BLOODY NEED!'
Mil: 'WELL IT'S GOING TO BLOODY HAPPEN - GET USED TO IT!'
And, indeed, I do go to town, buy her a card, and post it. Inside I write, 'Surprise!' She gets it on Valentine's Day and says, 'Thank you,' to me, through gritted teeth. (She gets me one too, by the way - it reads, "I'm not interested in a nice, normal relationship... I like ours better.")

Better late than never - Thursday night was the last night of term at the London College of Communication, where our courageous Postgraduate Diploma (Broadcast Journalism) students have battled their way through another series of newsdays and assessments. They're all documented on this blog somewhere if you can be bothered to look (bung "LCC" in the search box, bound to come up with something).

Warning: Self-indulgent personal bollocks about what the food was like, what the places we went were like, and a whole load of photos of friends, now follows. If you've just come here from a search engine or for something intellectually stimulating, I've just written something about bullying which - while hardly Nobel prize-winning - is better than this.

So what better way to see out the term than a Chinese restaurant and a club or two? We started off at Black's, a members' club in Soho and one I rate very highly (yeah, out of my total members' club experiences: 1). Lovely furniture, no blaring music, odd-but-nice Polish beer, no mobile phones, log fire, peace and quiet. I know I occasionally exhibit signs of being 60 before my time, but give me this over Fabric any day.

From there we went to the Mayflower (at least I think that's what it was called), a nearby Chinese restaurant who did well to make room for around 15 of us. Again, fantastic food, although it seemed incredibly expensive. But then I'm used to paying for my Chinese at the "Chinese Dinner" in Streatham Vale, an altogether different proposition.

Here's a series of photos from our evening in the Chinese, so if you don't really know these people or care, probably best move on.

Still with me? Excellent, here goes.

It'll be ages before we re-convene: four weeks off, then three week placements for some of us (and a TV course for others, which I'll go on after my time in Manchester). It's all coming to an end! The sadness, but oh, those happy memories. Plenty left in the LCC newsroom tank yet though (TV course will be a cracker, rest assured...).

Since Thursday night I've actually managed to become the centre of gossip for once in my life (I'm usually behind the camera peddling the goss instead, it's a definite eye-opener). One of my friends was told by a friend of another friend - ain't that always the way - that I'd pulled someone on Thursday night. This I can categorically deny, but still, it's nice to think that if Heat magazine did an LCC edition, I'd have got onto about page 14.

That's a section from a new poster launched by Bullywatch London, slogan: "If you can spot it, you can stop it."

By which token if I can spot a distressing visualisation of what life would be like in London under Orwell's Big Brother, I should be able to somehow stop it. I mean, look at it! Does that poster make you more inclined to report instances of bullying? Or does it make you think of everyone around you as having a giant CCTV camera for a head?

To me it's a frightening echo of a certain Dr Who episode shown last year:

Bullying is a problem and one we need to tackle, but the powers that be seem forever incapable of coming up with an effective means of doing so. Remember the blue wristbands with "Beat Bullying" proudly emblazoned on them, as modelled by the likes of Bono? KIds wearing them at school were beaten up for it on the grounds that, by wearing the band, they marked themselves out as easy targets!

Now we have posters where two kids engage in the sort of public act of bullying I don't think you'd normally get (give over, bullying's far more insidious than that, it's the mind games and not the knitting bones that do the damage), and people with spooky cameras for heads stand and watch!

To me, that sends out this message to the British public:

If you see an act of bullying occur, act like a CCTV camera: an inanimate, grey object, powerless to intervene or do anything other than watch from a safe distance in case someone comes along asking questions later.

Is that the society we want? The phrase "have-a-go hero" is much derided, but do we really want to encourage people to leave kids alone to be battered in the streets, just as long as they got a good enough view of the perpetrator so that someone might catch them once hell freezes over? Isn't that what the actual CCTV cameras are supposed to do?

If I'm getting attacked on a London street I'd much rather you came in guns blazing (not literally, let's not be too extreme) with a few other strangers you'd got together, chased away the culprits and helped me to my feet, thanks. Leaving me for dead but making a detailed note of the trainers my attacker's wearing is no use to me at all. Stop it, don't spot it.

You all know I'm blonde, so to save any future embarrassment, I'm just going to admit to my latest faux pas.

It was Saturday afternoon. Had spent the day reading the paper, attempting the crossword and browsing through various magazines. I was half-way through The Field, when I came across an article on Treacle Mining. Treacle mining? Carbonised sugar cane? Dug up in mines? Hmm. Now, I'm an innocent little thing and I believe everything I read in magazines... even when the articles are in the April edition. So, I begin discussing this. Much to everyone else's laughter. I then ring my father for confirmation... and what does he say... "Yes dear, treacle mines exist right next to toffee apple plantations". I hate you all!

As I write I'm in the car slowly crawling out of London, more specifically Stamford Bridge, where I've just seen Chelsea comfortably dispatch Manchester City 2-0.

Not that they entirely deserved to. By all means the talent they have on display was of a standard far superior to anything we can offer, especially with ten first team City players out injured. But the tendency of Chelsea players to bend or break the rules of the game, securing victories they could otherwise comfortably achieve within the regulations, is becoming a standard feature of top-flight football.

