Triangles and all that

Okay, okay, the Crystal Palace Triangle is not so much a ‘scone desert’ as we first thought. We found another one! This time it’s at the Roasted Bean café. Like the LWS café in our previous post, it is situated on the outer extremity of the Triangle where the influence is weakest. The Roasted Bean Café had plain and fruit scones. Some sort of normality after our gruyère and chive experience.

Normality at the Roasted Bean Cafe

Normality, however, is sometimes not all that it is cracked up to be. The girl who brought our fruit scone, semi-apologetically explained that the scraping of jam on offer was all they had left. Not a great start. On the plus side, we were able to sit outside in the ‘garden’ on what was a very hot day. The scone itself, although nicely toasted and tasted okay, the meagre jam and the strange synthetic butter missed the topscone marker by quite a long way. We have concluded that the Crystal Palace Triangle, though not a complete scone desert, is not the sort of place that sconeys should be frequenting. Unless, of course, they have a peripheral interest in broadcasting??

The BBC and Scotland

Crystal Palace may not cut the mustard for scones but it does have the famous Crystal Palace TV transmitter. With a coverage of more than 12 million people, it is the most important in the UK . Broadcasting aficionados will know that the first ever TV broadcast took place in our own home town of Falkirk. John Logie Baird demonstrated the new fandangled thing in what is now Johnston’s bistro in the Lint Riggs.
 
You are probably also aware that the whole ‘TV thingy’ caught on in quite a big way when the BBC was formed. The rest, as they say, is history. The BBC is about to get it’s new charter and whereas this transmitter probably does a good job for London it remains to be seen whether the BBC can adapt to the new politics of the UK. Can it reflect a Scotland where all but three MPs support independence? So far it has failed miserably. For instance, reporting a big independence rally in Catalonia whilst completely ignoring a similar rally in Glasgow on the same day. That is not a service, it is a disservice.

With Scotland raising more than £300m in BBC licence fees and only getting £83m back, an urgent revision is required. RTE, the Irish broadcaster, buys all BBC channels for £21m a year. It doesn’t need a brain surgeon to work it out. An independent Scotland would be much better off simply paying for the BBC in the same way as RTE. If it wants to.

Do you think this transmitter could have anything to do with the mysterious lack of scones in the Crystal Palace Triangle?

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