Suspect Members of the Audience and Poor Map-Reading Skills

I know the ENO doesn't usually sell as well as its Covent Garden counterpart and was pretty much in the pits until its recent refurbishment, but audience figures be that bad that they need a real plug with an embarassing non-story on the BBC 6 o'clock news?

Throughout the London News programme we got to hear trailers and mentions of the most interactive opera performance ever, how a member of the audience ended up on stage and save the day - making us believe this was some kind of Paul Potts - only to find out that the member of the audience in question was not only the understudy, but also an understudy who knew the singer in the title role had been feeling indisposed and might pull out at the last minute.

How come this is news?

This gave nonetheless an added opportunity for the soft-spoken, tall and dashing hero of the night (who looked slightly embarassed by the bluntness of the non-story himself) to plug his appearance at another opera. Nothing new though (and it looks like any endorsement counts these days)

But hey, what's news today anyway?(the second headline of the national news was the conclusion of the Maccas' divorce proceedings...)

Not unexpected either: the response of Lee Jasper, the London Mayor's senior race relations advisor to his standing down over a cash scandal (respnse which echoes Ken Livingstone's) - "I am not being hounded out of my job because of racist lies and smears. I am not capitulating to racism. I never do".

...And furthermore what about balanced reporting on Heathrow?

We hear that all three mayoral candidates oppose the construction of a third runway at Heathrow. We get only to see Red Ken visiting and being kissed on the cheeks by some suburban friend in Hounslow or whereabouts. The only anti-runway voice we get to hear is of an old long-term immigrant who doens't want to leave her house, even if offered compensation, because she has her dead husband's ashes in the garden and is used to the house. Straight away we get to hear not one, but two long pro-runway stances. One saying most people will accept the money and dozens of new jobs will be created, the other saying Heathrow is good for business. Even when the presenter on the studio asked a question in the lines of "but it's not just the people in the vicinity of the airport who will be affected by the additional air traffic, it's the rest of London too" the reply was, of course, because businesses, jobs and the economy will be at risk if the runway is not built!! and I thought the presenter meant the noise levels from planes flying either too early in the morning and too late in the evening was making it unbearable to more Lond0ners than just those next to the airport...

I should have guessed, with all that red in the studio...

By the way, will Northern Rock be getting a new look now that it's in El Gordo's hands?

P.S. And since we're on El Gordo, I couldn't resist drawing your attention to the poor geography skills of this government. I'm not talking of anywhere outside the UK, I wouldn't expect that much, but regional geography. I'm talking of course the fate of Newcastle-under-Lyme now being forced to ay back the unspent share of £2.8m in grants awarded to the city by mistake.

Whitehall officials mistook it with Newcastle upon Tyne...!

Now that it knows which one is which the Communities Department says it was "taking steps to ensure this does not happen again and working closely with the councils involved"....

Which bit didn't they get and have to work hard on?

Will that be spelling or map-reading skills?