Cost-cutting we all can dig

by | Feb 8, 2011


Important – and exciting news from the UK Foreign Office – the BBC World Service is being closed down. Newsbiscuit has the scoop:

The BBC World Service is to be replaced by a rolling 24-hour radio show presented by Foreign Secretary William Hague.

‘I have always dreamed of being a DJ,’ said Mr Hague, ‘as a small boy I would regularly spin classic vinyl of the speeches of Winston Churchill. I can’t wait to get down and funky with the global massive.’

The World Service, which is funded through the Foreign Office, recently announced that it was axing 650 jobs and would be cutting five of its language services.

‘I can easily do the jobs of these people,’ insisted Mr Hague, ‘I may not be fluent in 32 different languages but music is a universal language. Listeners will soon forget their need for an impartial news service when I start playing them tunes from my Abba collection.’’ […]

The show will feature regular phone-ins allowing the 180 million listeners worldwide a chance to engage in light-hearted jovial banter with Mr Hague about war, famine and global hegemony. There will also be exciting new competitions in which people can win foreign aid, an arms shipment or military intervention.

Author

  • David Steven is a senior fellow at the UN Foundation and at New York University, where he founded the Global Partnership to End Violence against Children and the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, a multi-stakeholder partnership to deliver the SDG targets for preventing all forms of violence, strengthening governance, and promoting justice and inclusion. He was lead author for the ministerial Task Force on Justice for All and senior external adviser for the UN-World Bank flagship study on prevention, Pathways for Peace. He is a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of The Risk Pivot: Great Powers, International Security, and the Energy Revolution (Brookings Institution Press, 2014). In 2001, he helped develop and launch the UK’s network of climate diplomats. David lives in and works from Pisa, Italy.


More from Global Dashboard

Let’s make climate a culture war!

Let’s make climate a culture war!

If the politics of climate change end up polarised, is that so bad?  No – it’s disastrous. Or so I’ve long thought. Look at the US – where climate is even more polarised than abortion. Result: decades of flip flopping. Ambition under Clinton; reversal...