In many Durham mining villages residents are suffering from planning blight, whilst in Macclesfield, architect Rod Hackney refurbishes old houses and communities. As Langley Park’s Railway Street faces the bulldozers, we ask should local authorities demolish old housing or renovate instead?
These four 16-year-old punk rockers might look dejected. But soon they may find it difficult to live down to the name of their group . . . The Rejected.
For they performed a song they wrote – about the plight of jobless teenagers like themselves in their home town of Sunderland – on a BBC-2 documentary last week.
And now three recording companies are interested in the boys who “seem to be able to speak for their generation.”
Continue reading Selected..the Rejected!“BRASS TACKS” (BBC 2, 8.5), the current affairs show that has pioneered viewer participation, would like to announce a modest success. The Monday evening chance for feedback from the show – “Return Call to Brass Tacks” – has been extended until the end of the series.
And calls following the weekly Tuesday evening documentary to local radio stations across the country are building up to a regular avalanche.
Continue reading We’re riveted by Brass TacksThis year marks a decade since a committee under Professor (now Sir) Michael Swann advised the British government to curb the then wholesale, indiscriminate use of antibiotics in agriculture.
This committee was established because of amply evidenced claims that the inclusion of potent antimicrobial drugs in feedstuffs for pigs, poultry and other livestock (to promote growth and prevent disease) had encouraged the emergence of bacteria resistant to those agents and capable of causing human gastrointestinal disease.
Continue reading Resistance resistedDAVID LEE, the NFU assistant press officer at Agriculture House, Knightsbridge, was giving the new issue of Radio Times a quick once-over on the afternoon of April 26. Looking across at Roger Turff, the press officer, he said: ‘I’m about to spoil your day’.
Radio Times and the Brass Tacks programme on BBC 2 was to spoil quite a number of days for both NFU members and staff; between them they also involved other specialised divisions of the Union, farmers all over the country, and almost every other organisation connected with Britain’s meat industry.
Continue reading How the Union got down to Brass TacksTHE BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation has flipped its lid. After weeks of scrupulous impartiality throughout the general election campaign – extending to even fiction programmes – it has seemingly sought to let off steam through the medium of a new programme called Brass Tacks.
This programme – billed in the Radio Times as ‘a new concept in broadcasting – is an insult to the public intelligence and professional journalism. If the hitherto much-respected BBC has any sensitivity left it will review the senior staff appointments on Brass Tacks.
Continue reading The BBC lets agriculture downAN INTERNAL Ministry of Agriculture survey of practices of calf dealers and fatteners has raised new official fears about drug abuse on British farms. The survey, which was instigated last year as part of the last Government’s policy of tightening up on animal welfare, turned its attention to the use of drugs almost as an afterthought.
But preliminary results have now revealed what Ministry vets call ‘worrying’ levels of apparent drug abuse on the farms involved. In particular, the survey has revealed wide and sometimes almost routine use of restricted antibiotics on many farms.
It seems to confirm the worries expressed in the recent BBC TV programme Brass Tacks about the use of one of the products – chloramphenicol, which is the most effective antibiotic against most types of salmonella including the common cattle infection Salmonella typhimurium.
Continue reading Survey points to drugs abusesMore than 20 veterinary surgeons took part in radio ‘phone-in programmes throughout the country after the screening of BBC’s controversial programme Brass Tacks on May 8. The programme looked at modern intensive methods of animal production and the potential risk to public health.
The programme asked whether it was time to tighten the rules on use of antibiotics even more than the regulations made following the Swann report 10 years ago which had shown that drugs were being misused by some sections of the industry. It asked, too, whether farming should take a different direction and move towards “organic” methods, which were less reliant on the routine use of drugs and chemicals.
Continue reading Animal production and public health: TV programme looks at “risks”There is always a danger in producing what is considered to be “good television”, particularly on a scientific subject, that some of the more mundane yet pertinent facts will be ignored. That was the case in the BBC2 programme Brass Tacks broadcast on May 8.
The programme looked at modern methods of intensive animal husbandry and the potential risk to the public health from antibiotics and other medicinal substances (see below). But as was inevitable given the type of presentation, a number of issues were raised that were not satisfactorily answered.
Continue reading Down to Brass TacksVIEWERS must have been left confused after last week’s BBC television programme on drugs in animal husbandry and organic versus intensive farming.
The experts, aided by filmed shots of processing plants and abattoirs, told them that poultry was involved in 6,000 of the 11,000 cases of notified food poisoning in a year. Salmonella and the use of drugs was put over as a health risk in the film and pre-publicity that has brought industry protests of bias.
Continue reading Trial by television puts chicken on the salmonella rack
McNultyMEDIA 