to aviation but also to rail.   The HS2 project, again a Labour proposal, has now been given the go ahead, but with a degree of appeasement.   Much of the railway track needed for the project will be underground.   This poses the question is this a political strategy or a damage limitation exercise in marginal coalitionist constituencies?

But returning to aviation, apart from the creation of a South East Airports Taskforce, little direction, or indeed statement of policy, has been made.   The taskforce recommended that the existing airport capacity in the south east of England should be improved within its existing infrastructure.  This is hardly a way to tackle a serious issue with economic significance.

Ministers this week have announced that there is to be a formal consultation about the proposal for a new airport to the east of London.  Whether this be "Boris Island" or Fosters'  Isle of Grain, or for that matter the Maplin Sands plan of the seventies, will, I am sure, be discussed.  What I am equally sure about is that the expense (initially suggested at £50bn) makes this a ridiculous proposal when Heathrow Airport is a shining example of an efficient airport, albeit one that is within 2% of being at capacity and one for which necessary expansion may cost votes - for whichever party is in power.

But as advertising revenue splits across a plethora of other channels, ITV is faced with growing challenges to make ends meet, and so the news offering now is very different.

I must admit, I rarely watch ITV news, as they now brand it. But timings at the weekends, as today, sometimes means I watch the gaudy bright yellow studio as it struggles to report with gravitas. The lead story this evening was whether the government should intervene in the debacle over a bonus due to the head of RBS.

In the report there were cuts to interviews with two government ministers. Iain Duncan-Smith, Work and Pensions Secretary, was interviewed on The Andrew Marr Show. Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, was interviewed on The Sunday Politics by Andrew Neil. Both of these programmes are, of course, BBC productions. ITV no longer has a political programme; gone are the days of Jonathan Dimbleby and even Brian Waldren's Weekend World. The inclusion of these clips from BBC programmes just goes to highlight the lack of compelling broadcasting that ITV can now afford to offer in the news and current affairs field.

But it doesn't stop there. ITV was once the home of good regional television, coming from your home ITV channel, be it Thames/London Weekend, TVS, TSW, Granada or Westcountry Television. Our local news, ITV Meridian, from here in Portsmouth (well now a small studio near Fareham) covers Essex, Kent, the two Sussexes, Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Dorset and a bit more besides. In fifteen minutes of local news, do I want to know about an event in Maidstone? No.

But it is down to the lack of advertising revenue which pays for these programmes and that is just no longer there. Is the only alternative to switch over to BBC?

neighbours, Balchen’s fleet sailed into the English Channel and was confronted by a storm. Around teatime on 4 October, Victory’s accompanying vessels lost sight of the flagship. The fate of Victory was unconfirmed for some time until here topmast was washed ashore at Guernsey and identified by the master of HMS Falkland, provisioning in the Channel Islands at the time.

The wreck was located in 2008 by an American exploration company, although some distance from estimates of where she had actually sunk. As a military wreck, however, there is no question of the finders claiming rights; she remains property of the British crown. Some of the bronze cannons which armed her have been recovered. There is a particular significance about ownership of the wreck; it is rumoured that she has a cargo of gold coins now worth £500 million.

If you can’t wait for the recovery to view recovered naval artefacts, the Mary Rose Museum opens in Portsmouth this year.

The portcullis, according to the council’s chairman, Dr Jonathan Drori, is seen by members of the public as “a gate to keep them out”.

The insignia was introduced by Sir Charles Barry as part of the rebuilding of parliament following the fire in 1834. He saw the Palace of Westminster as a legislative castle and the portcullis fitted well with this.

Perhaps it is as well that Sir Charles did not have to deal with focus groups, brand consultants or marketing agencies (or “councils on public engagement”). The insignia seems to have served us and the British parliament well for almost two hundred years.

You may consider that the reputation of a business is defined by its leaders.   Were you, for example, influenced in your view of the Costa cruise line this week, by the appearance of its CEO (or, for that matter the Captain of the Costa Concordia)?  Is your choice of supermarket slanted by your view of its senior managers when they are interviewed on television?   In the latter case, probably not.

You are, however, far more likely to be influenced by your interaction with the shopfloor staff in that supermarket.   I have two examples of this from yesterday.  A visit to a branch of the Carphone Warehouse left me annoyed.   I was the only customer in the branch; there were four staff.   It was a small branch and yet I was left to wander around the shop with no offer of assistance, no eye contact or engagement from any of the staff, who continued their loud conversation about the latest direction from head office.   I left without making a purchase.

The second example is more complicated and involved a visit to Asda.   Now I have a high regard for Asda.   I think they have a good reputation.   Their staff are smart, courteous, well trained and helpful.   The stores, generally, are well run, well stocked, reasonably priced and the company knows its market.   But recent legislation means that staff are not allowed to smoke on their breaks inside the building.   As a consequence they gather in an enlarged bus shelter in the customer car park, in uniform to smoke.   While this creates a diminished impression of the organisation's reputation, I appreciate that it is not entirely within the control of the company.

