Talking points 1st August

Your moderators while we are away from the office are Mike in the US and Bob in Australia….enjoy….

On air: Is the UN impotent?

The outgoing head of UN peacekeeping has said that the UN has “reached the outer limits of its ability to police world trouble spots”. They say they’ll never be able to put together a force for Somalia and the one for Darfur is struggling.

On air: Should all births be natural?

WHYS regular Lydia in Canada got in touch with a great talking point idea. I asked her to write a blog post which is faithfully reproduced below… 

Should home births be banned? Should elective Caesarian-sections be outlawed?

When it comes to giving birth, how do we best balance the wishes of the mother and the preference of medical personnel?

Beijing bound

My last day in before heading off to run the World Service news coverage of the Olympics.  It’ll be my 4th time of covering the Games and don’t think for a second i don’t realise how privileged i am to be able to say that.

 

Talking points 31 July

Good morning, good evening and good night,

Thank you Will for moderating overnight. Who wants to do it tonight? Let us know.

A couple of stories struck me this morning as I decided what to wear…

The outgoing head of UN peacekeeping has said that the UN has “reached the outer limits of its ability to police world trouble spots”

On air: Is there ever an excuse for murder?

Peter Dobbie writing this today — Ros is now off for a bit, so it’s me Madeleine or Tom-tom sitting in the studio for a few weeks.

Today we’re picking up with an item which got a lot of our bloggers (or should that be bloggees ?) very active.

Is there ever an excuse for murder ?

Talking Points for 30 July

Thanks Nelson for looking after us last night.

On to some ideas for today’s programme…

World Trade is dead, or at least it has fallen into a deep sleep.

On air: Does fame come with responsibility?

Steve in Virginia was Night Editing the Talking Points page on the blog after the show, and while he was doing it news came through that Amy Winehouse had once again been taken to hospital (she’s back home now). It started a far broader discussion about role models who never asked to be one.

Should we use Tiny URLs?

I seemed to have inadvertently opened up a can of worms in starting to use Tiny URLs in my daily email. The aim was to reduce the clutter that lots of long links can cause. Below is an email from Teitur objecting to the move And he wasn’t the only one. Let me know what you think as we’re happy to be guided by you.

Talking Points for 29 July

Hi All, it’s Karnie..

Thank you Steve for taking care of things overnight.

A few thoughts to get you started..we were quite keen to talk about Turkey today, Ros put up this post which have got some you discussing it already.