Today they were aided and abetted by referee Rob Styles and his assistants. They conspired to miss what I, having only seen it once and with very much a subjective point of view, consider to be one of the most blatant handball offences I've ever seen. Chelsea striker Didier Drogba controlled the ball with his outstretched arm, in plain view of the linesman if not the referee, before calmly slotting it home and celebrating, to quote Five Live just now, "with no shame".

Of course, that's less Chelsea's fault and more the fault of the officials, who did not help matters by sending off City captain Sylvain Distin for continuing to protest at half-time. My dad and I agreed that we'd have both been sent off long before the break, incensed as we were, so I hold little truck with BBC Sport Online's assertion that Distin was letting his side down in receiving his marching orders. Yes, viewed in the harsh light of day it is stupid to get oneself sent off over the issue, condemning one's side to even greater misery, but I don't think many people in Distin's position would have summoned up any more restraint. It is not as though Distin launched himself at the referee with a machete, much as I'm sure he'd have loved to. He simply walked over as the whistle went for half-time to continue remonstrating. At that precise moment, Mr Styles made certain of ruining a game he'd already nigh on wrecked.

Bear in mind that for the home supporters at Chelsea, it costs more than enough money to see what fizzled out to become a nothing encounter in the second half - City weren't about to threaten anything and Chelsea had long since given up trying. Then consider the Manchester City fans. It costs forty-eight pounds - forty-eight pounds - to sit in Chelsea's away end. Add that on top of travel costs like petrol or train tickets and you've probably paid well into three figures to watch a referee unnecessarily destroy a football match, first through an unaccountably appalling oversight, then an overzealous reaction to the understandably irate victims of that decision. I hope he is suitably censured by the authorities (he won't be).

I don't begrudge Chelsea the victory. I'd have taken 2-0 before the kick-off given the disparity between the two sides. But something needs to be done to iron out frankly bizarre officiating like we've seen today. You may think Distin deserved to be sent off (an argument can be made for it), but that situation would not have arisen had the officials been able to spot a clear infringement in the first place. An infringement, I might add, that put the game beyond doubt.

So it comes down to technology, doesn't it. That age-old question - do we want technology to start making decisions for us, or at the very least helping? I don't think I can see any reason, any more, why controversial decisions should not be referred to a footballing "third umpire", a video referee able to spend 30 seconds reviewing the blanket TV coverage available at all these matches before arriving at an informed decision. This need only be employed in situations the referee considers to have a crucial bearing on a match - goals, dismissals etc.

Let's use Drogba's disputed goal as an example.

Didier Drogba receives the ball from a cross, and it appears to clearly hit his hand. Neither the linesman nor the referee seem to witness this and, with play allowed to continue, Drogba coolly finishes the move, scoring a goal.

Without TV replay: Drogba and players spend a minute or so celebrating the goal (as would any team, it's normal) before settling back down. The entire Manchester City team are incensed. One Manchester City player is later sent off as a direct result. The referee, despite being a full 90 yards from any away supporter, is given an escort off the pitch at half-time through sheer volume of dissent voiced by supporters.

With TV replay: the referee notes the incensed reaction and handball appeal of the Manchester City players and immediately stops his watch before signalling for the video referee (ten seconds have elapsed since the goal was scored). Drogba, the rest of the Chelsea players and the City team all wait for a decision - you may have seen this in rugby, where a "TRY/NO TRY" verdict is displayed on the big screens (screens almost all top-flight clubs now have, or else you could announce the verdict over the tannoy). It takes the video referee fifteen seconds to call up the relevant footage of the goal and the incident. It then takes him a further twenty to thirty seconds to make his mind up as to whether an infraction has been committed. He then returns his result - no goal, handball, free kick to Manchester City - and play takes a further twenty seconds to resume.

I reckon that's just over a minute required from the moment the ball hits the back of the net to the resumption of play - roughly the amount of time it takes players to finish celebrating after a goal is scored. Considering the potential of video technology to stop these matches boiling over - with plenty at stake in terms of pride, finances, European qualification, Cup progress etc - I think it's time we introduced it.

A quick postscript: Drogba has just been on the radio. He says he thinks all the focus is on his handball because he plays for Chelsea, and Chelsea are a big club, and no one likes to see them succeed. "If Manchester City had done this, no one would say a thing." Au contraire, Didier. If Manchester City had done this, all the Chelsea players would have been furious, all their fans would have been furious, and it would all have happened from the other point of view. No one wants to see it happen - demonstrably poor officiating should not be a part of football just because it traditionally has been. Introduce TV technology at very little time penalty and we'd solve a lot of these problems.

A brand new feature for Dayorama this fine Saturday morning - you can now have a look at some of the best articles I've recently read, without having to plod through me harping on about them first.

On the right hand menu bar, below our prospects, you'll now find 'Recommended Reading'. This is a list of the most recent articles I've marked with a 'star' in Google Reader, the RSS reader I use. I'll be sure in future to mark the items I think are worth reading with a star, and they'll turn up on the right hand menu bar automatically. You can click the links to read the original articles, or follow a separate link to the home page of the website the article came from.

