RadioReview:On Thursday, One Planet: Flower Power (BBC World Service) was another programme to make you pause in the aisle and wonder whether dropping that item into your shopping basket would add to a tidal wave of misery in another part of the world.
Over the past few years media reports, largely about worker exploitation, have made savvy consumers wary of a whole range of products from footballs to trainers, cotton T-shirts to coffee. This thought-provoking programme (the first in a two-part series) looked at the phenomenal business of cut flowers. Every day, 20 million flowers are bought and sold at the Aalsmeer Flower Auction in The Netherlands. The auctioneer gave a typical example, of a flower brought in from South America, sold in Aalsmeer and flown to Japan, all in the one day. It's a sobering thought that your fragrant bouquet could have a bigger carbon footprint than the most ignorant-looking SUV.
That's one side of a pretty ugly story. For the other, reporter Susie Emmett travelled to Kenya to visit the massive commercial flower farms there - one employs 8,000 people - and found that Africa is the world's flower garden, not that the locals get time to smell the roses. They're too busy in the constant round of pesticide spraying that the production of perfect blooms demands. Typically, the flowers were grown in plastic greenhouses, each the size of four football pitches. Just think of the water that requires. Exposure to large volumes of pesticides is potentially dangerous for the workers, and local environmental activists talked of the destruction of the region's lakes with the run-off of chemicals from the flower farms. "Saying it with flowers" now has a whole new meaning.
Over the past two years, the BBC's Ireland correspondent Kevin Connolly has been given access to the workings of the Historical Enquiries Team, an investigative unit set up to review 3,268 deaths that took place in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. His fascinating two-part programme History's Witness (BBC R4, Monday) finished this week and it was a fine balance between an exploration of the work of the team, headed up by retired British police officer Dave Cox, and a complete understanding of the culture in which it is operating, where the whole endeavour has been seen either as window dressing or a pointless opening of old wounds.
"It's not exactly an easy win," said Cox. "There's always one side or another going to put a negative spin on it." There's little chance of any convictions for any of the deaths, it's more a question of giving answers to the families who in many cases would have had no information given to them at the time of their loved ones' deaths. Eugene Reavey's three brothers were shot dead while they watched TV at home in 1976. (The IRA promptly killed 11 people in retaliation.) The family always claimed that the boys had no paramilitary affiliation. After the deaths, the Reaveys were on the receiving end of relentlessly cruel treatment by the security forces. After examining the case, Cox concluded that the killings were indeed "a senseless sectarian act", the boys had no IRA involvement and there was full, written acknowledgement and apology for the abuse the family were subjected to by the British army. "You'd think that there was a hundredweight sitting on top of my head that was gone," said Eugene, who had initially been bitterly sceptical of the process.
Myles Dungan, a familiar RTÉ voice, returned to the airwaves with a new series, Highway 101 (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday) and his list of interviewees, starting with ex-CIA man Bob Baer, is far from the usual suspects. George Clooney played a character based on Baer in the movie Syriana so there's more than a touch of derring-do and glamour about the softly-spoken American. He talked about his missions in Iraq - where he attempted, and failed, to involve the Clinton administration in a plot to overthrow Saddam Hussain - and the early part of his career spent recruiting Soviet spies. It was movie material all the way. Dungan is so much at home with this sort of material, pitching knowledgeable questions on the Middle East and 9/11, and delving just enough into the Baer's personal life to make it interesting.
One of the most alarming revelations was that Ireland is now a centre for commercial spying. "It's like Berlin during the Cold War," said Baer, giving the impression that the place is coming down with ex-CIA operatives engaged in all sort of lucrative, covert activity. You have been warned.
