Joyfulness. How rare it is and even more so to see it live on our television screens. Only the most hardened cynics or republicans could not have been moved to joy or something approaching it if they watched the royal marriage. The BBC estimated that one third of the world’s population stopped to see how the Brits do pomp and ceremony and my do they do it well. There were street, pub and private parties all over the world; people camped near Pall Mall for days for a glimpse of Prince William and his bride-to-be Kate Middleton. Why was it such a big deal? one BBC interviewer asked a Huffington Post royal watcher. Because she said, in the shadow of universal gloom people wanted to see something uplifting, and they did. In the midst of all this there was one other wedding - well, an extraordinary wedding proposal at least. One of the BBC’s presenters was an elegant, composed and very attractive Indian who  so captured the heart of a spectator from the Ukraine, that he interrupted her smooth delivery for a second and proposed. She was, he said, beautiful, a princess – and then asked her to be his very own!

For some more familiar light relief try our very own Dagg, John Clarke: http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2011/04/28/light-relief/

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But back to the Land of the Long White You Know. So has anybody else noticed a steady stream of senior Government ministers avoiding Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report? We know public broadcasting or public anything is anathema to them, but isn’t this what Ministers often prattle on about – accountability – to us.

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And still on the public interest issue here’s this blow to robust journalism - just  before World Press Freedom Day was about to get under way in Washington: 

Three major international public broadcasters in Europe – the BBC World Service, RFI-France 24 and Deutsche Welle, will reshuffle their operations and make hundreds of journalists redundant. “This is terrible news for the public and also for all the journalists threatened by redundancies", said Arne König, President of the European Federation of Journalists. "We need journalism as a public good, not limited by commercial considerations or technologic choices that leave a great part of the public aside".  

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Breakthrough in boobs….

Apple announced that it has developed a breast implant that can store and play music. The iTit will cost $499 or $599 depending on size.
 
This has been hailed as a major breakthrough because women are always complaining about men staring at their breasts and not listening to them. (Off the Net – where else?!)