Unit 01 School life

Clip 1 Healthy eating

Woman 1: The schools are doing it because they’ve got to promote healthy eating and I think it’s the right message. But I think really they should target the parents beforehand, because I think it’s quite sad for the children to have things in there and then to take them away.

Woman 2: I think it’s a good idea. I think children should eat healthy while they’re at school. Treats should be at weekends or after school.

Man 1: So what is allowed in children’s lunch bags? Well, here I have an array of food. Good and bad.

Man 2: Sandwiches, pasta, fruit and nuts are fine. Sweets, crisps, fizzy[1] drinks and chocolate though are set to be taken away.

Clip 2 Grants for school buildings

Voice-over: The building work continues but for how much longer? They’re ready to start a second phase of refurbishment here, but the college may have to send the builders home.

Woman 1: We’ve just come up onto the roof of the old building and as you can see there, that is the new building we’ve been working on for two years and we’re just about to move into the refurbishment of this great two-lifted building.

Voice-over: The principal of South Thames College told me what would happen of she doesn’t get the money for the new building project.

Woman 1: I will have already committed six and a half to eight million pounds that will then be the College’s debt. And this building would no longer work because the services would be cut off and this will have to be muffled.

Voice-over: From hair dressing to forensic science—over 20,000 students and adult learners come here. Some classes are in the old listed building. But the basement floods and the heating breaks down and that’s why they wanted to give it a refurb.

Clip 3 The increasing tuition fee

Voice-over: University fees paid by these students are capped at around 3.000 pounds a year. But the government is due to review the situation and the body representing the bosses of England’s universities has a suggestion, to increase fees to 5,000 or even 7,000 pounds a year.

Woman 1: We have a world-class reputation that needs to be maintained. Students, I think quite rightly, expect a very high-quality higher education. And that has to be paid for.

Woman 2: Today’s second-year students will leave university with debts of more than 17,000 pounds on average. Under one of the schemes being discussed today, that amount will increase to more than 26,000 pounds, a sum that could take quite a few years to pay off. The question is, would this increase actually put young people off from applying to university in the first place.

Man 1: Potentially yes. Yes, I would have to assess my personal situation at that time. But I think it will put a lot of people off as it’s a huge amount of money.

Woman 3: I’m doing a history degree so I have about eight hours of contact a week. So as for my money being wasted, whereas medical students have lots of labs and lots of money on them, so I think it would kind of cause me to think twice about going to university and which university I go to and where.

Man 2: Well I think it is breathtakingly arrogant of university vice chancellors to be talking about doubling the level of tuition fees and the level of graduate debt in the middle of a recession. I think they need to get out of their ivory tower to look at what is going on with the economy now. Students are in increasing hardship already and leaving tens of thousand of people graduating with even bigger amounts of debts is reckless and irresponsible.

Voice-over: Introducing tuition fees in the first place was controversial and difficult so the government is unlikely to rush to increase them now. Annabel Roberts. ITV News.

Clip 4 Graduates facing difficult time

Voice-over: Students setting out on life’s journey are feeling the economic strain before they’ve even secured their first job. For as the economy contracts, graduates vacancies have fallen for the first time in three years.

Woman 1: Most of the other people that I know in my degree, in my course, they’re still struggling to find jobs.

Voice-over: Diphian Serran is a final-year student hoping for a first-class degree and praying for a good job. So far, despite numerous interviews and an impressive CV, she’s had bad luck.

Woman 1: Very bad luck. Unfortunately. I’ve gone through the interview stage of many, so to the final stage. But once I reach there, I often get, either get rejected or it’s, you know, “we’ll let you know”.

Voice-over: The downturn in manufacturing and the meltdown in the financial services mean that nearly half of the employers expect to hire fewer graduates this year. That means the competition on campus has ever been tougher.

Woman 2: This is the generation of university students who were born and bred in the economic boom. But they are graduating in the economic bust. Recruitment’s down, salaries are frozen. This is crunch time in every sense.

Man 1: These times are a lot tougher than they had been the last 10, 15, possibly even 20 years. But employers are still recruiting. The brains of today are the profits of tomorrow. The question is whether the graduates are able to adjust their expectations to the realities of the labor market.

