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The news seems to be dominated by issues of race this morning. David Blunkett is encouraging us all to continue flying our national flags (which is apparently the Union Flag / St George Cross, not the European flag) even after the World Cup is over and the jubilee is just a distant memory. Trouble is, while he says it will help us reclaim the flag from Nazis and far-right extremists, it is in direct conflict with most local and county councils, which forbid the flying of British flags of any description on council houses and flats, while doing nothing to stop the flying of flags from other nations for fear of being labelled ‘racist’.

Surely the answer is to ensure a level playing field. Whatever flag you want to fly, whether it be British, European or any other country, as long as it’s not an eyesore or a safety risk then councils should either turn a blind eye or ban them all.

At the same time, the British government is just finding its way with the new French administration, which seems to be on the verge of banning British lamb imports unless the spinal cord is first removed a la beef.

Metro has meanwhile got itself into a bit of a froth over Britain agreeing to contribute £5m to improving secirity at the Frethun freight yards around the Channel Tunnel to stop illegal immigrants entering the UK.

Why not, though? After all, why should the French pay for our national security? Britain wouldn’t expect to pay to stop people getting into Germany, would it. In fairness to Metro, it does quote David Blunkett’s point that this is cheaper than building asylum centres and processing dozens of applications on this side of the Channel. What it seems to be less concerned about, though, is the French demand that Britain should introduce identity cards to discourage illegal immigration. Reading the reports there seems to be some confusion over whether this should happen before the closure of the refugee centre in Sangatte can take place, or whether the French simply want to see some reduction in the number of people gaining illegal access to Britain before they consider it.

More sensible than a British identity card scheme, surely, would be a European system, perhaps linked in some way to the European driving licence. We talk about standardisation across the continent, whether that be of currency, passports or weights and measures, yet when it comes to entitlement to benefits and identity we are still very parochial. Logic dictates that a Europe-wide scheme, easily recognised by all authorities in all states, would be far more effective. Immigration would then be a Europe-wide issue, and local councils would have to worry far less whether they are being racist or fair.

When I’d finished trying to comprehend international politics, I got on with the day, wondering why I’d had so little success sourcing guests for this week’s show. Turns out the reason was very simple - none of the emails I’d sent on Monday had gone anywhere. Well, they’d gone somewhere … but I don’t know where.

I repeated one, and within five minutes had scored a direct hit. The Red Cross and Global Name Registry is bidding to be the next administrators of the .org domainspace, and they agreed to come on and talk about why they should be the winning application when it is reassigned at the end of summer.

Nigel has agreed to come in and do the news, too, which should be fun. It will be his first trip to the studio and I think we can expect some ascerbic wit.

Spent the afternoon reviewing a fantastic piece of kit that I’m very disappointed has to go back tomorrow, and stayed awake all the way home to get in a good forty minutes of German practice. I don’t know, but I’m guessing I’m probably going to have a fairly lousy German accent. Learning it on the train you can’t exactly recite your vocab out loud. Even mouthing it silently earns you suspicious looks, which is probably even worse.

If I ever test myself with a real German person they probably won’t understand a word. German with an Essex accent - an unlikely combination.

Caught up on recorded TV this evening, feeling righteous for having gymmed this morning instead. I’ve missed some big chunks of the X Files, so was shocked to see Mulder has not only died but had a Lazarus moment and come back to life. Watched it back to back with Six Feet Under, so all in all it was a rather morbid evening.

Kept one eye on them, and one on the Iceland guidebook trying to plan the best route for seeing as much as possible while I’m there. I’d like to get to Hofn, but it’s 500km from Reykjavik. The guide explains this as ‘a day’s drive away’. I guess that’s true, but when something is a day’s drive, that normally means there and back, and with enough time to hang around for a while and see the town. Gordon did it by plane. I’m guessing that’s the only way.

Nice email in my inbox from a lady setting up a voiceover agency. She wants to use my aerial photo of Broadcasting House on her web site. I see potential for favour swapping.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 26th, 2002 at 11:30 am and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.