Rupert Goodwins' Diary

Thursday 4/5/2006

Stupidity at the BBC. I go to Bush House to do a quick interview with World Business Report on Apple versus Apple – my best guess, Apple Corps trying to engineer an exit from their non-compete clause with Apple Computer so they can have a Beatles Online music store -- and general chatter about the state of the online nation.

As usual the visit involves waiting in the foyer for a bit, which is always fun. There can be no finer collection of itinerant intellectuals from around the earth than those who constantly wander the corridors of the World Service – and there are usually a few flat screens around showing interesting programming. Or the weather, or some guff about how good the BBC is. You might have thought that anyone in the foyer of the BBC World Service would have a shrewd idea already, but I suppose it can't hurt to remind them. And there are a selection of listening devices built into furniture – around ten, I guess, with touch sensitive LCD screens and telephone handsets – so you can dial into bits of audio.

This time, though, there is an extra distraction. A large sign containing a number of very bright, very big red LED numerals was glowing away on one wall. "HELPING the environment", it said. We've put a solar panel on the roof, it proudly proclaims, and at this very moment it's generating 2.12 kW. So far, it's generated 397kWh, which is 170kg of carbon emissions saved. The sign goes on to explain that over the year, this will produce enough electricity to run nineteen radios 24/7.

I stare into the glowing digits. They are very, very bright and there are quite a lot of them. In fact, there are two rows of six and one of four, so that's sixteen, each with seven segments and a decimal point... um, 128. Let's say each takes about half a watt to glow that brightly, which means at full tilt the thing will be taking 60 watts. It's a sunny day, so the solar panel won't always be producing 2kW... and then there's the electronics in the display. It's not beyond the bound of possibilities that the display will take a hundredth of the power generated, just to say how green it is. And then there are the plasma displays and the listening booths... if they put up a couple of posters and had Trevor Bayliss' wind-up radios instead, they'd save more emissions.

Being a conscientious chap, I decide to document this so I can do better calculations later. I raise my cameraphone and press the button, and a security guard softly materialises at my shoulder, "No pictures, please" he says. (The BBC employs the campest security guards in the business: they try to be butch, really they do, but it can get a bit pantomime). "Eh?" I say. "This is the BBC. It lives by taking pictures." "Sorry, those are the rules." "Your web site encourages people to take pictures with their camera phones, you know." "I know, but..." "And I'm a journalist. This is what I do. This is why you like me!" "Sorry, but those are the rules."

Got the picture, though. I wonder how long it will take the BBC to do the same.