Voice-over: For this final year engineering student, the reality is still great. Vacancies in the engineering and public sectors are on the rise. Will’s found a job in a bank. His starting salary is 42K.

Man 2: There are still opportunities down there for people being smart or, kind of risk savvy enough to get them so it’s just, you know, it’s more difficult but it’s not impossible.

Voice-over: The generation who never had it so good as children may find the economic realities harder as adults. Penny Marshall. News at Ten. Warwick University.

Clip 5 Value of a degree

Voice-over: ‘Tis the season when 400,000 bright young things write off hoping their dreams will come true. Not a letter to Santa, but a university application form. The government wants half of all our young people to experience the wonderful world of the undergraduate. The joy of learning, of student life, the thrill of graduation, the invitation to high-powered, exciting careers.

The reality can be rather different. A few years ago these telesales staff would have been school leavers. Today this publishing firm employs only graduates. Same job, similar salary, different qualifications.

Man 1: Fifteen years ago we would’ve probably said the basic requirements would be A-levels. Because that would be the benchmark we would’ve expected our new employees to have achieved. You know now we see the benchmark is being the degree. So I think the very fact that there are far more students leaving university looking for jobs, enables us to specify a degree today whereas we wouldn’t have done 15 years ago,

Voice-over: Thirty-five per cent of graduates enter the world of work in a job that doesn’t need a degree. And many get stuck in careers they don’t like. Asked what they did want to do, 47% hoped for jobs in media, advertising or PR. Other popular careers include design—favored by 21% of women—and computing, picked by 23% of men. But over 10% of media studies graduates are currently unemployed. It’s the same for design studies. And even worse in computing. Unpopular careers include engineering. Only 9% of students mention that. And yet unemployment amongst civil engineering graduates is only 2.9%.

At today’s graduate recruitment fair, thousands of students were searching for jobs. But engineering stands were typically deserted. And those that did enquire often lacked relevant qualifications. The engineering industry believes in encouraging yet more school leavers to go to university may be an expensive indulgence.

Man 2: Universities argue that we are not training, we are educating. We are creating people who can think. Now, if we are just producing philosophers and thinkers, I don’t think we are going to resolve the economic needs of this country. I mean, that would be absolutely silly, quite frankly.

Voice-over: There are now 60,000 different degree courses in Britain. The biggest increase in so-called cheap degrees, usually humanities or social sciences, which don’t require equipment or laboratories. Universities get money for how many students they have and extra cash if they can woo school leavers from poor and deprived backgrounds. Students are saddled with debts, justified by government on the basis that across a lifetime, a degree is worth an extra 400,000 pounds. But is it?

Man 3: There are two flaws in the government’s figures. Firstly they’re based on the percentage of graduates going through our education. Those figures were in a small per cent. In a couple of years’ time one in every two people will go through higher education of that age group. The second big fundamental problem is they were based on an employment market where there was a job for life, Things have changed.

Voice-over: Here at this plumbing school in North London, about 20% of the class are graduates who’ve decided to retrain. Many come from just the kind of backgrounds government wants to encourage into higher education. But their experience is hardly an advert.

Man 4: By the time I graduated I would say there weren’t the jobs there. So in hindsight, it probably was a waste of time, yeah.

Man 5: So how much money do you reckon you can earn as a plumber?

Woman1: Well, they say between 50 to 75 thousand in about 10 years’ time.

Man 5: 75 grand[2]?

Woman 1: Approximately, yes.

Clip 6 School disciplines (David Cameron’s speech, 31 July 2007)

So going back to my question, how do we translate our values into action? To reprise[3] those values, families as the origin of society, the role of schools in backing up and adding to the lessons of home, the need for clear boundaries and for rules of behavior, the diversity and the differentness of children, the obligation to help the most vulnerable and disadvantaged.

 

Earlier this month I spoke about families. Most of all, we need to encourage stable parental relationships for example, as has been suggested, through removing the bias through against cohabitation in the benefits system and using the tax system to support married couples.

 

Yesterday I spoke about special educational needs. We need to radically reform the statementing process to give parents what they need, including a more sensitive and flexible system of categorising special needs. Parents need greater choice between specialist schools and mainstream schools. And until the system is properly balanced, we believe we need a moratorium[4] on the closure of special schools.  