There is a Lakota Native American proverb: We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.   The reputation of an organisation is the responsibility of every one of its members, once lost it takes a long time to rebuild.

roll, which moved photography on from the Victorian concept of photographic glass plates, Kodak also invented the mass appeal Box Brownie, Kodachrome quality film and the Instamatic camera.

It was probably the advent of digital photography that caused the beginning of Kodak's decline.  The irony is, however, that it was Kodak that invented the digital camera in 1975, years before the popularity of the internet, broadband and mobile connectivity would realise the digital camera's potential.

Is nothing sacred?

Both Kelner and Weeks are right to bring this to our attention. And as Kelner points out, it would not happen in reverse. Can you hear Huckleberry Finn saying “I say, that’s a spiffing idea. And let’s wash it down with lashings of tea!”

The only thing I would take issue with in Mr Kelner’s comments is his assertion that it may seem a trivial matter, being AA Milne rather than Dickens we are talking about. That doesn’t matter. English literature is English literature. It should not be allowed, under any circumstances to be butchered by our American cousins. Winston Churchill said that the UK and US are two nations divided by a common language. He was right.

The series, the first colour children’s television programme, were first broadcast in the 1960s and were a staple in the Watch With Mother slot (a name which now I am sure would not be allowed. In fact in memory, my father usually watched it with me, when he was at home during the day. Some reels of duplicate film were discovered in the loft of creator, Gordon Murray. He then contacted the BBC and some original footage was found in a vault in Perivale. Thank heavens the BBC has vaults!    New technology has since been used by BBC Studios and Post Production and the high quality result is available for modern day children (plus a few forty-somethings and, if I am not wrong, the fathers of forty-somethings) to enjoy.

For a preview, showing the difference between the original quality and the new digitally remastered copy, part of the story The Printer and the Bill Poster (first broadcast the day before my first birthday) is available on The Guardian website by clicking here.

Still, anyone who wants a fix of Dickens to mark his birthday can travel down to our City of Portsmouth. It’s under two hours by train from London and there’s lots more to see besides. For details of celebrations in Portsmouth click here.

A small amount of internet research shows that there have been so many corporate identities for the business that the latest announcement has little impact (apart, of course, from creating some PR coverage during the quiet post-Christmas sales period).

I admire Waterstone’s Managing Director, James Daunt, who, co-incidentally, also owns one of his employer’s competitors (and one of the only other retail bookshop chains) Daunt Books. However, I was less impressed by the justification for this change in corporate identity.

“Waterstones [sic] without an apostrophe is, in a digital world of URLs and email addresses, a more versatile and practical spelling,” he said. Well fair enough, at a push I suppose. But he then goes on to say: “It also reflects an altogether truer picture of our business today which, while created by one, is now built on the continued contribution of thousands of individual booksellers.” Yes Mr Daunt, but they are not all called Waterstone are they? There was one Waterstone (Tim); it was his bookshop and it should, therefore, be Waterstone’s. This is PR spin at its worst.  I rest my case.

Exciting news for 2012, for those of us living in Portsmouth.    We are to have our own air show. The Portsmouth Air Festival will be held on Southsea Common on 18 August and will celebrate the role of Britain’s armed forces in the air, on the ground and at sea.

Southsea Common will be home for the event. Static events and activities will complement the flying display, for which air traffic clearance is expected to be granted soon. And, of course, there will be a massive closing firework display.

Naturally we will be there. More details will be published soon.

I learnt from an article in The Times, yesterday, that Sir Edward Elgar opened the original His Master’s Voice Store (later known just by its initials), at 363 Oxford Street in July 1921. The store, according to the plaque on the wall, “shaped the way people bought music for nearly a century”. The building itself is no longer a record store; it now trades as a sports wear shop, under the American Foot Locker brand. But the clear art deco lines of the black fronted building give some indication of the more glamorous days of the record store’s 1950s heyday.

The original store was destroyed by fire in 1937 and HMV eventually gave up the premises in April 2000. It is a sad reflection on the way people buy music today, that this Christmas period saw a 17% slump for HMV. Its future is not as secure as it was in the days when a 78rpm demo disc of a new band, The Beatles, was cut in the store in 1962.

In an earlier blog (Digital Luddism) I talked about technological advances changing the way we buy both books and records. It is exactly these advances that have contributed to the demise of every other chain of music stores (Virgin (subsequently Zavvi), Our Price and so on) and put HMV in its difficult financial position today.

The first CD I ever bought, in the mid 1980s, was Brothers in Arms, by Dire Straits. I bought it from Audio Boots, a music division of the main Nottingham chemist, which operated a discrete record store in Clarence Street, Kingston upon Thames. Everybody was getting in on the act when buying music, from a shop, was big business.