You can also subscribe to the recommended reading list as an RSS feed yourself, so you can read all the good stuff I find without even visiting the site.

If you're not sure what RSS is yet, it's worth finding out. The BBC has a good guide to it here.

Today's Guardian has a very good piece from Emily Bell, editor of Guardian Unlimited (i.e. their website), about the paper's new podcasts and various related ramifications.

First up, here's an idea of what's going to be on offer:

There is a daily news show, inventively called Newsdesk, which one of our news editors, Jon Dennis, is anchoring (during podcast training his dry tones suggested he could be catapulted to John Peel-esque fame). There is a politics show fronted by our seasoned political commentator and ace broadcaster Mike White, a media talk show hosted by media editor Matt Wells, a science and technology show, an arts and entertainment show, a music show about much-loved albums (a sort of musical Good Read) which our director of digital publishing, Simon Waldman, is turning his hand to, and a raft of other projects to follow.

Then Emily goes on to mention Volvo's involvoment (I know, I crack me up) in the podcasts as sponsors, making the valid and worth-pondering point that podcasts aren't regulated yet:

I wonder, fleetingly, if I should mention during recording the media talk podcast that I drive a Volvo (which I do) and it is an excellent car (which it is) ... Thus far, podcasts are not under the auspices of media regulator Ofcom, and it is not clear that they would be self-regulated by the Press Complaints Commission, either. Therefore issues such as bias, loose language, undue commercial prominence and the plugging of sponsors' products are not prohibited as they would be under the stringent rules which apply to radio licences. Anyone can podcast anything. I leave the gratuitous Volvo mention to one side, but I can't help feeling that this is one area where regulators will spot a job creation opportunity.

Never mind the regulators, I've spotted a job creation opportunity too. I've got a near-as-dammit irregular podcast going on here in terms of audio supplied to Dayorama (and the near-live Dayoramoblogs, posted from my mobile phone as and when I feel the need - example here). I've also given plenty of thought to a regular Dayorama podcast, something I still want to do, possibly when I have my own place and can set up a little studio corner to produce things properly. It also needs to have people other than me talking in it (I do realise I can be very boring, fear not), which I could achieve using Skype - recording interviews and informal discussion via free internet phone calls, in other words - if nothing else. It's worth a bit of research and development.

But that's not going to pay me; I couldn't do what some people are trying, go off and make a living out of a weblog or podcast, much as in some ways I think that's my ideal environment. Instead, I do harbour some interest in the prospect of working for a newspaper podcast. Guy Ruddle is the Telegraph's Podcast Editor, which sounds very much to me like a full-time position alongside his commitment to early-morning Five Live programming, and he's very good at his job.

I've listened to offerings from both the Times and Telegraph, and the Telegraph wins hands down. The Times had one uninterested-sounding individual reading articles out of the print edition of the paper for three quarters of an hour; The Telegraph had Guy and six or seven of the paper's other journalists involved in around a half-hour show, including a different foreign correspondent each day and some lively, informal banter with the city and showbiz staff. It was only let down by incredibly wooden performances from the 'newsreader' (sounded for all the world like someone on print journalism work experience, a broadcasting recipe for disaster) and the market round-up presenter.

I can't imagine newspapers are yet thinking of paying that many, if any, people as full-time podcasting staff - and if they do, it'll be for a pittance I'm sure - but it's worth bearing in mind. How about working as a podcaster for somewhere like The Sun? It'd be a brilliant job, to my mind. I'm half tempted to email them about it.

Anyway, do try some national newspaper podcasts, especially if you commute anywhere for longer than half an hour each morning. Why bother listening to the same old music on the tube when you can have Guy Ruddle et al acting like the breakfast show in the radio-free underground? The Telegraph, Guardian and Times all definitely have podcasts to try (I'll be interested to see if The Times has got any better in the last month or so). The Telegraph podcast is available directly from iTunes for free and comes recommended by me.

A title that makes me sound like I'm pouring coffee. But I'm ashamed at The Week, or more specifically its editor Caroline Law.

This is the weekly magazine which rounds up the news and comment from newspapers both home and abroad. It's immensely useful, highly readable and a fine product all round. My dad got me into it and I've had a subscription for quite a while now, plus I've seen a steady rise in the number of people reading it on things like buses and trains around London. It's a magazine that is going places, providing a digest of all the best articles in one convenient location.

So it's saddening when the editor writes something quite as alarmingly craven and ignorant as she has this week. This is the text of The Week's brief editorial column, in full:

"What are you looking at?" It's a question every city dweller dreads: you've run into a yob, grandstanding on the street, looking for trouble. What are your options? Face down the aggressor, and risk violence? Or avert your eyes, and skuttle meekly away, your day ruined, your spirit crushed, so that he can swagger on, king of the hill? Francis Gilbert, author of a new book, Yob Nation, calls this kind of territorial behaviour "parading", and it seems it's not confined to thugs. We're all at it now, bristling with knee-jerk indignation, primed to take offence.