 

Today I want to explain something of what we'll do to improve behaviour in the mainstream schools.

 

Sometimes people who discuss education give the impression that some sort of incredibly complex alchemy. It isn’t. We know what works because we see it, in our own country and oversees. The best schools, whether they are private schools, academies, grammar schools, comprehensives, have some simple things in common. Most of all, they have an independent ethos and clear rules on acceptable behaviour.

 

Schools should be places where teachers teach and children learn - not sort of holding centres for children irrespective of how badly they behave. Most of all, they should be places where the kids respect, and even fear, the teachers, and not the other way around. If we want our children to grow up in a loving environment, they need to know where the lines are and not to step over them.

 

Heads need to be able to impose real codes of behaviour and discipline and be backed up by parents.

 

Teachers often say to me that they set clear rules, they enforce them and then the parents come along and take the side of the child. This can completely undermine the authority of the school and contribute directly to bad behaviour.

 

Now many schools have home-school contracts, setting out in black and white what is expected of the school, of the parent and of the child. I'd like to take this idea further and make them enforceable, as requirements of admission and as grounds for exclusion.

 

Head teachers should be able to say to parents, if you don’t sign up to this code of conduct for yourselves and your children, your child cannot come to school as simple as that.

 

And I want to strengthen the position of teachers as well. More needs be done to protect teachers from the tiny minority who are bent on undermining authority in schools by making false allegations of abuse against the teacher. This is a growing problem. A recent survey in SecEd magazine indicated that 20 per cent of teachers had been falsely accused and 55 per cent of teachers knew a colleague in their school to whom this had happened.

 

The Teacher Support phone line is taking almost twice as many calls about pupil allegations as it did a year ago. Yet in the past ten years only three per cent of serious allegations have actually resulted in a conviction. And that’s why we believe that teachers should have the full protection of anonymity until the case against them has actually been dealt with.

 

Given the elementary principle that a head teacher must have control over the standards of behaviour in his or her school, this must mean, as a last resort, the power to exclude pupils whose conduct badly disrupts the education of others.

 

Today, at the moment, if a head teacher excludes a pupil, the child has a right of appeal to an external panel run by the local authority. And currently a quarter of the exclusions which are reviewed by appeals panels are overturned. More than half of these pupils are then returned to the school from which they have been expelled.

 

Now just imagine what that does to the standing of the head teacher in the eyes of the students. To see a child, expelled for bad behaviour, swaggering back into the school. It sends completely the wrong message about the relative power of the child and of the school itself. The local authority should be there to serve the school, to help the school, to support the school, not the other way around.

Unit 09 Environment

Clip 1 Another war began in Kuwait

Voice-over: The war is over, but Kuwait’s biggest battle hasn’t even started. Here on the country’s largest oil field almost every well is ablaze, torched by Saddam’s departing troops. It’s a nightmare sight and an environmental catastrophe, perhaps unequalled in history. As we drove past abandoned Iraqi tanks day began turning into night. Rising from each of the fires a dense cloud of toxic smoke adding hundreds of tons of pollution to a sky rapidly turning black. It was high noon in the desert, but the sun was blotted out.

Man 1: Literally from horizon to horizon you can see smoke and fires. And very little light. There is some behind me where the fires are more distant. But as we come round, the situation gets worse and worse. We counted over one hundred fires here. Surely if there is such a thing as a nuclear winter, it will be something like this. Because despite the intensity of these fires, the temperature here is actually freezing. And the sun is unable to break through the cloud of pollution above.

Voice-over: Ahead of us a solid wall of smoke and flame. To the side this eerie sight. A car splashing through puddles of crude oil. The only well that hadn’t been exploded was gushing oil. An official said this is inhuman. Half buried in the sand unexploded bombs. Around each well there may be mines and booby[5] traps. All will have to be cleared before the work can be start putting out the fires. American soldiers arrived at the scene too late to stop the Iraqis torching the wells. “It’s like looking at the gateway to hell”, said one Kuwaiti. Certainly the environmental effects are incalculable. If the pall of black smoke has reached this size within a week, what effect will it have in a year or two which represents the best estimate of putting out all the fires. There are 800 of them, almost 90% of Kuwait’s oil industry. Saddam Hussein’s revenge for a country he failed to capture will continue to take its toll after the war. Ken Reese. News at Ten. Kuwait.

