Good afternoon.
Euphemistic double entendres, analogies, similes, puns and plays on words - all ways of ducking and diving, linguistically. So when the Mayor says Brixton Base are "closing" and Brixton Base say they are "moving"... you begin to wonder. Then you remember this is one of the organisations at the heart of Andrew Gilligan's savage attack on the Mayor's ethnicity man Lee Jasper in the Evening Standard, all stood by by Gilligan, all vehemently denied by Jasper on this very programme, you feel duty bound to dig, unearth and lay out your findings like Howard Carter at the tomb of Tutankhamoun. Harris is the man in riding breaches with the solar tope who took the Earl of Carnarvon's shilling.
West Ham are putting their money where their mouth is: they've a good track record as a community focused club and have joined forces with Newham Borough in a determined anti-knife and gun crime campaign. Ken (the one who works here, not the one at City Hall), who worships at the altar that is Upton Park, says the campaign will be a gem when fought at home but might face a bit more of a test on away territory but that, in so many ways, is the point of it. Liz is in claret and blue for you, and will be forever blowing bubbles at six.
Blowing in the wind is the answer to this conundrum: why is the treatment of parking ticket appellants so different from Borough to Borough? How many wardens will it take till they know that too many appeals have been lost? And how many plastic bags will it take til they know that only a level playing field will do? Sharon, my friend, is the girl in the know: she is the girl in the know.
No-one seems to know anymore what really happened when a baby died in the care of child-minder and respected citizen Keran Henderson. The prosecution said she shook the baby to death and a jury agreed. Now two of them have unusually expressed public doubts. Witnesses agreed with the prosecution, too, but now one of them isn't sure, either. Nor is the Attorney General herself, Baroness Scotland... who is Attorney General for England and Wales. (Scotland has a Procurator Fiscal but who doesn't only deal with financial matters. I am going mad. Move on.) We talk to Keran's husband about how close he thinks he may be to seeing his wife freed from her three year sentence.
Not in time, I fear, to wander down to HMV and effect which song will be No1 this Christmas; though, if she can get online in jail, she could via a download. I am banking on Fairytale of New York ("with bars big as cars") but it will be a fiercely fought contest with young Leon Exfakter in with a good chance. Steve, who retains a touching outside hope for Sir Cliff Richard, is our Jimmy Saville-Chris Moyles clone with your Christmas Top of the Pops.
Also, pop-pickers, our penultimate school carol and a real treat tomorrow but I'll leave that for tomorrow.
Chrissy is all in black today: very worrying for someone who drove home through -5 degrees last night, I can tell you... through chattering teeth.
Nina's done some more Christmas shopping this lunchtime and is warming herself with a coffee as I write: her tiny hand is frozen, I hum.
Wrap up warm in the three London papers, my friends, thinking of those who are worse off than you.
Stay in the warm with us at 6.
Alastair & Nina.
