Free rides with RTÉ

No, Tina, it is not everybody's dream to have a personal shopper in Brown Thomas who encourages you to buy that "must-have little black dress" for €1500, or that Louis Vuitton luggage set for thousands of euro, or to join the waiting list for that Hermes handbag. Nor those knee-high boots with a sheepskin rim, or whatever other ridiculous things that were suggested in the opening half of the SSIA-themed How to spend It, on RTE Radio 1.

Does giving 15 minutes of free promotional air-time to Brown Thomas's personal shopping service really qualify as public service broadcasting? Presenter Tina Leonard then moved on to worthier but duller topics. There was the decent woman from Limerick who, after contemplating the family trip to New York, the new car and the household renovations, decided to do a diploma in development studies at the Mary Immaculate College. There was the fella who's encouraging people to invest their money in credit unions in developing countries. Who on earth, or even in RTÉ, thought that this was a topic worthy of its own slot, even in the silly summer season?

Next week, will the show cover luxury holidays, or which new car is the best buy, or something equally unimaginative. Spare us, please. No mention of the fact that only the better-off could afford to take out an SSIA in the first place, or that everyone could give a few thousand euro of their bounty to a charity of their choice. Ah, no. None of that. No mention of those who cannot or will not benefit from the pre-election government windfall. Sure they don't vote anyway.

More plain damn assumptions from each weekday morning now that The Tubridy Show is back, and back for two hours, God help us. Listeners had got used to Tom McGurk and Leo Enright, both much easier to listen to and better informed. Listening to Tubridy trying to manage two hours of breaking news on the UK air "terror" threats on Thursday, 10 August was pure torture. Clumsy, ill informed, nearly hysterical and just awful. And remember how badly he stumbed when he broke the news (before he was meant to) of the death of Charles Haughey?

Awful too was his interview with Minister for Education Mary Hanafin on 15 August, which was nothing more than a (free) 43-minute party political broadcast. Amid the self-congratulatory chat there was just one vaguely hard question, but no follow-up, no holding to account, no challenge. Remember the similarly soft interview he gave Bertie Ahern on TV?

Tubridy should not be allowed talk about foreign or current affairs. If he's to be there at all, he should stick to lighter, popular, cultural issues with which he is more comfortable and competent. His interview with Derval O'Rourke on the same day as Mary Hanafin was grand – soft-focus, gushing, feel-good. And isn't that what he's meant to be there for?p