The Ministry Of Truth

The Ministry is going on hiatus: it is highly unlikely there will be any new posts in July or August.

I need to concentrate my time and effort on to some other things for a while but, assuming the world hasn’t completely devoured itself by then, I’m sure we’ll pick things up again in the autumn.

Have a good summer: remember to put your chocolate in the fridge because that heatwave could strike at any time.

…the day the music died.

Right on cue…

This, incidentally, is my first post using my beautiful, new, shiny kit.  It’s lovely.

This has to be some kind of sick joke.

Addressing the British Bankers’ Association in London today, [Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn] King… expressed concern about the way risks taken by financial institutions had been monitored by the authorities. “For reasons of historical accident we have created over many decades a financial system in which the incentives to monitor risk-taking have been sharply reduced.”

It’s the first time I’ve heard a professional economist describe Thatcherism as an “historical accident” (I admire his honesty) but doesn’t a large slice of the blame for this endemic risk-taking by financial institutions rest with, er, regulators such as the Bank of England?

Oh, yeah: look what I bought.

I knew the Minister’s Wife(‘s 15% educational discount) would come in useful eventually.

This week I have been 19,000 people.

Since rising on Monday I have been wandering around clutching a strange little booklet in which I have occasionally scribbled Xs and lines on a series of complicated grids.

I am one of 2,500 adults taking part in the RAJAR/Mori National Radio Listening Survey.

Last Saturday afternoon a silver haired gentleman in a salmon blazer knocked at the Ministry’s front door and asked if – for the incentive of being entered into a free prize draw to win £100 at odds of 2,500-1 (still better than the National Lottery) – I would trot through the motions on behalf of broadcasting’s least attractive sibling.

Given the desperation clearly visible in his face as he tried once more to make the prospect seem appealing to another householder eyeing him suspiciously, he couldn’t really have hit a richer seam – a radio addict, a former radio activist and someone (just about) intelligent enough to understand the methodology all in one rotund, sweaty, balding package.

It seems barely credible at this stage of technological evolution that we still measure radio audience numbers manually but there we are.

So all week I have had to try to remember in which precise 15-minute segment of the day I switched from Station X to Station Y.

Thus, when I drove home from work on Friday and retuned from Radio 2 to Radio 4, when exactly did I do so?  I remember I was driving through Wootton Green but I don’t know the precise time for certain because I was WATCHING THE ROAD, STUPID!

And when I wandered into the card shop earlier today and caught five minutes of the Jonathan Ross show, was it between 11am and 11.15am or between 11.15am and 11.30am?  As if I’m timing my every movement in the middle of the town centre on a Saturday morning when I’m trying to prevent pensioners from elbowing me in the ribs, kids from vomiting on my shoes and Big Issue vendors from accosting me every 16.3 yards.

Was I in the butcher’s queue long enough to have heard the requisite five minutes of Classic FM between 11.30am and 11.45am today, or was I probably only waiting three or four minutes?  (If you don’t listen to something for at least five minutes of the 15, you don’t record it.)  Who knows, or even dares to care?  Besides, I had sausages that required prompt refrigeration – no time to dawdle clock-watching.

But still, RAJAR expects 2,500 participants to remember so they can sit down with a cuppa in the evening and try to complete their little booklet semi-accurately.  Mental.

But not half as mental as the fact that I represent 19,000 people.

And by a quirk of timing, this means that Virgin Radio’s figures are going to get a shot in the arm this quarter.

As mentioned earlier in the week, I’ve started to become something of a fan of Iain Lee’s work for Virgin on Sunday nights.  This week, however, he also broadcast on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights as a stand-in for a holidaying colleague.  I therefore – atypically – listened to Virgin for at least two hours on each of three nights during the survey period.

Ordinarily I would have listened more to 6 Music, Radio 2 and Five Live, but they’ve just magically lost 19,000 listeners from this quarter’s figures.  Sorry, people: it’s nothing personal.

Plus, the fact that I listened to podcasts originating from Radio 4, Radio 2, Virgin and LBC during the week counts for nothing.  Because – while listening to live radio streams via t’Internet is deemed to count – there is no way to record podcast listening on the National Radio Listening Survey.

Every bloody radio station promotes its podcasts incessantly, investing vast sums of effort and expense in the format, yet the industry-sponsored listening figures entirely fail to take account of the genre!

While there is less than a tenth of the money in radio that there is in television, these 19,000 blips do nevertheless actually impact on people’s livelihoods.

Heavy hangs the responsibility around the poor Minister’s shoulders.

And Iain Lee owes me a pint.

Superb.

Things The Minister Never Expected To Say Part 7075943520a:

This man…

…might just be the best broadcaster on British radio at the moment.

Sundays, 10pm, on the soon-to-be-renamed-Virgin Radio*.

He also has a podcast. (And it’s free, the Minister’s favourite price.)

And yes, for the absolute avoidance of all doubt, that’s the same Iain Lee who presented RI:S(E):IB:LE.

[* Virgin Radio - Genius Business Decisions Of Our Time; bought in March 2000 by Scottish Media Group for £225,000,000; sold in June 2008 by Scottish Media Group for - ahem - £52,000,000.]

I’m tempting fate, but I’ve avoided the movie so far.

Meanwhile, in other news…

Not for the first – or, I suspect, the last – time I am ashamed of my profession.

I have received ten cvs in the past three days for the advertised role as the Minister’s factotum.  Only one of those cvs has been from someone carrying a dyed-in-the-wool Anglo-Saxon name.

The other eight came from candidates with names that suggest they don’t form part of the British National Party’s plans for world domination.

The quality of two of those candidates certainly leaves something to be desired and, like the Anglo-Saxon-monikered Boris Johnson acolyte, they have received “close but no cigar” responses.

Of the remaining seven, every one has relevant experience and good academic qualifications.  On paper, at least, three of them have a rather better academic pedigree than me to the point that they have been awarded academic scholarships from “traditional” (ie pre-1992) universities.

Most have already funded themselves through either the Legal Practice Course (not that that’s worth a bucket of warm spit) or the Bar Vocational Course.

While some people obviously do not interview well there is, on paper, no obvious reason why any of these people should not already be pursuing careers as Trainee Solicitors or Bar pupils in London (assuming that’s what they want to do) instead of casting around for paralegal/legal executive scraps in the Northern Home Counties.

I wonder why they haven’t already been snapped up already…?

There’s always a chance one of them might turn up at interview next week with ‘CLASS WAR’ tattooed on his or her forehead but, having spoken with most of them by phone in the past 48 hours, I suspect not.

Three have been asked to form an orderly holding pattern and four will be interviewed next Monday and Tuesday.

Is it good form to ask candidates to brew up at the start of the interview?