Dismayed by the incompetents competing for his patronage on The Apprentice last week, Sir Alan Sugar warned them that his company, Amstrad, was a real business - not a further education college where "dummkopfs come to learn where to make mistakes". To must of us, it was a throwaway remark on an entertaining TV show; to Dr John Brennan, cheif executive of the Association of Colleges, it was a grave slight on him, his colleges, and hardworking students up and down the land. Seizing the opportunity to assert himself over a well-known pugilist, Dr Brennan wrote Sir Alan an outraged letter, requesting an apology. And perhaps he'll get one, since Amstrad - as Dr Brennan surely knows - does a lot of business with FE colleges. But let's hope not. Because if we kowtow to the unarmed grandstanders, the passive aggressors in their comfortable offices, what chance have we got against the yobs on the street?

My blood boils just rewriting that for this weblog. What absolute self-defeating, hypocritical nonsense (and she over-uses commas as well, if I'm allowed a cheap crack). The thrust of her piece is that Dr John Brennan is "grandstanding" by making his complaint, and should not be allowed to defeat a "well-known pugilist" like Sir Alan Sugar. I hardly know where to begin. Let's take this point by point:

"Sir Alan Sugar, a well-known pugilist" - and not a "grandstander" himself at all, of course. Using your ability to make "throwaway" remarks to millions of people in order to generalise horrendously about an entire industry isn't grandstanding in the slightest, then, is it? It was a grave slight! Had I been in Dr Brennan's position I'd have felt perfectly entitled to an outraged letter demanding an apology. Sir Alan had every right to say that about FE colleges, and Dr Brennan had every right to demand an apology. This is not some absurd yob-related concept of grandstanding or "bristling with knee-jerk indignation", this is free speech. Had Dr Brennan shot, stabbed or otherwise physically attacked Sir Alan, I may have understood the analogy and the theory behind the editorial. He didn't, and I don't. Differences of opinion do not "passive aggressors" and "unarmed grandstanders" make.

"Unarmed grandstanders" - yes, speaking of that, what bollocks is that supposed to be? Sir Alan Sugar, broadcasting to the nation on prime-time television during a series with a cult following (substitute one of the Ls in this sentence for an N depending on your point of view), is vety much an armed grandstander! Is that in any way better than an unarmed one? Is it perfectly acceptable to make derogatory generalisations without reproach on national television? By all means allow him to say it, but he has no immunity from further education professionals and students feeling quite rightly hard done by. This is a basic concept of our society, not some new fad that's cottoned on, otherwise letters page would never have existed in national newspapers.

"We're all at it now, bristling with knee-jerk indignation" - quite right, Caroline. You're at it yourself, writing an editorial bristling with knee-jerk indignation at Dr Brennan's knee-jerk indignation. I'm at it writing a weblog post bristling with knee-jerk indignation at your knee-jerk indignation at Dr Brennan's knee-jerk indignation. And yet somehow it almost feels like we're just expressing opinions rather than bristling with anything untoward. No one has died, to quote a certain Radio 1 Newsbeat editor I met a few weeks ago. The earth has not stopped moving. These are not the actions of yobs threatening people on the street, this is reasoned debate between a man who thinks FE colleges are useless and a man who doesn't.

"The passive aggressors in their comfortable offices" - one wonders how spartan your office is, Caroline. Would that I had the ability to make a "throwaway remark" or two on national TV. Who knows, maybe at some point in the future I will? And if I do, I'll make sure I take the time to remark that Caroline Law and her team at The Week are a bunch of worthless, untalented hacks with nothing more to contribute to human existence than collecting proper journalism from other journalists and publishing it for their own gain. And naturally I expect you to take that lying down, Caroline. None of that grandstanding now...

OWL stands for Oxford Wireless LAN. This means I now have internet access in the American Institute. Oh dear.

We wouldn't be a very good Guardian-shortlisted Best British Weblog (alright, alright, it was in 2002 but even so) if we didn't at least briefly mention today's budget.

The problem for most news outlets is of course that it's the most boring budget in a long time, and budgets are traditionally boring. Gordon Brown said so little worth reporting that Jon Snow's opening comment on Channel 4 News referred to the recycled paper used to produce each edition of the budget. In his 'Snowmail' email update an hour before the programme, he'd said it wasn't recycled. At 7pm, he said it was 50% recycled. That discrepancy, dear user - a mistake on the behalf Mr Snow, most probably - is almost the most exciting budget related news to report.

But not quite. Ahead of it is Five Live's revelation regarding the cars which qualify for 0% vehicle excise duty, as announced by Mr Brown today. There are two types of car which qualify for this rebate. One is a Honda, the other a diesel Smart car. The car must be new to qualify for the rebate. Neither car, Five Live discovered, is now available for purchase in the UK. The 0% vehicle excise duty concession is therefore available to nobody.

Now that is certainly something, but my interest is piqued instead by a phrase used all day long to describe this budget. "The devil is in the detail," they all say. at least three different people on Five Live, Channel 4, and various websites have used this phrase to suggest Gordon has been less than up front about certain items on the UK's financial agenda.

Typically, it is the legal profession leading the way in the use of meaningless jargon. "But as one lawyer commented, 'the devil is in the detail'," reports TheLawyer.com.

