Snowmail: appeal row to hurt DEC?
Updated on 26 January 2009
Jon Snow asks: will the row over the decision by some broadcasters, including BBC and today Sky News, not to televise a Gaza emergency appeal contaminate future humanitarian appeals?
The appeal for the Disasters Emergency Committee goes out on Channel 4, ITV and Channel Five tonight. Before the televising, a mere £600,000 had been raised. The TV appeal would normally be expected to raise about £5m (Congo raised £6.2m last month).
But we may soon get a sense of whether the political row over this appeal has any amount on the money raised - one way or the other - and whether there is a public appetite to donate.
We now know that Sky News, like the BBC, will not be showing the appeal. Tonight we look at whether this row will contaminate future DEC appeals, which have historically tried to stay above politics and seek out a humanitarian consensus. And we set this in the context of a battle to channel aid to the Palestinians featuring not just the charities who make up the DEC, but also the EU, the Iranians, the Saudis and others. Influence is at stake as well as lives.
Our foreign affairs correspondent Jonathan Rugman is on the case, and we'll be talking to Brendan Gormley (interestingly, the brother of the sculptor Anthony Gormley).
Peer allegations denied
Labour's leader of the House of Lords Baroness Royall made a statement about the allegations - denied - that four of her colleagues had offered to try to fix laws in return for cash. She called the suggestion "deeply shocking" and promised a "rigorous" inquiry.
Planet at steak?
The NHS is considering asking its patients to eat less meat in their hospital meals to save the carbon emissions meat-production generates.
A friend of mine has lymphoma and is a vegetarian, but has been told that if she eats a 10oz slab of steak every day it's a good as a pint of new blood in a blood transfusion. I took her out to lunch the other day and had to wade through one myself, and realised it was the first steak I'd eaten in a year.
I'm not a vegetarian - more a kind of pescatarian. My sense is that people are eating less meat, but the facts tell me that the rubber chickens that bounce off the shelves of supermarkets at £5 a throw are going like a train. We'll be discussing the matter at seven.
Murray out in five
This was supposed to be the year when Fred Perry lost his status as the last British man to win a Grand Slam tournament (1936). Andy Murray was riding high, conqueror of the conquistador Nadal, vanquisher of Federer, unbeaten in 2009, favourite in the Australian Open, hadn't lost a set so far, fresh from Burns Night.
Boy, were the omens in place. But on an oven-hot day down under, out he went in the fifth set. Still, there's always Wimbledon. Watch it.
Finally, news from the sumptuously corrupt state of Illinois. The governor, Mr Blagojevich, is reported to have wanted to have made Oprah the senator to replace Senator Obama once he became president. The mayor says he's cuckoo. Well, Governor B has finally been talking to the media - and a lot of fun it is, too. You certainly sense the tweetering of birds.
I shall not be singing at seven, but will be on parade with a host of developing stories, not the least of which is the continuing brouhaha about corruption in the House of Lords. It seems a very under-regulated place, and once you're in there, whatever you get up to, you stay for life. Brilliant! I wonder if my employers have heard of the concept?!
