Hear Here, There – Frank McNally on the news where you are

One of the great British broadcasting euphemisms is the bit at the end of the BBC's nightly news bulletin, when Huw Edwards (or whoever) announces cheerfully: "That's all from us. Now for the news where you are."

What follows is usually not the news where I am.

Currently, it tends to be the news from places at least 60 miles north of where I am.

But I can’t complain, since I don’t pay the BBC licence fee. And anyway, I’ve usually just tuned in to watch Newsnight or Match of the Day.

Daughters of Destiny – Frank McNally on a forgotten immigrant community, the Irish Palatines

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Mean, Green Grass of Home – Frank McNally on the greatest of all Irish curses

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No Irish Need Apply – Frank McNally on the national hang-up about capital punishment

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Present and Incorrect – Frank McNally on the importance of being “Anseo”

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There was a time, when I was growing up a few miles south of the Border, that the BBC's local news was from a lot nearer to where I was – near enough for us to get the TV signal, unlike most of Ireland back then.

But the euphemism for regional coverage hadn’t yet been invented.

And as near as Northern Ireland’s news was to the news where I was, its intrusion on the main broadcast was not always welcome. Sometimes the presenter didn’t even break the news that it was time for the news where we were – it just happened.

There was a horrible moment every Saturday when you’d be watching Final Score, for the English football results. Then the English results would be hijacked, mid-sentence sometimes, by the results from BBC Northern Ireland.

It was as if rebels had seized the station and cut the line to London.

From the glamour of hearing about Chelsea v Arsenal, suddenly, you were plunged into the latest grim encounter between Chimney Corner and Distillery, where it had finished 0-0 after extra time. Not – again – that I could complain. It didn't cost us anything then either.

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If I had to pay for the BBC licence now, I might reserve the right to feel patronised by notion of the main bulletin cutting to the news where I am.

It might be all the more annoying since we live in an era when national leaders – a habit common in Dublin as well as London – tend to explain away mistakes with the phrase “We are where we are”.

Which only serves to emphasise that where they are is not always where the effect of their mistakes is.

But I don’t pay the fee, so I can’t feel patronised. And anyway, someone else has felt it already.

Googling the phrase "the news where you are" this week, I found a brilliant satire on the subject from a Scottish viewpoint, by a poet named James Robertson.

He performed it somewhere live back in 2014, when it was merely funny. It may have taken on more of an edge in the years since, when the news in Scotland has increasingly threatened to become news where Huw Edwards is too.

You can see Robertson’s “The News Where You” on Youtube, so I won’t quote much, except the bit at the end, which is about “the weather where you are”.

That’s one area where the Scots have always competed well at a UK level, but not well enough, as he suggests (channelling the deadpan delivery of a national presenter), eg:

“Extreme weather is news. However, weather that is more extreme where you are than where we are is not news. Weather that is extreme where we are is news, even if extreme weather where we are is only average weather where you are. On average, weather where you are is more extreme than weather where we are. Tough shit.”

In an Irish context – nothing to do with the BBC this time – I can also relate to Scottish meteorological sensitivity.

One of the first winters after I left sub-arctic Monaghan for the balmier climes of Dublin, the latter had a snowstorm that became the talk of the town.

It was the most extreme weather event in recent memory, or so people in my office thought.

I found myself comparing it with the Big Snow of 1979, which had lefts roads in Monaghan impassable for two weeks.

But whenever I mentioned this, it attracted blank looks. It had been news where I was, clearly.

It just hadn’t happened to Dubliners. And since there were a lot more of them than us, I might as well have imagined the whole thing.

Anyway, that’s all from this column – now for the news where at least one of my readers is.

When writing about the Palatines here yesterday, I suggested that their first Irish settlement was in Limerick, "near Adare."

And in fairness, it was near Adare. But it was nearer Rathkeale, as a Rathkeale person pointed out angrily on Twitter, while wondering aloud if The Irish Times thinks they can’t read.