Only Nick Robinson avoids using the term (or at least I've checked twice and can't find it, and my suspicions remain). Instead he pointed out one fine example of the machinations to which the term alludes:

Study the Treasury's Red Book - the bible of hard facts that shed harsh light on political rhetoric - and you discover that the "long term ambition" to match what private schools spend in state schools comes with no figures attached, no target date and no explanation of how it will be paid for. Provided the government doesn't cut school spending it will inevitably reach what's spent now in cash terms in private schools.

And since they're students, they're getting paid peanuts.

The NUJ's annual conference is being blogged by a team of 15 journalism students (yes, other peons of the media industry like myself). Those are the mugshots of the team above, plus their two actual-journalist mentors in the corner. Somehow I suspect a few of those photos are not of the individuals they purport to be.

You can click here to read the blog, though at the time of writing very little exists. For example you can still read the instructions left on the blog for the young bloggers themselves to follow. This is all the usual highly basic bollocks like so:

Check your copy before posting. And always ask a co-writer to double check it for content, tone and typos before it goes live.

Since the students involved are print and broadcast - as well as those fancy MA students who you always suspect of spending more time concocting wild theories on which to base a thesis - we're promised a cocktail of text, video and audio reports from the Liverpool venue.

I'll certainly be keeping up to date with it, if only to weigh up the standard of material being put out by other journalists on courses like mine, as well as BA/MA courses around the country. And also because I feel a bit sorry for them after reading this section of their instructions:

There is no point writing for no-one, at least not for this project. So each of us needs to undertake a personal promotion campaign - email the site's address to everyone you know. I kid you not! Proper grown-up bloggers go to other relevant blogs, add their comments and then link back to their own sites - and that's a great way to build an audience. I'm not sure we've got time to do that really, but if you can give it a try, great!

There, I've done my bit. Someone on my course once called me a 'public servant' (of which I'm very proud, I might add), so that's my good deed done for the day.

Anna Adams, now officially Best Looking Undercover Reporter, taking over from Donal Macintyre in what is otherwise a very poorly contested category.

I've just finished watching the investigation into UK estate agents put together by Anna and fellow reporter Emma Clarke (possibly not their real names, I can't decide - Anna Adams appears not to exist elsewhere on the internet in any shape or form, other than as a middle-aged author and poet)

It was very well done, and was always a guaranteed winner on a topic most people approach with preconceptions in the first place. As one text contributor to Five Live put it in the programme's aftermath:

So estate agents are crooked. Well done BBC. What's next? 'Bear defecates in woods' exclusive?

But that's missing the point. Sure, we all think we know estate agents are less than level with us. Even so, sitting in front of the television watching employee after employee indulging in a variety of tricks to screw both buyers and sellers is compulsive viewing. It's essentially licence to sit in front of the box screaming 'Bastard!' every four or five minutes. No one passes up that opportunity. This is why soap opera is such a popular medium ('They're under the patio! Under the patio!').

I've just one complaint about the entire programme. No, two complaints, but one is arsey nitpicking because after five months' training to be a broadcast journalist I think I know everything. In other words, I thought the script was a bit unsteady now and again, and fell too often into the trap of overdoing the naivety.

In reality, the phrase 'I was worried that this wasn't right' is a little incongruous as you watch estate agents telling our undercover reporter to lie brazenly to anyone and everyone. Of course it's not right. Were you bollocks worried, that was exactly what you'd expected to find and now you're thrilled because it means you have a programme in the making.

Louis Theroux does this as well. In his Weird Weekends series (he's returning to BBC2 by the way, hurrah) he'd be filmed sitting in on an orgy involving 30 naked, middle-aged Americans, romping around with each other in some suburban idyll. Then he'll narrate over the top: 'I felt a little uncomfortable being here.' Really... no shit, Sherlock. Of course if we're honest, you also felt elated that you had footage of 30 naked, middle-aged Americans romping around with each other, ready to broadcast to an open-mouthed British public.

And speaking of shit, that's my main complaint with tonight's report on estate agents. At one point we were shown some secretly filmed footage inside the estate agent Foxtons (who really, really didn't come out of this well). You could distinctly hear people using the word 'shit' over and over again. Nothing was bleeped out. Yet the subtitles that had been put in place to clarify the voices - not the ones provided by Ceefax, these were put in by the production team to help you understand what was being said - had all asterisked out the word: 's**t'.

Why?

If we can perfectly well hear people saying 'shit', what possible further damage could be done by spelling the word out on the screen? Is it okay if kids who stayed up late enough learn how to say it, but entirely unacceptable for them to spell it correctly? Are deaf people particularly sensitive to the word?

I wonder if this is to do with a little-known piece of technology used when subtitling programmes. Earlier today I discovered the stenographers who transcribe the subtitles for live programmes use special dictionaries which filter out swear-words to ensure they are not broadcast. This is documented in a MediaGuardian article, part of which is reproduced here (the link would want you to register, which I never like to encourage):

Channel 4's Richard and Judy escaped criticism after an ... error was made with a swear word appearing on subtitles. Ofcom was told the stenographer quickly realised the mistake and issued an apology at the end of the programme.

The broadcaster revealed that the wrong electronic dictionary had been used - enabling the stenographer to create subtitles at speed. The dictionary allowed strong language and was designed for Big Brother post-watershed broadcasting.

