No Jon, I don't think so either - I'm just pointing out that there's more than one way of looking at those stats that Dave P put forward.

England already has the equivalent of the Scottish regional broadcasts in its local radio stations. The problem is that the English broadcasters aren't as good as the Scottish ones (don't know about Wales) at reflecting local minority music interests, even when they're not _that_ minority. I was in BBC Scotland a couple of weeks ago and chatting generally to the people there gave me the feeling that they have a far more inclusive policy with regard to their output than I see displayed in Manchester and this reflects in their music coverage across the Scottish region. I've got no hard facts to back this up - it's just anecdotal evidence and I could be mistaken.

I'm not however, mistaken when I look at what I understand to be the legacy of one BBC man who's moving around the regions closing strands like Henry Ayertons syndicated folk programme, Alistair Anderson's folk programme, the Manchester folk programme (can't remember who was the last presenter - I haven't listened since Mike Billington ran it - Ali O'Brien?).

If the BBC were to concentrate more on providing something different from the 'one size fits all' programming we're subjected to at the moment, we would have more opportunities to hear, disseminate, propogate and celebrate our particular brands of music at grass roots level and not have to worry about whether we need to even things up with another award or two.

Hey ho. Tea break (and rant) over. Back to the marking!

J