Today's show 28/02/12

Another quick on today, due to pressure of more important things to do, but we haven't had one of these for a while...

Today's issue that affects me: Our toaster has just broken. Grrrr....

There is an interesting conversation taking place on your Twitter feed this morning concerning a chap who said "I am not intelligent enough to be constantly stimulated by Radio 4. I am a bit too young for Radio 2 after Chris Evans finishes at 9.30am" and was looking for a radio station to listen to. Your response to him was "No @JxxxBxxxxx, actually I think you are the perfect profile for my show. Don't be lured by @NickyAACampbell", which is an interesting response as from what I have heard of Queen Nicky on R5 his programme is worse than yours! However, the tweet that really caught my eye was this one from (presumably) one of your listeners: "@JxxxBxxxxx no no no. I am not clever and love @theJeremyVine.". I need say no more.

So what has my favourite public service broadcaster's most popular radio channel got to offer me this lunchtime? We must remember, though, that like many other public services the BBC wastes money, runs the service to suit itself, and expects users of the service to be grateful for what it does...

1) CORRUPTION - A leading copper at the Met says there was a culture of corruption between police officers and Sun journalists in pursuit of salacious gossipy stories that had no public interest. 3.26 million people bought the Sun on Sunday and don’t seem to mind : 3.26 million? In that case I proudly count myself among the 58,958,761 UK residents who did not buy a copy of the Sun on Sunday last weekend. But you are correct, of course, in that the SoS readership don't mind because this whole performance is only of interest to the few of us who have an interest in the "news" and how it is distributed. This obviously includes anybody in the news media too, and the opportunity for the BBC to have yet another pop at Murdoch is again proving too much to resist, while the equally suspicious Mirror Group escape the BBC's wrath yet again. Double standards? Yes, of course it is, and exactly what I and many others now expect the BBC to provide. The BBC news page you link to says "Payments by journalists to public officials were identified in the "police, military, health and government", she said.". Odd, don't you think, that journalists are being pilloried for giving money to public officials, yet those same public officials are not - to the best of my knowledge - being identified or punished in any way. Will you be covering that aspect of these developments? I thought not. Next...

2) OCCUPY PROTESTER - The Occupy Protesters have been evicted from outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Is this a good news story, or a bad news story? : You are missing the middle option. They should be Good News, Not News and Bad News. I'll go with the middle one. The Occupy movement started off with apparently good intentions but quickly seemed to lose its direction. Their message that they were against "corporate greed" got through, but I struggled to find out what alternatives they were suggesting and how those might be achieved. Even their own web site was not clear on the matter and a number of their demands were not even demands at all! In my mind, all that the Occupy movement achieved was to prove that so-called leaderless campaigns do have leaders with their own agendas, and they win through in the end. Occupy should have targetted the bankers and the bond traders. They should have targetted the politicians who expect us to work harder and longer to pay for their broken promises. They should have targetted those whose hands we are not allowed to remove from our own pockets and who use the law to steal our money and place future generations in debt. But they didn't, and an opportunity was missed. The eviction is of no importance to me at all, and I am not likely to ask or be asked "What were you doing when the Occupy protestors were evicted?". I hope your BBC-supplied black armband fits comfortably. Next...

3) SLEEPING PILLS - Research from America suggests that people taking sleeping pills are 4 times more likely to die prematurely and they may be as dangerous as cigarettes. Are you hooked on sleeping pills? : No. Next...

4) ROOF RACKS - Finally, did you see the story of a tiny Nissan Micra with 2 sofas on the roof? What’s the most you’ve put or seen on a car roof rack? Find out more in the Western Morning News : I didn't see the story, and I don't own a roof rack.

The Jeremy Vine Show - we don't need or want clever listeners