Clip 2 Paper bank or bank paper

Voice-over: It may be old rubbish to us, but paper banks are now living up to their name. Waste paper prices are heading for the sky飞速上涨. For Britain’s rubbish collectors, this growing cascade of old newspapers and magazines could just as well be banknotes. A year ago they could barely get rid of this stuff. Now with Britain’s booming paper mills, the waste is fetching[6] up to 125 pounds a ton. It’s feeding an industry that is a traditional indicator of wealth. Analysts say it’s the biggest price hike they can remember.

Man 1: It is the shortage.

Voice-over: Such is the demand some companies have to keep their waste paper under lock and key. Paper Round is a non-profit making collection company. They say big prices bring big problems. They’ve turned up to find maverick[7] collectors have beaten them to it.

Thrown away on expensive landfill sites. Five million tons of it every year. And that adds up to a lot of forests. Two trees can be saved for every six sacks of waste used in Britain’s paper mills—mills that increasingly rely on recycled paper as their main resource.

The world’s biggest store of used paper of the world’s biggest news print mill, just opened in Kent. Each year 450,000 tons of waste paper will produce 370,000 tons of new paper. But can such huge supplies of paper waster be guaranteed...

Clip 3 More moves need to be made to clear up the sky

Voice-over: The tinsel [8]town is living quite literally under a cloud. It is a cloud of their own making. The smog from a million exhausts. The price to be paid in Los Angeles where the car is king. And the cars are getting bigger and more than half of new ones now four-wheel drives. Fuel consumption is going inextricably up. And beyond their own air they’re pumping tens of thousand of tons of warming carbon gases into the world atmosphere too. Is anything about to change? Not likely.

Man 1: I don’t care about much about gas. I prefer to drive a good car and...

Woman 1: Wouldn’t want to move to a smaller car now, driving in the city.

Man 2: There is not much that is gonna change this great car society and indeed ordinary American seems to becoming more, rather than less dependent on their cars. But there are some people, albeit a small minority, who are trying to prevent their addiction to the motor car from causing quite so much environmental damage.

Man 3: People are changing. People are starting to get it.

Voice-over: Actor Ad Begley, star of “St. Elsewhere” and the new series ”Six feet Under”, is trying to lead by example. His all-electric car, one of just a few here, but their numbers are growing.

Man 3: We have full mobility like any car here, like there big humongous[9] cars. And with a fraction of the environmental impact.

Voice-over: The car, like his house, is entirely powered from solar panels. Indeed solar arrays are now springing up all over downtown LA. If this alternative energy source can work anywhere, Southern California must be the place. Change though is slow. And what change there is, is coming from the ground up. Most Americans still back their government’s line, that there isn’t really a problem. James Mates. ITV [10]News. Los Angeles.

Clip 4 Fight for going green

Voice-over: It wasn’t much of a day for solar panels but at least wind power came into its own. Sustainable living is the order of the day [11]here, so full marks for the man who recycled an old bath as an umbrella. The driving rain didn’t deter new arrivals as the climate camp opened its doors for business and invited in the media. My two minders Rebecca and Chico—both students—began with a tour of the tents, laid out geographically.

Woman 1: This is the Oxford neighborhood.

Man 1: This is the London neighborhood.

Woman 1: This is the west side neighborhood, involving the west of England and Wales.

Man 1: This is the north-western neighborhood.

Woman 1: This is the Scotland barrio[12].

Voice-over: That’s right, they’re called the barrios.

Man 2: Doesn’t barrio mean slum?

Woman 1: No, I don’t think it does in this sense.

Man 2: Have you seen a real barrio?

Woman 1: Not personally no.

Voice-over: In the best tradition of eco-living the camp boasts compost堆肥 toilets.

Man 1: There is straw or wood chippings and then you use them and then you can take that away and leave it for buried and you will be able to use that as compost.

Woman 1: These are bath tubs that are going to be used to construct a grey water system.

