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Had a call from one of the UK tabloid papers today fishing for information on Ian Stringer, my colleague and a candidate on the new series of The Apprentice, who has got himself into a bit of trouble when the press found out his name - and discovered he worked for BBC Three Counties Radio.

Following the flurry of emails sent round to Three Counties staff about referring all calls from the media to the BBC press office, combined with the fact that this reporter woke me up while I was sleeping between this week's night shifts, I was in no position to comment - particularly bearing in mind the rough ride that has (predictably) been given to Ian over the last few weeks.

So: Tabloids don't believe the BBC when they say that Ian quit his part-time radio sports job to appear in The Apprentice and make a big deal about a new 'trust' scandal, then have another go at him for quitting his job to appear in the show and not being able to afford mortgage repayments...

Here's the facts as I understand them:

• Ian was not working for the BBC when he applied to be on the show.
• He was working part-time for 3CR when he was selected to be a candidate. He declared his new position, and the independent production company that makes The Apprentice were happy to proceed, as long as Ian quit his job at the BBC. He did, for the duration of the show recordings.
• After recording, Ian applied, and got, a full-time position at 3CR as a combined sports reporter, news reporter and Broadcast Assistant.
• Months later, when the series had been edited and prepared ready for transmission, the production company released the names of the candidates - prompting research from the press and the discovery of Ian's work position.

I honestly don't know, but I imagine that if Ian's still working in BBC local radio months after filming ended, he probably didn't win the series.

The Apprentice starts tomorrow, Wednesday 26th March 2008, on BBC1 at 9pm.

A few weekends ago, we drove from Bedfordshire all the way through to Bruges in Belgium (though, obviously, not across the channel!). See this post for information on why we went on this 'dirty weekend'!

The following is an extract from the travel review written afterwards - read the whole thing on my website.

The E40 motorway is a 5-minute drive from the ferry deck, and the Belgian border about 10 minutes' drive from the motorway junction. No fear, though: the border consists only of a sign at the side of the road welcoming you to Belgium - crossing borders the way the should be.

Bruges from there is about a 40-minute drive straight up (and a little bit across) on the motorway. About 25 minutes up, you come to a junction going west to the seaside town of Ostende or east to Bruges, Brussels and - eventually - onto the Kazakhstan-China border.

A good place to stop en route is the PJ chocolate factory in Ostende. On the outskirts of the historic Belgian seaside town, the factory produces and sells chocolate, and also has two rooms at the back for cigarettes and alcohol. Although there was not much production of the silky brown stuff going on while we were there, we did see moulds of chocolate of both breast and penis shapes stacked up on the 'factory floor'. We both got our families loads of Easter presents, a big box of chocolates each for work, plus a few bars for the rest of the journey, for about £30 - about a third of the price you would expect to pay for the amount and quality received.

The best first thing to do in Bruges is just to walk. 'Get lost,' as some guide books put it. Wander around the little cobbled streets, along the beautiful canals, stick your head into some of the Flemish courtyards, and stroll around the daffodil-lined squares.

The Belfry is the odd-looking of the three towers in Bruges. You can pay a nominal amount for the privilege of losing your breath (or keeping fit, however you look at it...) while climbing up the 350-odd spiral steps to three levels of the tower. The first is where the city's treasury was based many years ago, and you can still see the iron gates which kept any thieves out and the cash in. The next level up enables you to see the amazing cogwork of both the giant clock, and the massive barrel which produces the folk-song-by-bells music heard every 15 minutes.

We stayed in the cheapest place we could find - the St Christopher's Inns Bauhaus budget hotel.

Each guest at the Bauhaus is given a Bruges Card free of charge - offering a 5-20% off various city attraction entrance prices. There's also a voucher for three free half-pints (one cherry beer, one Belgian beer and one wheat beer) at the hostel's bar, plus 10% off all drinks and meals at the attached cafe-restaurant-pub.

For lunch the second day, we went to a cafe highly recommended by the guide book called BarChoc. Looking at the menu, we realised that the book had underestimated just how much of a chocolate-lovers' haven this place is. We started off with drinks - hot chocolate of course. For mains, I had lamb stew cooked in Belgian beer on a bed of pasta, and Sarah had the rabbit in beer on a pasta bed. All very well - but the whole thing was cooked in the most delicious dark chocolate, including the pasta.

See more photos in the Bruges trip gallery on my website.

I haven't seen much of the White season being broadcast on BBC2 recently (not through choice or deliberate avoidance, just through lack of time), but I did manage to catch the programme on tonight: The Poles Are Coming! (you can see it on the iPlayer in the UK until the 18th March).

