Pope Benedict and the telly

I had been thinking how well the Beeb had been covering Pope Benedict's pastoral and state visit.  They used to do these things so well in the Dimbleby days of hushed and respectful - and infrequent - interjections by people who knew what they were talking about, and the coverage from Westminster Abbey yesterday was Auntie at her best.


A pity, then, that the joyous singing of the Rutter Blessing at the end of the Hyde Park celebrations this evening was completely obliterated by chattering voice-overs.  It must have been the work experience team.  Back to hacks' primary school, please.

Fatuous equivalents

They're at it again, the TV news boneheads, with their fatuous comparisons.  Last night it was the 60cm shaft that is to be drilled to provide an escape route for the trapped miners in Chile.


I would have thought that 60cm was a pretty precise figure, but that's because I'm a word person, and TV types can only think in pictures, so 60cm was explained as 'about the size of  bicycle wheel', in case you were innumerate or completely brain dead and also only capable of thinking in pictures.


Now my memory is that bicycle wheels come in all shapes and sizes (think penny-farthing), even, but not exclusively, 60cm.  So that visual equivalent was about as useful as a chocolate fireguard.


Then blow me, in the same programme the same twits did a montage of a load of London buses to illustrate some impressive measurement or other of the A380 Airbus.  Excuse me, pimple-heads, but buses is buses and planes is planes,  Wales is Wales and Wembley Stadium is Wembley Stadium.  If you really can't get your head round dimensions such as 80ft (the height of an A380) do you honestly think you are safe behind the wheel of a car?