Man 1: This third tranquility and meditation tent is still being set up but it’s just where people who are stressed can come and relax. Maybe get a massage, things like that.

Voice-over: Throughout the week camp goers will be encouraged to take part in seminars and workshops to learn more about going green. But it’s what the protesters get up to offside which is scaring the authorities.

Man 2: The camp organizers claim reports that hard-line activities are planning violent disorder are simply smears[13]. But that doesn’t mean some protesters here aren’t prepared to break the law.

Woman 2: Unlawful yes, violent no. It’s going to be peaceful and it’s going to be safe.

Voice-over: The question occupying the police is where and when will the so-called direct action begin.

Man 2: Among the buildings which will almost certainly be targeted by protesters from the camp, possibly wearing suits, is this one. It’s BAA’s Heathrow HQ.

Clip 5 Bubble might be a solution

Voice-over: It’s a sign of the times; nine months old and in a bubble[14]. Lloyd is ones of the first babies to try out a buggy[15] fitted with a protective bubble, to keep out the pollution and possibly guard against diseases like asthma, which might be linked to car fumes. From certain parents say, it’s precaution worth taking. The bubble fits on to any make of buggy and has a two-stage filter, to remove dirt and chemical pollutants from air drawn by a fan into the bubble itself. At first Lloyd wasn’t too pleased about being enclosed in his private protected pram, but soon got used to it. The bubble isn’t completely sealed, but the air inside is at a higher pressure, so stops the fumes getting in. Environmental group say the bubble is an idea worth looking at, but it’s also a sad comment on the state of pollution in Britain’s cities. Boris Bellante. ITN[16]. Central London.

Clip 6 What can we do at home

Woman 1: So after all the excesses of Christmas most people will be wanting to cut back on everything, including energy. So we’ve come to a very ordinary street in London to a very ordinary house to find out how it can be done.

Voice-over: Alexi is one of a team of experts who will come and asses your home.

Voice-over: The thing what he may do is to seal the building to determine where you’re losing heat.

Man 1: I’m going to pressurize the house and we’re going to use a smoke pencil and that’s going to identify in the areas where you might be losing warm air, especially the leakage areas. So hold on to your hats, we’re gonna... Well, so we should see some air escaping here potentially. Yeah. So this is all warm air you’re paying to heat and it’s just escaping straight away.

Woman 1: So how expensive is it to rectify that?

Man 1: Very straightforward—a chimney balloon is a very low-cost measure and it will stop all of this air escaping here. No problem

Voice-over: The thermal imaging camera is another key instrument which shows where energy is being lost. We were advised to double glaze the windows, fit energy saving light bulbs and to insulate the floor boards.

Man 1: OK, so we might have some pipes behind here.

Woman 1: Hiding behind this...

Man 1: Hiding there. Which we do and you can see they’re... It’s like a small radiator. You’re losing a lot of heat through the pipe there. So some pipe insulation; very easy; DIY; set thing; morning job.

Voice-over: Spending around 2.000 pounds should cut your energy bill by up to 25% a year, but more importantly it means you’ll be doing your bit for the planets. Lucy Cotter. London Tonight. Clapham.

Unit 10 Mystery and quirk

Clip 1 Why won't the car start

Voice-over: There’s no doubt who’s taking the lead here. Everyone knows that humans walk the dog, not the other way round. But when it comes to going out in the car, mischievous two-year-old George is in the driving seat, on account of the fact that yesterday the car wouldn’t star without him.

Woman 1: Hello? Is that the AA? Oh, yes. I’ve got a problem with my car. It’s stuck动不了 on the driveway and it won’t start.

Voice-over: Quick as a flash AA engineer Kevin Gorman rushed to Juliette Piesley’s aid. Swiftly he diagnosed the problem with the immobilizer汽车防盗器 in the car’s key.

Man 1: Have you done anything in particular with the key today?

Woman 1: Well, we took it apart to put a new battery in it.

Man 1: OK.

Woman 1: And since then, like it just doesn’t work.

Man 1: Did anything fall out the key when you took it apart?

Woman 1: There was yeah, there was a little plastic thing. It fell. It broke off the key.

Man 1: Yeah that’s the immobilizer chip. We need to locate that again.