A documentary by Tim Samuels, he travels to Gdansk in Poland where he finds the lack of people to fill jobs so severe that women whose husbands have moved westwards are holding up the city's fire service, immigrants from North Korea, Ukraine and China are filling the gaps in the shipyards - and even the site of the proposed new Baltic Stadium for Euro 2012 - in just four years' time - is a grassy field with a dirt-track access road which requires a ferry crossing to get to from the city.

In general, I support the idea of immigration and emigration, and believe everyone should be free to move around as they please, leaving the economy to sort itself out: more people = more money from taxes = more money to spend on services and more jobs to serve the extra people; likewise, less people = less money needs to be spent serving them. But I know it's not as simple as that: as seen by the sheer number of people getting training in places like Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia before moving further west, where they know they will earn three or four times as much, leaving the economy in their home town and country to suffer.

Full credit to Tim for following one particular migrant on the 33-hour coach and train journey between Gdansk and Peterborough. Obvious delight at seeing the White Cliffs of Dover faltered at the sight of the traffic on the M20, finding out that Peterborough isn't a traditional English village with red brick roofs, and a rather rude and abrupt train guard at Peterborough train station.

I'm off to watch the rest of the White season - it's a truly fascinating insight into both English and international cultures and traditions, and how they mix together in the melting pot that is contemporary Britain.

So, Dave Lee got very annoyed by the fact that BBC News didn't switch to wall-to-wall coverage of the earthquake earth tremor that hit Market Rasen in Lincolnshire last week...

The 'speed vs accuracy' debate is always an important consideration for any story - and, in general, in TV rolling news, Sky News are first for stories - some of which turn out to be untrue or contain information which is just plain wrong - while the BBC holds back a bit on the accelerator to check and double-check facts. Of course, this doesn't always work and every newsroom (including newspapers and online newsrooms) gets information wrong. But the BBC must check and verify a story from two seperate trusted organisations - for example news agencies, BBC reporters, publicly-funded organisations, etc - before it is broadcast unless it goes via the lawyer.

In the case of the earth tremor, if you do a bit of research, the BBC was both first with the news and more accurate than Sky.

The first thing you have to understand is that Dave and his mates weren't watching BBC News 24 that night - but BBC News. In the early hours of the morning, News 24 and BBC World simulcast the same programme, under the banner 'BBC News'. Therefore, a potential audience of 233m people (2006/7 figures) would also have seen - in between news of Kofi Annan suspending peace talks in Kenya, a London terrorist being convicted for recruiting extremists and two hopefuls for running the world's most politically powerful country preparing for their last debate, viewers would also have heard about a small earth tremor which knocked down a single chimney in a rural English county.

The next thing you have to consider is that the BBC has more outlets than BBC News 24. Radio 5Live, the UK's rolling news and sport network, is only aimed at a domestic audience and only broadcast in the UK - and they did cover the earthquake. Much, much sooner than Sky did...

Outlet	Broke	Off	Epicentre	Intv
5Live	01:03:48	01:05:03	01:21:53	01:21:28
Sky News	01:10:09	02:06:59	01:36:18	02:38:44
News 24	01:31:19	01:31:42	02:01:04	02:01:30

Broke = Time the outlet first mentioned the story (in any form).
Off = Time the outlet moved on to another story (excluding headlines).
Epicentre = Time the outlet broadcast the correct epicentre (see below).
Intv = Time the outlet first broadcast an interview with an expert.

From this table, we can see that while BBC News broke the story 21 minutes after Sky, 5Live broke the story 6.5 minutes before Sky. We can also see that 5Live broadcast the correct epicentre (see below) before Sky, and had the first interview with an earthquake expert - from the USGS - a whole hour and twenty minutes before Sky. The 5Live interview was then broadcast on News 24 37 minutes before the same contributor appeared on Sky.

So, what were Sky up to for the 57 minutes they spent rolling on what turned out to be a non-story (compared to the 23 seconds on News 24 and 1:15 on 5Live)? They spoke to one of their reporters who was at home in Birmingham, which was later repeated twice in the space of 6 minutes and contained the gem of a question "I know you're still in your own home, but do you know of any structural damage in Birmingham?".

They also spoke to a collection of members of public from around the country on the telephone, while all the time showing (at one point, non-stop for 6 minutes) a meaningless map of England pointing out the cities of Manchester and Birmingham (the two cities where they spoke to Sky reporters from), and the counties of Norfolk, Bedfordshire and Leicestershire, the caption of which was spread out from the west coast of Wales to Lincolnshire. Later, they changed the map to show North Yorkshire, Cheshire, Lincolnshire and Greater London - and, even after saying the epicentre was 15 miles north-east of Lincoln (approximately Market Rasen), showing a large caption pointing out Kingston-upon-Hull - 45 miles away from Lincoln.