Which is better: a 'live' broadcast of a classical concert or being in the Royal Albert Hall for the performance itself? Last night's Prom included Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and centenarian Elliott Carter's Oboe Concerto. Using the BBC iPlayer I was able to compare the television broadcast, the radio version and the experience of actually being in the hall at the concert.

The TV broadcast includes a revealing interview with soloist Nicholas Daniel. In it he talks about the rapt concentration on the faces of the crowd of Promenaders standing in the arena. The Proms audience is particularly attentive - unsurprising since the hall is dominated by a well-informed crowd of 400 or more who are so motivated by the music that they are prepared to stand for it. But join any audience at a live performance and you plug in to the collective experience in a way that never happens at home.

Conductor David Robertson also gave an interview in which he identified Elliott Carter's ability to capture real experience in his music, in the same way as Virginia Woolf did in 'stream of consciousness' novels like Mrs Dalloway. Being in the Albert Hall it is the moment-by-moment collective experience that makes the music.

Standing in the hall with my £5 ticket bought just before, I was hot, and not quite close enough. But when the conductor's baton hovered momentarily at the top of its first down beat, hushed expectation distilled into one moment of complete focussed concentration.

In the fifth symphony the sound was rich with detail I'd never noticed in recordings, and the dynamic range was vastly greater than any recording. Even a static viewpoint sometimes distracts me and so I listen with my eyes closed. In the apparently familiar Beethoven there were moments of complete engagement in the music. This is consciousness changing  'flow experience'. When I was a child it happened so much more easily.

The broadcasts are flush with background information, sophisticated camerwork and the BBC's determinaton to make everything upbeat and accessible. The sound is perfectly balanced. The broadcast 'experience' is almost too polished and content packed, (how I love close-ups of the hammed-up histrionics of some conductors and soloists!). For me, make it live any day.

If you're a designer you'll laugh - and then maybe weep. Clients should be forced to watch this before commissioning.

Spotted on Ultrasparky. 

Last Sunday we had breakfast at the Café Madeira beneath the viaduct beside the Albert Embankment. I tucked into smoked salmon and scambled egg on foccacia - a bargain at £3.50. Everybody else seemed to be Portuguese. Respectable, decent, hat-wearing folk chatted convivially beneath big wall-mounted LCD screens. A bakery next door turns out dozens of reasonably-priced and tasty-looking Portuguese specialities. Further down the viaduct there's a gay gym, some clubs and several bars, all part of 'Voho' the Vauxhall 'gay village'.

There's even art underneath the arches. Not far from the tourist disappointment that is the Lambeth Walk, the once grand Lambeth Ragged School has been sliced through by the railway. It was built by Henry Benjamin Hanbury Beaufoy FRS in 1851 as a memorial to his wife. Ragged Schools educated 'about 800 children' At the school's opening, Lord Ashley portentously declared that 'there is no reason whatever why Lambeth should not rescue itself from the present disgraceful opprobrium which attaches to it.'

The gallery was founded with high-minded ambition of the kind the ragged school's founder would recognise. It aims to “fill a niche between the institution, the commercial and the ‘alternative’”.  It isn't exactly welcoming from the outside. In trepidation we pushed the buzzer beside a blank door set into a high wall - but the people inside couldn't have been nicer or more friendly.

There was an unexpectedly warm welcome at nearby Southbank House too. You can't help being struck by the fabulous Victorian building in Black Prince Road, all ornamented terracotta and glazed tilework set into the window ledges. A frieze over the doorway is one clue to the office block's distinguished past. If you look up, some fading lettering spells out the name 'Doulton'. A smiling caretaker led us to a gallery of photos that tell the story of how John Doulton built a vast business at Lambeth starting from a £100 investment in 1815. The Doultons' fortune was first made in glazed earthenware sewer pipes which saved the city from epdiemics of disease. Doultons then went on to make the fine china that was much admired by Queen Victoria.

An ancient family story describes a domestic science lesson (that's what they were called then). A teacher told an unenthusiastic child to 'put some elbow grease into it!' Some time later she was found searching high and low in a cupboard in a desperate attempt to find the stuff.

Call me a reactionary fuddy duddy if you want, but here are some juicy hand-picked factoids about effort from today's media.