Voice-over: Where could that possibly be? Perhaps Juliette’s partner Rob knows.

Woman 1: You know that little piece of plastic that fell out this morning?

Man 2: Oh, no. George.

Woman 1: George ate it? Oh George! How are we going to get the car started? Have you got any ideas?

Man 1: I’ve got a cunning plan. Can you take the dog to work with you?

Woman 1: Yeah. Probably. Yeah. I’m sure there’s a possibility.

Man 1: Well let’s stick him in the car and see what happens.

Woman 1: OK. Oh, no, that’s unbelievable! It started.

Voice-over: Meet the first canine microchip. The two parts of the key reunited from the bowels of George’s belly.

Woman 1: I thought it was a fluke偶然, but later on we took him out and it didn’t start and then we put him back in and it started again.

Man 3: What have all your friends thought about it when you mentioned it to them?

Man 2: Just laughed. Nothing else. Just laughed.

Man 3: If it does reappear through sort of the natural processes, do you think you will be able to put it back in the key and make it work?

Man 1: Yeah, yeah. It will work again. As long as they clean it with tooth brushes and some Dettol.

Voice-over: You never know what else you’ll find there. George has a prodigious appetite. Shoes, half a dozen remote controls and even mobile telephones. George scoffs（狼吞虎咽地吃gulp, wolf down）the lot. Phil Bayles. London Tonight. Addlestone.

Clip 2 Mysterious crop circles I

Voice-over: Crop circles have been appearing mysteriously on the summer landscape for centuries. And these are some of this year’s mysteries—circles that have appeared in the last few days. Some are only inches across, others as big as skating rinks and they can take intricate shapes, like this one, known as the scorpion. The formations draw scientists and spectators from around the world, each with their own theory about what’s creating them.

Woman 1: I feel intuitively that they are some of communication from the earth.

Man 1: I think higher beings.

Man 2: If somebody tells you that they know the answer to this forget it.

Voice-over: Finding the answer though is the major preoccupation of circle investigators. Paul Vigay believes the answer lies in electrical pulses coming from the ground.

Man 3: So I get into a circle and I’ll get to the indication of an energy there or no energy.

Voice-over: But crop scientist Dr. Jeremy Sweet thinks the creative energy is simply the weather.

Man 4: A sort of downward circle which makes the air come down very fast in a sort of whirlwind effect and flattens the crops as if goes down.

Voice-over: The wind, the sun and other elements are also part of the mystery surrounding ancient circles of stone. Most of Britain’s crop circles occur within 50 miles of Stonehenge. Could there be a mystical connection?

Man 5: First one. Second.

Voice-over: Dowser Dennis Wheatley thinks there is. He claims the movement of his dowsing lodge shows crop circles have energy lines and earth spirits, believed in by Stone Age man.

For people in this twilight convoy of cars heading for the Wiltshire hillside, crop watching is an obsession. This group spends night after night in all weathers, believing flying saucers might be the answer.

Man 6: I have seen UFO’s. And so I don’t need persuading. I’ve seem these objects in the sky.

Man 7: Are you looking for little green men or what?

Woman 2: No, no, not little green men or women.

Man 8: I believe that they, the UFO phenomenon and the crop circles are totally connected. And it’s to reawaken an ancient knowledge that we’ve forgotten.

Voice-over: But for many who live on the land, especially farmers, the explanation is not extraterrestrial. It’s human and destructive. Phil Fiddler showed ITN a new cascade in his wheat field.

Man 9: If an alien is gonna come from another planet, it’s not gonna land in the middle of a crop. Why wouldn’t it knock on my door? Why land here?

Voice-over: Exactly, says the granddaddy of hoaxers, Doug Bower. He says any idea of mystery is rubbish and he should know. Doug’s been responsible for hundreds of hoaxes, not just this circle he created for ITN.

Clip 3 Mysterious crop circles II

Voice-over: This was the cause of the initial excitement, fresh crop circles at dawn after a night of mysterious flashing lights. For some hours, scientists from Operation Blackbird high in the Wiltshire hills really believed they captured on the video the actual formation of a crop circle half a mile away, right under their noses. Too good to be true? Yes. Some hours later, when they belatedly walked to the scene, they found a couple of Ouija boards and crude wooden crosses. They’d been had. The vague video images they recorded were of humans, not aliens.

