[interestednovice]

On the point about context to news for World viewers: good point, however to an extent the reverse it also true - British viewers will be irritated by constant explanations of where Warwickshire is and how the “UK Finance Minister” is called the Chancellor, so will quickly switch away if things get too international.

It is possible to write a script that subtly explains what someone's role is without being too obvious about it.

Take for example the HS2 story. It can be introduced it as being a line linking "parts of England" or "North West England with Birmingham". You don't then later need to introduce Mark Harper as specifically the UK's transport secretary as the context is already there.

You rarely need to make a point of introducing anyone when an Aston will do, but it’s a bit odd to crash into somebody speaking about a topic without some kind of introduction!

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The new joint service doesn't have any hope of getting devolved government in the UK correct. Eg. Steve Barclay is the Health Secretary for England, not the UK Health Secretary, but you can guarantee that he'll be wrongly referred to as the UK Health Secretary.
Same goes for Education Secretary, Transport Secretary, and any area of government that's wholly devolved to Scotland, Wales & NI, who all have their own ministers responsible for these areas of devolved government.

But the News Channel couldn't even get devolution right when it was just broadcasting in the UK, so trying to explain the UK's complicated system of devolved government to the rest of the world.............

This isn’t really a legitimate complaint. People are referred to with their official titles, and that is it. If those titles are misleading that’s a separate issue. Barclay is the UK government health secretary, despite the fact that Health is a devolved issue and the role is therefore only relevant to England. This situation arises because there is no “England Assembly”, so the “default” has to continue to be the main overall Westminster government.

That’s just how things have been set up.

Viewers in Scotland/Wales/NI are likely to already know about devolution so it shouldn’t be too difficult to follow if information is relevant to them. However, with less time to explain arguably “parochial” stories about the U.K., you can’t really blame the BBC if they don’t provide a full explanation on the NC in my view - interested viewers can always look details up via the BBC News website.