What is interesting is that I also remember buying chart singles from the same store in the late eighties for 99p. For younger readers, these were fragile, vinyl discs which you were well advised to copy to cassette tape before they got scratched or otherwise damaged. These days, over twenty years on, for the same price of 99p, I can download a clean digital copy of the latest chart number one “single” from a well known online retailer without leaving the comfort of the sofa on which I am now sitting.

The interview which ran for almost fifteen minutes, was constructively executed, with well phrased questions and superb delivery, allowing the viewer to grasp a real insight into Spielberg’s craft and history. It was also allowed to run, obviously, without commercial breaks but also without interruptions for sports bulletins, inane competitions and pointless regional news from studios outside London (but covering half the country anyway). This is why the one interview Spielberg gave was to BBC Breakfast and not one of its commercial rivals.

Too often the interviewer is too keen to promote his or her voice over the interviewee and to ask pointless questions about subjects unrelated to the interviewee’s particular field. Not so this morning.

And, on the subject of drama, look out for the forthcoming Call the Midwife, a saga of postwar London, and an adaptation of Sebastian Faulks' excellent Birdsong. Both will be running on the BBC.

Having worked in PR for twenty years, I never cease to be amazed by some of my colleagues who claim to be “too busy” to read a daily newspaper, despite the fact that it is the very news which is reported there that, in effect, pays their wages.

On the basis that in thirty years time, students of early twenty-first century history will be studying the articles that are published today in the press, and online, we are privileged to be able to read them for ourselves on the day of publication.

I am reading the excellent biography of Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin and am currently at the point where the great author is learning his skill as a journalist. Whatever we think of the media today, their role in society is vital for future generations’ understanding of events and, thanks to the internet, it will be easier for them to access than my generation who relied on rather poor quality photocopies from an ancient bound edition of Punch.

Students of PR often ask me what newspaper they should read. The answer is always as many as possible. Understand the differences between them. You will find one you prefer but keep changing. It's part of a PR practioner’s trade. But whatever newspaper you read isn’t important. It’s the fact that you read one at all that matters.

The survey questioned 1000 people, asking them how much they trusted each title given. The response was a score between 1 and 10 (where 1 is don’t trust at all). The most telling response is the percentage scoring between 6 and 10 for each outlet. This gives us a "trusted index" and therefore a league table.

Now the figures are obviously going to be a bit skewed. There will be a tendency to score the outlet you use regularly the most highly. Whilst some of the selection is down to free choice, some will inevitably be down to availability. So commuters who regularly pick up a copy of Metro at their railway station will probably trust it without giving much thought. We all know that Sky News promotes itself as “first for breaking news”, causing some people to turn to it first if they hear something major has happened.  Available, but trusted?

The surprises for me in the survey were that The Guardian was the top scoring of newspapers (well, jointly with The Times) and The Daily Mail was more trusted than the Daily Express. No surprise was that the TV outlets were most trusted (in order BBC News, ITV News, Channel 4 News (incidentally produced by ITV) and Sky News).

And despite all the discussion about people preferring their unedited news coming from Twitter, the micro-blogging site came second to last above only the Daily Star.

I was surprised to learn, from an article in yesterday’s i newspaper, that the BBC does not attempt to collect the licence fee from those people who use the iPlayer and other TV broadcasting websites (despite the fact that their development was actually paid for by the licence fee). I suspect that this is probably down to the fact that the technology they use (ie via the internet) is different to the conventional broadcasting means employed by television sets. The explanation proposed by the i newspaper is that those of us who use the iPlayer already have a television licence.

The article from which this gem comes, goes on to suggest that the onset of all this new technology is taking a long time to change our lifestyle habits. We still like to watch major television programmes at the time of broadcast; Downton Abbey on a Sunday night, The Apprentice, so that you know who has been fired before the following day’s Breakfast programme tells you and, somehow the demise of Pat Butcher would not be the same on replay.

Furthermore, while 26.6 million music albums were sold digitally last year a massive 86.2 million CDs were purchased tangibly (is that the right description?). My mother had a Kindle for Christmas and I still can’t see the time when I buy her a download rather than a book with a dustcover and spine...what would there be to wrap up? It seems that despite the convenience of this technology there is an element of Luddism in most of us.

Les Misérables is clearly theatre at its best and commercially successful. It provides what the people want. Should we rely on all theatre to be funded in this way or do we still need an element of subsidy?

Les Misérables is, of course, based on a literary classic by Victor Hugo and those studying classics for academic pursuit at school or university, rely on seeing productions of classics for the fulfillment of those studies. I remember seeing Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? at the Thorndike Theatre Leatherhead (now closed), and productions of lesser known plays at the Young Vic, Waterloo and the Orange Tree, Richmond when I studied A level English Literature.

Of course we need subsidies to preserve British theatre. Not every production can be commercially successful. But we cannot produce commercially successful theatre without having subsidised theatre to feed it with actors, writers, producers and students first. The question is (and I do not know the answer to this) should the subsidy come from the government or from altruistic businesses?