A Spectator's Notebook

If, we are to have another general election within a year, a long-suffering public should Tend the next few months clamouring loudly

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at TV and radio belt up a bit during the next arnPaign. They nearly drove everyone distIrwacted in 1970, and loud were the complaints. e might have hoped that the number of 'lours devoted to the election campaign this , Year would have been reduced. Instead, it was ti Increased. The time has come to reverse the ' 'rend very sharply indeed. 1 1. can see that, if you are going to have i'kulcial party political broadcasts at all — and ' "e parties will not willingly surrender them they have to be transmitted on all channels 11 Or no one will listen to them. It is the inter,111,inable clatter of discussion and comment `..nat needs to be drastically cut. Two major 'r,Feforrns should be urged now. f One TV channel each evening should be left tr,ee of all politics other than the party polls le41, on a rota basis, so that there is some e4c,ape route available. Most important of all, cameras and radio microphones must be rsxcluded from the party leaders' morning "orneiss conferences. This could be achieved if Y•one of the parties had the sense to do it, It would get rid of the continual posturing Vie answering answering back which so irritated s, .wers and listeners. It would also free the news bulletins for real news. 4 °MY the public can save itself from tinother boring welter of broadcast efking, which encourages 'presidential-style' Poll ;411Paigning and discredits party politics and :ticians. If the protests are numerous and , °cal enough, the media will conform.

''llaste chimes

Most important conclusion from the elect 1j1„n carnpaign was that whoever invented , e damned 'chiming doorbells that go :01„'rig-tong' must have made a packet, and I sTe it chokes him. Lf You are living in a house that has one, 1,,14 Probably don't hear it very often, unless ;Ill have many friends or are plagued by ycollectors. But the candidate or can, lier who has to cover a whole estate of e box-houses all fitted with identical nles gets to feel that one more chaste -Alsj \yap cal greeting will drive him straight up the The relief of the occasional virile whir, beIg'Peal from an old-fashioned electric door

Immense, even if it does start the dog arki

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-ich reminds me, never push a leaflet

°,h11gh one of those ridiculous letterbox flaps , 'aches off the grouncl. One of my cando'sers once nearly lost a finger to a silent ,g treacherously lying in wait on the door 4and X I°'t Know whether the inventor of those iie`‘iched chimes was a Liberal, but statisto,,a'IY there was this time a high positive Lelation between `ting-tongs' and maverick btliral voting. Perhaps they have some AL'In subliminal message. atidtl,Yway, it was generally agreed by all Tory eqtes in areas with large new private Q1,ib'rPrise housing estates that the first-time ral votes were thickly clustered in them. hPut,,servative electors in working-class council ses proved markedly stable, and there was a small but perceptible swing from otir to Tory in the council estates.

In the Wimpey belts, however, the sound of Conservative chickens coming home to roost was deafening. Here were the young couples — some barely out of their teens — who had been encouraged to undertake the responsibilities of home ownership and heavy hirepurchase commitments in the belief that 'growth' would take care of everything. And in 1974 they find themselves with an immense burden of mortgage interest, tougher HP terms, soaring prices and virtually frozen incomes. They feel let down, and it is hard not to sympathise with them.

The young wives, in particular, seem totally baffled. "Well," they kept saying during the campaign, "I thought I'd try the Liberals this time" — for all the world as if it were a new brand of detergent. I doubt if Which? will decide in the end that it was a good buy; but they can hardly be blamed for feeling that the Tory package was rather less than satisfactory for them. The passionate free economy pundits will no doubt maintain that it was all their own fault. However. .. . caveat emptor by all means; but the salesman is never wholly guiltless.

Floater sinks

Each election produces one canvassing encounter that sticks in the memory. I recounted one from an old campaign in this Notebook some weeks ago. This year's pick comes from the deep countryside of south Warwickshire.

A young woman was chatting to me on her doorstep about this and that, and at last I got the conversation round to her voting intentions. "Oh yes," she said, "I know exactly how I'm going to vote this time." When I invited her to be a little more explicit, she said with great firmness, "All I'm saying is that I know just how I'm going to vote." Admitting defeat, I bade her a polite farewell and set off down the garden path. As I reached the gate she called after me, "But actually I shan't be here on Thursday."

It's a great thing to know your own mind. But I confess I was left wondering just how hers had been working. •

Wrong accent

Well, that's enough about elections. We must now return, with vigour, to campaigning against the appalling disintegration of the English language which the BBC is now blatantly encouraging. You will, I hope, remember what it is that I am creating about. It is the totally pointless accentuation of prepositions, conjunctions and auxiliary verbs, which is making a meaningless nonsense of the spoken word on the air.

I admit that no one else seems to have noticed it — or at least thought it worth mentioning. But it must be dealt with drastically and at once, because it is clearly a catching disease. It is spreading all the time. Announcers, newsreaders, commentators — even the ones who sound educated — have all got it.

"The calling-off OF the miners' strike should bring an early end TO three-day working."

"FROM Paris, here is William Woodcock WITH the latest news OF the political crisis."

"Ministers ARE now considering how to reply TO this request."

The only conclusion one can possibly reach is that the people who read these scripts simply do not understand what the words mean. One could forgive the occasional misplacement of emphasis due to a lack of time to study the text before delivering it; but often these horrible gaffes are perpetrated by the correspondents who have written the scripts themselves. They don't seem to understand their own prose.

If you think I am exaggerating, or that this is unimportant, just listen to The World at One or The World Tonight on Radio 4. I guarantee you will pick up half a dozen of these moronic errors in each.

This is not a legitimate modification of the language to meet changing needs. It is a silly, sloppy fashion which the patriarchs of the BBC should at once bring to an end. Let them listen to their programmes for once and issue directives, ukases, circulars and rockets to Hardcastle, Stewart and the man from Wigan who reports on the latest transfer of footballers to Scunthorpe. They are all guilty. They must all be disciplined. Write to Trethowan, write to Curran, write to that chap whose name I can never remember who is Chairman of the BBC. Get mad. Let us put a stop to this nonsense once and for all.

Flying bombs

The appalling disaster involving the Turkish Airlines DC 10 has given rise to innumerable arguments about whether bigger aircraft are more dangerous than smaller ones. If the crash was indeed caused by a planted bomb, the argument seems to be inconclusive. The new giant jets are reputed to have a good safety record, although it is perhaps still too early to be quite certain of this. But safety records have nothing to do with bombs. And if the planting of bombs is to become a regular hazard, then two conclusions seem to emerge.

The first is that one bomb will kill more people if it is planted in a large aircraft than in a smaller one, so that giant jets seem undesirable per se. This is for the airliners to consider. On the other hand, the individual traveller need not consider the relative hazards before choosing his flight. If someone is going to plant a bomb in his aircraft, it will kill him whatever the size of the plane. Jumbo or Trident, it will either blow up or it won't. Fortunately, it is more likely on past form that it won't.

Angus Maude

Angus Maude's contribution of the Notebook was interrupted during the election campaign. Readers will already know that he relained his seat at Stratford-upon-Avon.