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| Rewind radio: Woman's Hour power list; Remembering James Bulger; 6 Music Live; Desert Island Discs – review | Rewind radio: Woman's Hour power list; Remembering James Bulger; 6 Music Live; Desert Island Discs – review |
| (7 months later) | |
| Woman's Hour power list (R4) | iPlayer | Woman's Hour power list (R4) | iPlayer |
| Remembering James Bulger (R4) | iPlayer | Remembering James Bulger (R4) | iPlayer |
| 6Music Live (6Music) | iPlayer | 6Music Live (6Music) | iPlayer |
| Desert Island Discs (R4) | iPlayer | Desert Island Discs (R4) | iPlayer |
| Lists and anniversaries: where would the media be without them? News requires expensive investigation; lists are provided free of charge, usually by advertisers. Cash-strapped newspapers and catch-up broadcasters fall upon Top 100s with relief, no matter how silly they are. | Lists and anniversaries: where would the media be without them? News requires expensive investigation; lists are provided free of charge, usually by advertisers. Cash-strapped newspapers and catch-up broadcasters fall upon Top 100s with relief, no matter how silly they are. |
| The Woman's Hour power list, announced on Tuesday, tried very hard not to be silly, labouring for weeks over who should be where and why (no Sarah Sands, the only female editor of a newspaper, because the Evening Standard only covers London; no Caitlin Moran, despite having introduced a new generation to feminism, because she's just a writer; no Helena Kennedy because, well, no one knows). The judging panel included Eve Pollard, Oona King and Dawn O'Porter, all intelligent, unconventional women who understand how the media works. So it was perhaps an opportunity missed that they chose dear old HM the Queen as the Most Powerful Woman Of All. | The Woman's Hour power list, announced on Tuesday, tried very hard not to be silly, labouring for weeks over who should be where and why (no Sarah Sands, the only female editor of a newspaper, because the Evening Standard only covers London; no Caitlin Moran, despite having introduced a new generation to feminism, because she's just a writer; no Helena Kennedy because, well, no one knows). The judging panel included Eve Pollard, Oona King and Dawn O'Porter, all intelligent, unconventional women who understand how the media works. So it was perhaps an opportunity missed that they chose dear old HM the Queen as the Most Powerful Woman Of All. |
| The Queen has a lot of old power, no doubt – all the cash and countries you could wish for – but her supremacy, her top-ness, her Numero Una-bility is completely unavailable to other women. Unless William and Kate have a girl baby. Then exactly one other woman in the world will be able to aim for the Queen's top spot. And when she gets there, she too can do absolutely nothing with that power, other than keep it shiny by being gracious on all occasions. | The Queen has a lot of old power, no doubt – all the cash and countries you could wish for – but her supremacy, her top-ness, her Numero Una-bility is completely unavailable to other women. Unless William and Kate have a girl baby. Then exactly one other woman in the world will be able to aim for the Queen's top spot. And when she gets there, she too can do absolutely nothing with that power, other than keep it shiny by being gracious on all occasions. |
| Whether or not you think the Queen is really, honestly, more powerful than the head of Santander or the chair of Unilever, than Jessica Ennis or Dora the Explorer, depends on your definition of power. And Woman's Hour stuck to a very old-school idea of what power is. How many people you have on your employee list. How much money you "turn over". Whether you can actually call yourself the CEO. It's understandable, because we still live in a capitalist man's world, where such things matter, but, crikey, it's dull. | Whether or not you think the Queen is really, honestly, more powerful than the head of Santander or the chair of Unilever, than Jessica Ennis or Dora the Explorer, depends on your definition of power. And Woman's Hour stuck to a very old-school idea of what power is. How many people you have on your employee list. How much money you "turn over". Whether you can actually call yourself the CEO. It's understandable, because we still live in a capitalist man's world, where such things matter, but, crikey, it's dull. |
| It would have been more interesting had we discovered how these women got their hands on all that lovely power. No interview with the Queen, of course (yet another reason for her not to be top of the list), but Heather Rabbatts gave a lively talk about her career, where she pointed out that many women underestimated their abilities. Often, she said, men did the opposite, citing the time when she was recruiting for a football manager and received an application from a chap who claimed to have taken Accrington Stanley to the Champions League. It turned out that he had, but only on his PlayStation. Still, for those of us who still can't quite imagine how you can go from leaving school at 16 to being chosen to sort out a failing council – how you can go from anywhere to running a council – more detail would have been nice. | It would have been more interesting had we discovered how these women got their hands on all that lovely power. No interview with the Queen, of course (yet another reason for her not to be top of the list), but Heather Rabbatts gave a lively talk about her career, where she pointed out that many women underestimated their abilities. Often, she said, men did the opposite, citing the time when she was recruiting for a football manager and received an application from a chap who claimed to have taken Accrington Stanley to the Champions League. It turned out that he had, but only on his PlayStation. Still, for those of us who still can't quite imagine how you can go from leaving school at 16 to being chosen to sort out a failing council – how you can go from anywhere to running a council – more detail would have been nice. |
| Just an hour earlier, an anniversary had provided the media hook for Remembering James Bulger, a Winifred Robinson interview with Ralph, the father of James Bulger. It's now 20 years since James was killed. I found this programme incredibly hard to listen to, in the same way I found the details of the case impossible to read when it happened. Robinson, as ever, was an impeccable interviewer, caring and careful, but I kept wondering: who is this interview for? For the BBC – a scoop? For parents of two-year-olds – keep your child close at all times? In the end it was for Ralph, remembering sweet little details about his sweet little boy, watching Thomas the Tank Engine on a chair that Ralph had made him. And Ralph made heartfelt, valid points about our legal system, points that have been made time and again by victims of rape: the way that the crown takes over as the prosecutor means that the victims of crime can only ever be witnesses, kept in the dark, out of the loop, their grief and pain disrespected and lost in the system. | Just an hour earlier, an anniversary had provided the media hook for Remembering James Bulger, a Winifred Robinson interview with Ralph, the father of James Bulger. It's now 20 years since James was killed. I found this programme incredibly hard to listen to, in the same way I found the details of the case impossible to read when it happened. Robinson, as ever, was an impeccable interviewer, caring and careful, but I kept wondering: who is this interview for? For the BBC – a scoop? For parents of two-year-olds – keep your child close at all times? In the end it was for Ralph, remembering sweet little details about his sweet little boy, watching Thomas the Tank Engine on a chair that Ralph had made him. And Ralph made heartfelt, valid points about our legal system, points that have been made time and again by victims of rape: the way that the crown takes over as the prosecutor means that the victims of crime can only ever be witnesses, kept in the dark, out of the loop, their grief and pain disrespected and lost in the system. |
| Something to cheer us up? 6 Music Live was as excellent as ever this week, with sessions from Foals, Richard Hawley, Palma Violets. And Mad Julie Burchill on Desert Island Discs was a treat, from her still surprising voice to her still surprising opinions. "I like a bit of a fight. A bit of one, not a lot of one." "I find myself endlessly fascinating." She might wind the world up, and I don't envy her children, but I, for one, am glad she exists. | Something to cheer us up? 6 Music Live was as excellent as ever this week, with sessions from Foals, Richard Hawley, Palma Violets. And Mad Julie Burchill on Desert Island Discs was a treat, from her still surprising voice to her still surprising opinions. "I like a bit of a fight. A bit of one, not a lot of one." "I find myself endlessly fascinating." She might wind the world up, and I don't envy her children, but I, for one, am glad she exists. |
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