BUS STATION'S WEAPON OF MASS DISTRACTION

Staff at a west London bus station are using classical music as a psychological weapon against loitering teenagers and sleeping tramps.

This isn't a made up thing, honest.. and it's more widespread than you might think. During the day the arias and symphonies fed through the public address system at the Hammersmith bus depot lend the place a warming background sound. It almost allows you to forget about the surly looking police eyeing the dangerous looking teenagers intimidating the frail looking grannies as they scurry for the exit.... one eye on handbag.

But in the dead of night - when the above are tucked up in bed, this place becomes more frightening still. A late night hub for the assorted all sorts that drift in from around West London. And perhaps that's why the attendants strategically blast out Bach and Beethoven at abnormally loud levels - targeting the different groups with different loudspeakers making it uncomfortable for the undesirables to hang around too long and impossible for anyone to steal a crafty sleep on their hard metal benches.

They've been at it for at least two years now, on and off, stressing people out with the sound of Szyubert, mercilessly torturing them with Tchaikovsky - At such a volume it's almost impossible for the hapless late night traveller to read a bus timetable and mandatory for them to go home with a headache. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself - imagine him if you will (for it can be amusing) pale and thin, Big Mac in one hand, violin in the other, scurrying up the escalator for the N97 to Aldwych - the poor sickly devil would no doubt spin in his grave if he knew the art he once slaved over was being used like this.

Hmm. Funny. But it's not really. The security staff at Hammersmith aren't the first to think of it.... not by a long shot. The technique is known as 'Acoustic bombardment.' Developed by the US military as part of their non lethal weapons programme around fifteen years ago, it's been used to end sieges, help fight battles and yes as part of the 'interrogation process' at Guantanamo Bay. According to documents gained through freedom of information requests, Barney the Dinosaur and the Sesame Street theme tune were two of the favorites there.

Using music as a weapon to break people down and bend them to your will...I'm not seriously suggesting for a moment Hammersmith bus station are trying to torture tramps and teenagers...of course not...thin end of a worrying wedge though?

THOUGHTS ON BEATING UP OLD PEOPLE

So Silvio Berlusconi is out of hospital. And the man who clobbered him across the face with a miniature statue of Milam Cathedral is still in his cell. The facts of the story themselves are priceless. As the news was breaking I heard one (very senior) journalist exclaim, "I knew it was good as soon as I saw it....but when I realised the weapon was a piece of religious iconography.....well!'

Still one specific point has been intriguing me all week. Did he consider the Italian Prime Minister's age before he did it?

Burlo may have been the third spoke behind the Iraq war, a possibly corrupt and very rich media baron cum politician with an unhealthy interest in women a third his age... but he's still 73 years old. SEVENTY THREE. If he were a pensioner in Swansea rather than one of Europe's most powerful men you'd offer him your seat on the bus.....maybe help him buy soup in the supermarket......how did someone bring themselves to violently slash the side of his head?

42 year old Massimo Tartaglia, it turns out, has a history of mental illness but his attack still made me think about whether we simply find it easier to be mean to old people now.

One person who thinks he's a bit loud and obnoxious is the The Queen. A full ten years his senior her Maj told him off at a the G20 summit earlier this year for shouting during the family photo in Buck Palace (true story)

But they may have more in common than she thinks. For the head of the royal family was recently attacked by one of her own MPs. Peter White, a London Labour candidate called her "Vermin" and a "Parasite." He may have strong views on the monarchy but again...always wrong to hit an old man in the face...always wrong to call an old lady Vermin.

Now every year her Maj has a big theatre do thrown in her honour, called the royal variety performance, celebrity heavy but wholesome in a way entertainment aint any more. And this past time who should be the surprise guest....veteran actor Andrew Sachs.... (you can see where I'm going here.)

Sachs was at the centre of a media circus last year after BBC presenters Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand taunted him down the phone - Brand saying he'd slept with the man's granddaughter.

Of course the minds and motives of Tartaglia, White and Ross are vastly divergent. In my opinion they were mad, bad and dangerous to put on the radio in that very order, and I'm not overly concerned about the welfare of any of them but more the lack of respect for our senior generation.

Because I'm a big fan of that generation. To use a reverse cliché, our old people are the past. We should look after them, respect their years... gain their wisdom, Not hit them in the face, call them vermin and taunt them down the phone. Now where's my tartan rug?

NEWS COSTS LOTS. MURDOCH MIGHT BE RIGHT.

Stop press! Hold the front page! The Internet behemoth Google has backed down to media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The top telly and tabloid boss insisted people pay for his scoops while the online giant wanted to offer them for free. (ok enough headline hyperbole for now)

Seriously though, Murdoch has been strenuously insisting “there’s no such thing as free news” and Google - who had previously aggregated his content on their search engine – have now said they will allow him to charge readers after a certain number of clicks - A scary prospect that could seriously change the way we consume information…. And I’m weirdly bi-polar about this whole issue.

As a normal person I dislike parting with money in return for information, but as a working journalist (in a Murdoch newsroom no less) I like getting paid for writing. And while Murdoch is often a man people love to hate I think he might be right about this.

CASH STRAPPED
Because there IS no such thing as free news…because news is really REALLY expensive. Take a simple top story from today, the stray yachtsmen being released from Iran, and join me for a quick audit of the costs behind covering it.

Well to stand any chance you really need a journalist and a snapper in a place like Dubai and you’re paying for everything from the stamps in their passport to the food on their plate plus the petrol in their car. And they’re only half the team. Your UK reporter needs last minute plane tickets to follow the families from Plymouth to London as they dash for a foreign office meeting, and a hotel when he gets there. When they file their words and pictures you need salaries for subs and designers who will hammer it into something resembling a newspaper page, plus webmasters and printers to turf it back out to the public. All the above work in a cavernous newsroom that needs heating, lighting, cleaning and protecting by security people, that’s before you consider gallons of ink, millions of bits of paper, acres of London real estate and miles of computer servers too. All for just one top story on one average day. We’ve not even mentioned chequebook journalism, costly investigations, protecting people in war zones or those times you have to charter a plane.

Advertising once paid for much of this but it’s fallen off a cliff. And circulation has been dropping for years now too. So where’s the money coming from? This is what drives Murdoch’s argument that the advertising model is dead…people will have to pay from here on in. A colleague tells me this probably won’t involve paying per click in the end. You will get a subscription package to several papers, perhaps bundled in with your Sky TV.

CHALLENGER
It’s already a crowded argument with Google and Murdoch but EXTRA, EXTRA, there’s a third challenger in the ring, another big name weighing in. Arianna Huffington of The Huffington post (bow down bloggers) has hit back at Murdoch saying his idea makes for bad business, big blogs are surviving fine, the future is a hybrid one and the old press barons should have got their act together before the world transformed around them.

Her hilarious slap down is well worth a read; even if doesn’t quite solve the problem of where the money is coming from.

The key thing really though is the pace of change. Bill Clinton once said ‘you should never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.’ The problem is soon nobody will any more. ‘You should never pick a fight with people who enjoy more than a million unique users…doesn’t quite have the same ring to it…does it?