Broadcaster and campaigner Anne Diamond’s take on the local issues that matter

Diamond Life

Broadcaster and campaigner Anne Diamond’s take on the local issues that matter...

It’s great to be writing for Berkshire & Buckinghamshire Life – as I have been seeing such a lot of it since starting my mid-morning show on BBC Radio Berkshire just a few months ago.

This is undoubtedly the most interesting area I have ever worked in – it’s full of characters, it’s bursting with song (so many choirs!), bristling with wildlife and waterways, sumptuous historic houses and gardens (spent a great day at Highclere, eyeing up the Egyptian collections) and history (did a fascinating outside broadcast from Reading Museum).

Right now, Berkshire has also become one of those intriguing political “barometer” areas, with several marginal seats in the General Election and an electorate who were rightly upset by the MPs expenses scandal from the earliest, when Bracknell’s Andrew McKay was exposed for effectively claiming for two second homes and using public funds to pay for both of them.

If there’s any good to have come of it, then perhaps it has educated us voters to be far more demanding of the people who represent us in Parliament. But it’s no good just moaning about them, we’ve got to know what we want and make them deliver.

So what do folk in this area want? From what I hear on my radio show, strong action to rid city centres of drunken youths at night, particularly in Reading, Maidenhead and Slough, a solution to the endless plague of litter and perhaps more financial help for those who want to embrace green technology like turbines and solar panels, but cannot afford it.

Talking of technology, this month, I found myself inside a surgical theatre at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, witnessing an operation being performed by a robot! “Robbie the Robot” is a multi-armed monster designed to perform the most finely-detailed cutting and splicing in the most hard-to-reach places, taking keyhole surgery to a whole new level, and so reducing the risk of infection and speeding up recovery.

So there I was, all dressed up in my scrubs, watching Robbie whip out a man’s prostate. Just days later, whilst I was interviewing patients in the dialysis ward, I met the man who’d been on that very table – fit, well and full of beans.

Now the Royal Berks is having to campaign and raise a million quid to keep Robbie. Perhaps one of our new MPs will make such a good cause their new priority!

Something else we’ll discover soon – how BBC Berkshire has fared in the prestigious Sony Radio Awards. It’s been nominated for FOUR, more than any other local radio station. One of the awards is for The New Ballad of Reading Gaol, a community based project which got local young offenders discovering a new talent for writing! The breakfast show’s Andrew Peach is nominated for Best Speech Broadcaster, up against the likes of Melvyn Bragg and David Attenborough, so keep your fingers crossed for him! We’ll know on May 10!

Listen to Anne’s weekday show on BBC Radio Berkshire, 95.4 and 104.1FM, from 10am to 1pm.

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Comment by: patricia 26 April 2010 - 14:37

I agree with Anne about reclaiming our town centres. I live near Ascot and there are always youths standing about on street corners. They may be harmless, but they make me feel unsafe.

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