If the subtitles dropped into the estate agent report also used some form of dictionary, presumably the dictionary asterisked out 'shit' while we all got to hear it.

Of course if you work for Foxtons, you were seeing, hearing and thinking and doing nothing but shit for the entire hour.

In other news, I'm glad Manchester City's abject failure to beat West Ham in the FA Cup last night has been more than matched by Birmingham's 7-0 annihilation at home to Liverpool in the same competition. Misery loves company.

I've been the editor of one half of our LCC newsroom (around 13 or 14 people) for the past six or seven weeks for our 'online' project.

That means creating a news/features website, perhaps a bit like the BBC's "Where I Live" pages, using a series of Monday afternoon sessions, culminating in the deadline today.

In reality the Monday sessions didn't really work out too well - people had other assessments, and entirely understandably, they went off and did those instead (including me, I am by no means blameless there).

So all the hard graft essentially took place today, especially from my point of view. For the past month or two I've had virtually nothing to do except make a few 'executive decisions' about articles and generally appear jovial and enthusiastic, which I'd like to think I try to do anyway.

But today was one long, torrential downpour of work from the moment I got in. And I really enjoyed it, let me immediately confess, lest you get the impression I'm complaining. I love the whole website design thing, I love editing (a true megalomaniac at heart), I love being the one in charge of putting lots of individual contributions together into a finished work of art, essentially.

And so without further ado, go to LCC Broadcast and select 'Castles' to admire my team's work.

There are fully researched articles (proper journalism, none of my Dayorama nonsense) covering topics ranging from referees at kids' football matches through to the theft of sculptures in London. We've got an interview with Robert Edwards, director of political satire 'Land of the Blind'; we've got a trip down to the Thames to see what weird objects lie under the water (everything from religious icons to sets of false teeth); speaking of religion there's a couple of great spiritual articles covering religious dating and the Alpha course, which promotes Christianity.

Elsewhere you can read all about the dangers marathon runners will face taking on the usual London route next month, including an interview with a man who suffered a hernia during one such race - ouch. You can go round a selection of top London music venues and sample the music on offer, or if you're feeling a little frisky you can find out more about male pole dancing!

There's more on energy use in the UK and the drive to stay carbon neutral, if you enjoyed the stuff I did on the Energy Review a month or two ago. And if you listened to Jason Leonard on here a couple of weeks back, you can read a comprehensive dissection of England's dismal Six Nations failure, with individual profiles of five key players.

Finally, we've a great pair of articles following a wheelchair-bound woman around London as she tried to get to the England v Ireland game at Twickenham last weekend. Our reporter went all the way with her, so to speak, and took a great series of photos. Here's one example:

It had never previously occurred to me that people using wheelchairs have no hope of pressing the buttons or inserting coins into one of these machines. Trapped! It's a disgraceful oversight, and those machines have been around for years.

Anyway, do check out the site, and be quick - I don't know how long it'll stay there before it's wiped ready for next year's teams. In fact, if you're reading this after the summer of 2006, it's safe to say you're not reading any of my team's work at all! I imagine I'll shed a tear when that comes to pass...

Oh and before I forget, there's even my very own 'From The Editor's Desktop' tucked away in there, if you can find it. Pete Clifton eat your heart out (he used to write them all the time for the BBC News website, if you don't know).

In other news, and very briefly, there is a great plan coming together for the TV module we do as part of the course next year. The idea is we get in groups of three or four and those teams go round recording the relevant TV material needed for each of us to build a four minute TV report - one person presents, two operate the equipment, then you swap round, etc etc, since it's impossible to do it all yourself.

I can't reveal any more about our team's plan yet under pain of death (although either of my two co-conspirators may well have blown the gaffe by now), but we've had official approval and it's going to be hilarious. More as soon as it's confirmed!

Poems On the Underground - an initiative which began in 1986 with the aim of bringing poetry to the wide ranging audience of passengers on the Underground. TFL must have recently refreshed the posters displaying the poems since I've read several new works this week; - some traditional, some modern. If I was to write one I would simply compose an ode to the District Line. How I adore than rambling green snake. It is like a second home.

Life is busy. The Affordable Art Fair, held annually in Battersea Park is well worth a visit. It's an incredible collection of art galleries from around the country with a solid mix of paintings and sculpture to suit all tastes (or not, as the case may be). However, beware: the marquee is hot and art fatigue is inevitable, even for the most hardy art lover. Also, try not to go with an art student: they can get offended when you say "that is really s**t".

There is nothing more romantic (in an artistic/Monet/Wordsworth and Upon Westminster Bridge way) of walking across a London bridge (in my case, the Albert Bridge) on a sunny, crisp Saturday afternoon with a wonderful group of friends. Glorious. Timeless. London at its finest. The knowledge of a warm cup of tea and cake after the bracing [polluted] air helps too.

The British Museum is deceptive. With the number of posters/free books/advertisements in the Standard and Time Out you'd have though the Michelangelo exhibition would have started. Has it? No. 23rd March. Perhaps I should have checked before trekking to the BM, but at least we got to see the Elgin Marbles.

