London/UK Riots Coverage (Sky News/BBC News Channel)

But this goes back to what I've been saying over the last couple of days - just because you don't have a camera on the ground doesn't mean the story isn't happening. It's exactly that kind of stupid, limited thinking that the news channels need to move on from.

I couldn't agree more that there's scope to take a step back from time to time to cover other stories - this is another failing of news channels in any breaking news situation, who rarely take time out of the major developing story to cover other news from elsewhere - but just because you don't have your own live footage doesn't mean there isn't anything to report on. Eyewitness reports, text reports and calls from correspondents on the ground, tweets from reliable sources, news from other news agencies, broadcasters and print journalists - there's lots of sources, with plenty of information coming through, and plenty still happening in numerous cities.

Ignoring or scaling back coverage of the live story due to the absence of live video, and replacing it with recorded packages, doesn't do justice to the developing nature of the story. There's still an awful lot going on - it's the responsibility of the presenters and producers to ensure that they keep communicating that effectively, even without live video to continuously visualise the story.

I'm not sure how well known it is but one of the unique things about Blackberry is the way it's network operates.

AIUI It started in the pre-WAP/GRPS days when getting data over a mobile connection was tricky. RIM (Research in Motion, who make Blackberries) worked out a way to do it for e-mail and at the same time made it secure, this is why it was and still is used by companies for their communication.

Blackberry messages go via RIM who are based in Canada so are notoriously difficult to trace, which is why several governments including India tried banning Blackberries last year - they can't get access to the communications between them in the same way they can with other smartphones: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11131330

If you used the theatre things you'd also kill the O2 Airwave TeTRa Network, meaning the police/paramedics/fire can't talk to each other as they use the same masts as mobile phones and the same basic technology, just a different part of the spectrum (I think).

TETRA runs on 465 MHz, (just below the UHF broadcast TV band (way-hey almost back on topic!)), mobile phone GSM bands are 900 MHz, and 1800 MHz, with most 3G services even higher than that, in other words 'miles away' spectrum wise.

Jane Hill live at Westminster this morning on the NC!

And presented the One from there.