UK Freeview news sources

For any of my students who have not yet discovered the various news options available to them on Freeview tv, you should have access to:

24 hour news channels

- BBC News24 (Ch.80)
- Sky News(Ch.82)
- Al Jazeera English (Ch.89, available between 6 and 11pm)
- Russia Today (Ch.85)

BBC World Service radio also broadcasts 24 hours, although not always news, and can be accessed via Freeview on channel 710.

Morning news

BBC1 and ITV both have weekday breakfast shows with regular news content. Similarly, the Today Show on Radio 4, which you can listen to via Freeview on channel 704.

Evening news

- BBC1 (Ch.1) at 6 and 10pm
- ITV (Ch.3) at 6.30 and 10pm
- Channel4(Ch.4) at 7pm.

* Photo by flashpro, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

in a rich man's world

Need a one-stop-shop for coverage of yesterday's budget? Intute and LSE Library oblige.



[as I flipped past the news last night, the presenter was laboriously explaining the 'the Gord giveth and the Gord taketh away' pun used in several headlines. There is something quite wrong about the fact they felt the reference needed explaining. The image of Gordon Brown with a long flowing grey beard will, however, haunt me for a while.]

And forever your gonna regret that

You know something?

Having more armed police patrolling my city? Does not make me feel safer. Having any armed police officers routinely patrolling the streets does not make me feel safer.

It makes me feel anxious and uncomfortable and distinctly unsafe, in ways that are pretty much entirely unrelated to the incidents that the police are currently responding to(1).

More armed police on standby, yes. More police on foot patrol, yes. But more guns on the streets? Regardless of who's (however carefully selected, well trained) hands they're in? Not so much.

My gut reaction is more or less: 'Gun-totting cops in Stockwell? 'cos that's worked really well in the past …' and my more considered one is to ask 'but how, exactly, is that going to help?

I don't, to be honest, understand the idea that somehow guns on one side neutralise guns on the other – the police are carrying magic guns that shoot a protective force field? No, I didn't think so…

My heart goes out to the families and friends of these three boys. And those of the two? three? other boys who have been stabbed in the same area over the same period and who are equally dead, but rather less all over the papers.

I hope that these murders are solved, and no more are commited.

And I pray that those armed officers never have to fire a bullet at someone to do it.

(Mind you, Cameron's suggestion that somehow tax credits are the answer is just bizarre. "I think we should split up." "But honey – think of the tax breaks!" ??)

(1) partly that it triggers vivid memories of visiting East Berlin when the wall was still very much up.

After all this, won't you give me a smile?

Re the so-called 'battle of the free evening papers' - there is no battle, in my opinion. Save that of trying to get past the people being paid to hand them out.

London Lite couldn't hold my attention when there was no competition, and my alternative was reading the adverts on the tube (this is not hyperbole - I was in this situation last week, due to poor planning on the book provision front). thelondonpaper, though, is fairly interesting and gets bonus points for trying to draw attention to the Astoria situation in the first issue.

I think that's all the commute-based news I was going to talk about.

Except that TfL have finally got their customer charter claims page working, so every time you're delayed 20 minutes or more it's a little easier to fill out a claim form.