I feel so sorry (and I'm not renowned for being overly maternal, despite wanting children) for children who do not receive the attention they deserve from their parents/nannies. I was on the tube (District Line...!) on Saturday morning (after driving back from Kent on very little sleep) when I saw a child of about 4 and his mother/older sister/nanny. He was an engaging, lively child... bubbly, obviously intelligent and sweet. He was babbling away, asking questions... and yet he was ignored. Totally and utterly. But the child had so much to give, and so much he could learn. Surely he'll give up questioning - and what a shame. Why? What is so wrong with paying a lovely child some attention? If you're not going to, don't bother having children... or employ a better nanny.

I've now been to Stoke Newington.

I learnt something else earlier this week. It's always bad when you leave your flat for "coffee" at 6pm... without any stuff for the following day... to meet a female friend. What happens? You never have coffee but end up in a bar with a few more friends. You leave around 11.30pm... by which time you have to return to her house because a) safer to travel together in a taxi anyway... busy stops are just too cold to wait at when there's snow in the air and your feet are singing the hallelujah chorus from your stilettos... ; b) you're in West Ldn; c) she lives with your boyfriend anyway. But, this means the inevitable trek back across London in the early morning to retrieve books for the day of study, and clothes for the party you are attending later that evening in Canterbury.

I am very busy next weekend too... With a hectic but fun week behind me (and with at least two heavy nights of drinking, I just don't want to calculate my alcohol intake) and a moderately busy one ahead... my diary simply has a red line across it saying "busy". What does this mean? It means a few relaxing dinners, a walk or two, reading of the paper and copious cups of tea. Doing nothing in other words. Now will this ever happen? Hmm. Only time will tell. But I doubt it...!

Accompanying my dad and I to the Man City v Wigan game today - lost 1-0, abysmal, but our lot are saving themselves for the Cup quarter final against West Ham on Monday - we had one of my dad's friends. This happens from time to time and, first and foremost, means I'm relegated to the back seat of the car, resulting in crippling pain in my back and legs from the (comparatively) cramped conditions.

Okay, I may exaggerate, but when I say my dad's friend has a penchant for a good discussion, I do not. Mr J, as we shall refer to him, likes nothing better than to insert topic after topic into conversation to see if anything can produce a properly heated debate - indeed he admitted as we arrived back home tonight that he enjoys listening to people enthusiastically fighting their intellectual corner. This, famously, resulted in all-out war a year or two ago when, following Mr J's argumentative lead, my dad concluded the excursion by telling me if I stood as a politician he'd never vote for me.

So it was with some trepidation that we made today's journey, and indeed within minutes Mr J was off. I was relatively safe for the first fifty minutes or so because he and my dad stuck to the topic of football programmes, about which my views are rarely sought, being fairly ignorant beyond the basics as I am. But then we ventured into broader footballing territory, so I was called upon to discuss whether the next England manager should be English, British or foreign (answer: don't mind, if there's a good English manager then by all means, but not to the exclusion of all foreign options).

From there I knew we'd be entering ground inevitably covered every time this trio end up in the same car: immigrants, the various social dichotomies emerging in the UK, the NHS, tax and politics:

Do I believe in the welfare state? (Sort of, it's a nice idea but it's not working in practice, and no, I don't have any better ideas.)

Can I provide any reasoned argument for socialism or Labour policies? (No, this being why I don't vote for Labour - or indeed anyone else, before I'm accused of supporting any other party. I do, however, support bans on hunting and smoking, something which riled Mr J, particularly the former.)

Do I believe positive discrimination in favour of ethnic minorities is lowering standards? (Quite probably - it's a very British, noble, 'proper' idea in principle but I do feel it relegates talent to second place, and if I were from such a minority, I would feel aggrieved that I had been selected purely because when the interview saw my skin colour they ticked a box and waved me through, rather than because I was actually very good at what I do.)

Why are the media so biased in favour of ethnic minorities? (They're not, at least not intentionally. Bias does exist although to call it 'bias' is a little strong, it's more an earnest endeavour to appeal to, and cover, all sections of the community. However it is sometimes overdone in a sort of making-up-for-lost-time way, to the extent that white middle-class England - as represented by the Daily Mail, never slow to pick up on this - occasionally has reason to feel the BBC and co have forgotten they exist. That said, almost all daytime terrestrial programming is targeted at precisely those people: property shows, cooking shows, 'Loose Women' etc.)

The conversation was most interesting when I got to pry into Mr J's political preferences. He's right-wing by his own admission, much as I don't believe in such broad labels, extolling the virtues of Margaret Thatcher as Britain's greatest ever politician, and bemoaning some aspects of David Cameron's tenure thus far. He is further to the right than my dad, which makes for the amusing sight of my dad picking holes in Tory arguments, something I usually have to do as devil's advocate while he represents the party. Needless to say he does it better than me.

And so we got onto the subject of banning smoking, etc. Mr J at one point professed to be 'not overly bothered' by an outright ban on cigarettes in their entirety, though he subsequently said the smoking ban should logically result in an alcohol ban, i.e. prohibition, too. He then extended this argument to drugs, where suddenly his views took an abrupt about-turn. Our right-wing Mr J came out in favour of legalising cocaine! This I had not been expecting, so I pressed him on it and he confessed it was something about which he did indeed hold a left-wing view. From what I can recall his argument was that drug-taking was nigh on as prevalent and as dangerous as alcohol abuse, and therefore if alcohol is entirely legal in any quantity (with certain legal restrictions e.g. on driving), why not drugs?

