OneGuyFromBarlick

Radio Lancashire this afternoon reported that the re-cycling centres throughout the county are due to be re-opened next week. You will have to book an appointment before you are allowed to visit. How this will work has yet to be advised.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests on 'In Our Time' yesterday at 9AM. It was a repeat but no worse for that. They discussed John Clare the 'Peasant Poet'. Like all these programmes, available on BBC Sounds and well worth listening to.
[LINK to his poem 'The Badger'. Graphic and terrible but the best description we have of badger hunting.]

The BBC is Following Me!
Monday R4 Start the Week

Community and industrial declinehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00289gx


The story of Liverpool’s once thriving port is one of spectacular rise, and spectacular fall. In Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain, the historian Sam Wetherell looks at the city post-WWII, as the decline in the port led to the poverty and neglect of its population, the deportation of Chinese sailors, and the discrimination against the city’s Black population. It’s a history as prophecy for what the future might hold for the communities caught in the same trap of obsolescence.

As manufacturing has declined in the UK it has grown exponentially in China, which is now known as ‘the world’s factory’. Dr Yu Jie is a senior research fellow at Chatham House and an expert in China’s economic diplomacy. She considers what the mega-cities that have emerged out of China’s rise, and the communities living in them, can learn from the history of Liverpool.

Corby in the Midlands was once at the heart of British steelmaking, with one of the largest operations in Western Europe. But once the plant was closed in the 1980s, the ‘clean-up’ became known as one of the worst environmental scandals, causing serious birth defects in the town. The four-part series, Toxic Town, written by Jack Thorne (on Netflix from 27th February) tells the story of the families as they fight for justice.

I said I was listening to R4/ World Service , but on World Service the News 27min sections seems split : Newsday for GMT Morning, The Newsroom for Afternoons, (With an Hour long one as Newshour) , Drivetime BBC OS (what actually is OS? ) 56 mins x 2 ) then back to The Newsroom 27 mins and Newshour again. This seems a reasonable split of the schedule for the UK aimed part of the World Service. I suppose I am chasing news at present for a whole load of reasons, I suspect my binge will pass

Some of the BBC News Radio takes its audio feed from the BBC News Online Channel (I think its on Freeview Too) which confuses me.

Meanwhile not on the Radio, at times like this I realise I miss Alistair Cooke and Letter from America.

The first American Letter was broadcast on 24 March 1946, initially confirmed for only 13 installments, after Cooke had given a one-off talk under that title in the series Sunday Newsletter on 25 November 1945.
The change of title to Letter from America came on 30 September 1949.

Interesting as this somewhat co-incides with Post World War Two times , the establishment of NATO, Nuclear Arms Race and the world of the 1950s
Later letters would cover the war in Iraq. of course Korea and Vietnam would feature as well along with the popular culture changes of the 1960s and 1970s
Last Letter 20 Feb 2004 looks back at Iraq War of the 1990/91 George Bush/Margaret Thatcher. And then the 2nd Iraq War and its follow up mess once someone (Blair?) decided that Saddam had to go, (nudged by 9/11/2001) ( without a meaningful replacement , and argueably the part of the reluctance of the US to enter mass warfare ( Afghanistan noted). Cooke though thinks Kerry would be in the White House , and that didnt happen in the 2004 US Presidential Election