In spite of all the campaigning to get kids to propel themselves to school, at many well-to-do London primary schools all pupils still arrive by car – most in gas-guzzling Chelsea tractors. The physics 'A' level now covers half the syllabus it did 10 or 20 years ago. As a result, British students no longer win the world 'Physics Olympiad'. 

54% of state school teachers won't send their brightest pupils to Oxbridge because a degree at some of the best colleges in the land  'wouldn't be right for our pupils'. And only 1% of children's television shown in the UK is made here: the rest is bland cartoons and unchallenging sitcoms about 'American teenage obsessions like dating'. Age-specific educational programmes and programmes like Grange Hill that tackle British issues and values just don't get made any more.

And then there's cleaning products... Have you noticed how they almost always promise 'no need to rub'? That'd be too much effort. Gullible media-softened saps that we are, we put our blind faith in the miracle product. Once we let the genie out of the bottle, it will solve all our problems for us. Then with a warm glow and a clear conscience we swoosh the stuff down the drain, with no thought for the environmental consequences.

Harrumph. Diaphania shuffles off to Tunbridge Wells making disgusted noises... 

The unanimous decision of an employment tribunal that a Christian registrar working in Islington was unfairly discriminated against because she refused to perform partnership ceremonies for gay people has stirred up a hornet's nest of controversy. That individuals have the right to freedom of belief and religion is rightly enshrined in law – but in this case the law is once again proving itself to be an ass.

The full judgment upholds a complaint of 'direct discrimination on the grounds of religion and belief'. Miss Ladele (who was in post before same sex partnerships were introduced) affirms that 'a civil partnership is a marriage in all but name... I feel unable to directly facilitate a union that I sincerely believe is contrary to God's law' Two colleagues of Miss Ladele (one a Muslim) took demotion (with no loss of pay) to avoid performing the cermony and Miss Ladele was initially accommodated informally by the altering of rotas. But the working atmosphere (particularly with gay and lesbian colleagues) deteriorated and she was informed that she was required to stick to the terms of her contract and perform the ceremonies for people irrespective of their sexuality.

One council diversity specialist told me he was in complete despair at the judgment. He sees it opening the door to any employee refusing duties on the grounds of religion or belief. "Imagine a BNP supporter refusing to serve immigrants on the grounds of 'belief'!"

I'm not convinced that an employment tribunal establishes formal legal precedent in this way. But I am absolutely sure the tin marked 'registrar' now lists gay partnerships as one of its key ingredients. Anyone signing up to the job must take it - or leave it.

POSTSCRIPT

A number of lawyers are conviced that the case deserves to be overturned on appeal. Headoflegal writes:

"if as the Tribunal says, Ms. Ladele's stance is based on her belief that marriage is a life-long bond between a man and a woman, why didn't she kick up this fuss about marrying divorcees?"

Some stunning images in BBC Two's new series presented by Francesco da Mosto in which he sails the great Venetian trading route all the way to Istanbul. In the second episode the journey begins with Pulia in Croatia - a vast Roman ampitheatre where a careless thumbs down from the crowd decided the fate of countless hapless gladiators. Da Mosto goes on to the Istrian chapel of St Mary near Bevam where 15th century frescoes depict the dance of death that comes to all, rich or poor, gladiator or not.

After visiting a solitary lighthouse keeper passionate for the sea, Francesco arrives in Split, the city built around the remains of Diocletian's vast retirement palace. 

It brought back memories of my visit there and to nearby Trogir - both sparkling backdrops to some of the most aggressively opulent yachts I've ever seen. Sometimes the television camera goes to places ordinary tourists never see. We visited the Temple of Jupiter in the palace, but didn't get to the first floor living room of the man who shares his space with a fragment of the temple's pediment, complete with a recently discovered carved portrait of the building's architect.

For once the fairly constant background music (mostly by self-styled 'emotive music creator' Chris Nicolaides) didn't get in the way. It compliments the superb HD images and da Mosto's passionate and honey-tongued presentation style. Next week he covers the island of Korcula and Dubrovnik. 

On the beach where I swam, da Mosto played picigin (a kind of variation on water polo) with the good-looking crew of his sailing boat. Nearby is a lido with the charged atmosphere of all those special places where swimming is taken seriously. Take me there now.