Now, I'm not about to agree or disagree with that. As with many of the things we discussed, I feel a little uncomfortable adopting any definitive stance because I've not infomed myself well enough to make that sort of decision. I've decided this is one reason journalism appeals to me - let other people do the research and the policy formaton, then let it be my job to canvass opinion and produce a synthesis. And on that note, if you've any strong opinions on any of the above, leave them in the comments. (Comments need me, Amy or OJ to approve them before they're published, so if your comment doesn't immediately appear there's no need to submit it again, I promise it worked the first time.)

In other news, a quick look at the stats for Dayorama shows my 'Celebrity Autopsy' post to be quite popular (along with rumours about Jermaine Jenas, and Daz Sampson. Not rumours about Jermaine Jenas and Daz Sampson, though). This worries me. It was supposed to be a satirical post suggesting TV shows of the future, one being 'Celebrity Autopsy'. However people are arriving here having searched for this! Clearly, a market does exist for that TV show! What a harrowing thought.

And finally, I never cease to be amazed by the people I know. I like to think I've got skills in a few different areas of life, but nothing compared to one friend on my course. Aside from training to be a broadcast journalist he has a wealth of experience at the BBC directing TV shows and entire networks, which was the first thing I learned about him and was enough to really impress me on its own. Then I discovered he's a landlord too, one armed with a disturbing anecdote involving having to call in 'the heavies' to remove some less than pleasant tenants from a flat. And tonight I learn he trades cars on eBay! Truly a man of many talents.

From MediaGuardian:

Staff at the Independent and Independent on Sunday have rejected an improved pay offer from management and are pressing ahead with plans to strike on Wednesday.

If staff at the Independent on Sunday strike on Wednesday, is that the journalistic equivalent of a tree falling down in the woods with no one around to hear it?

From an email sent by the University of the Arts' student union earlier this afternoon:

As you will see we are also running a smoking referendum, do you think smoking should be allowed in the Students' Union bars? Let us know what you think!

Well, I think that with a complete ban on smoking in public places coming into effect in around twelve months' time, this is a monumental waste of time and space. Has the students' union got nothing better to do than hold its own irrelevant re-runs of government matters? Will the union treasurer discover to his horror that someone's acquired a secret loan of £3.25 and a Kitkat? Will the Entz rep dump her boyfriend over shocking allegations of dodgy deals with some Italian geezer in the union bar loos? We should be told.

Did you know, 1.25 billion Cadbury Mini Eggs are produced each year: the weight of 1250 hippopotamuses. You see, you learn something every day (or simply by reading the packet of Mini Eggs...)

Minor technical hitch from the BBC's One O'Clock News. Darren Jordon's reading the headlines, during which we cut between a series of three-second long clips used to illustrate each story. So for example, the first story is the men seriously ill after a drug test went wrong, so we see a three-second clip of the 'Welcome' sign for the hospital where they're being treated.

And now the problems start. Story two is 'Tony Blair vows to shake up the honours system after loans scandal', for which the three-second clip is some men working on railway tracks.

Eh? Railway tracks? What's that got to do with Blair or the loans system?

But we move on anyway, and Darren Jordon begins story three: 'Guilty of manslaughter-' but wait! There's Tony! Appearing, smiling, on screen at the exact moment 'guilty of manslaughter' is broadcast. It turns out the story's about a man gulity of manslaughter over the deaths of four rail workers. Ah ha. Oops.

Notice anything odd?

I know a few people who read Dayorama are, or have been, treasurers of some form or another. Can they perhaps explain to me how the Labour party treasurer, Jack Dromey, 'did not know' the party had secretly borrowed millions of pounds?

[Mr Dromey] complained that neither he nor Labour's elected chairman knew about the loans from businessmen, despite being regularly consulted about bank loans.

He only found out when details of the money emerged in the newspapers and wants to find out who obtained them for the Labour Party. "It cannot be right that the elected officers were kept in the dark," he told BBC News.

[source: BBC News - 'Labour loans to be investigated']

So hang on. This man, as treasurer, is presumably in overall charge of the party's accounts, or at the very least has unfettered access to them. And as he was going about his treasurer's business, someone else in the party - or perhaps connected with it, or working at Downing St - snuck millions of pounds past him? How on earth can you be 'kept in the dark' about something like that? Will it not be stark bleedin' obvious, especially if, as he says, 'the loans will show up in Labour's accounts'. If they'll show up in the accounts then they must have been entered into the accounts, and surely that means Mr Dromey noticed them?

Put another way, imagine you're opening your bank statement. Essentially you're your own treasurer, having as you do access to your account and responsibility for the sound fiscal maintenance of that account. On scanning your bank statement, you happen to notice a seven-figure sum - or allowing for scale, say maybe a four-figure sum - inexplicably lying there. This is a four-figure sum of credit, so obviously you're not exactly horrified by this, but it still warrants some sort of mental flag, some token attempt at an explanation, doesn't it? And under what circumstances w