Man 1: We had seen lights which we could not easily account for early in this morning. And we were further analyzing that data.

Man 2: It was almost instantaneously clear that it was a hoax.

Voice-over: This realization came too late to stop the gathering of the curious. The news had after all been flashed around the planet. There was disappointment in the air.

Woman 1: No jolly[17] green giants?

Man 2: No jolly green giants.

Woman 1: I’m disappointed. Oh, dear, dear, dear.

Woman 2: I don’t think it’s a hoax.

Man 3: You still believe it?

Woman 2: Yes I do. I don’t know how they can get it like that.

Voice-over: They, whoever they were, could have got it like that by simply sticking a pole in the ground and walking around it in ever increasing circles, trampling the corn as they went. But the circles were not perfect; the straight lines a disgrace to anyone from outer space; just perhaps a result of spending a little too long at the local pub.

Man 3: So tonight the world will remain as we know it. No extraterrestrial sightings. But they are not saying goodbye to Operation Blackbird yet. They’ll continue to watch over these corn fields for another three weeks, just in case. Bernard Man. News at Ten. Wiltshire.

Clip 4 Mysterious carvings

Voice-over: Kilburn is a friendly sort of place, where very little out of the ordinary is just how people like it. That was until this arrived. Stone carved heads suddenly appearing all over the village. From where, no one knows. And the reason has just left them baffled.

Woman 1: I was absolutely shocked but delighted when they arrived. Even more intrigued when we found out there are other pieces through the village. The mystery is built and everyone is talking about it.

Voice-over: Kilburn was taken completely by surprise.

Man 1: There are no clues in the Kilburn guide book, but with each rock there was a riddle, which goes like this. Twinkle twinkle like a star, does love blaze less from afar? Curious but what does it mean? What are a couple of popular theories then?

Man 2: Well I, you know, it’s linked to religion and it goes back to a sort of early religious symbolism. So who knows?

Clip 5 Talking birds contest

Voice-over: Ten thousand birds are attending this annual show in Birmingham. While some may have been counting the days till Christmas, others in the talking birds contest were rendered speechless by the grandeur of the occasion.

Woman 1: Come on then, cheeky[18] boy. Cheeky boy. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. No?

Man 1: What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?

Voice-over: Not a lot apparently. Birds like Charlie here can sing “I want to Be Free” by the pop group Queen. His 500-word vocabulary includes linguistic gems like “get in that kennel” and “show us your knickers女用短衬裤”. But the real contest would have been Oliver Cromwell and his coach and his lookalike[19] Basil. Basil won and feathers flew.

Man 2: Oliver won that show outright.

Voice-over: The judges were left looking a little bewildered but some saw the funny side.

Bird: Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Voice-over: Indeed. Mark Webster. ITN. Birmingham.

Clip 6 Poor badger

Voice-over: It’s a miracle the young badger獾 cub survived, say wildlife experts, but survive she did. Battered, and bruised though possibly a little cleaner. Her adventure took her right out of the frying pan into the fire. Escaping from other badgers who’s attacked her, the cub crawled through an air bend into a farmhouse looking for sanctuary. But it seems to a badger sanctuary looks very much like a rolled up pair of jeans in a washing machine. After she’d crawled inside, the machine was switched on and both the jeans and the badger went through wash, rinse and full spin.

Man 1: With the temperature of the washing machine would’ve gone up to. I just could believe that she would survive 60 centigrade. I think the saving grace[20] is that the, she was on an economy wash, that means the water level was quite low.

Voice-over: Min Muldoon couldn’t believe it either, when she emptied her machine and came face to face with a badger.

Woman 1: We just looked at each other and I was absolutely amazed it was a badger. I was quite frightened. Frightened because I was terrified of it and it was obviously frightened, but also because I thought perhaps I’d done some damage to the poor thing.

Voice-over: But the only damage was minor and animal sanctuary staff caring for the cub plan to release her in a few weeks time. They’re hoping once she’s back in the wild, she will never get into hot water again. Helen Wright. News at Ten.