Kenneth Roy
Why is Roseanna’s
Catholicism
an issue?
Islay McLeod
Pic of the day
Alison Prince
Oh, for a crack or two
appearing in the
worship of purchase
The Cafe
The really offensive verse
Andrew Hook
The dogma of
public bad, private good
is well past its sell-by
George Gunn
In defence of Edwin Morgan
Bob Cant
Tom Johnston
and Jimmy Reid:
Best first ministers
John Cameron
Tutu on sexuality
Barbara Millar
There is a queer
Scotchman come.
His name is Wilkie
Rear Window
Anne-Marie McManus
Islay’s pics
Monifieth, Angus
West end, Glasgow
North Berwick, East Lothian
Glasgow Central Station
Photographs by
Islay McLeod
Three minutes
to slog it out:
the polar
waste of public discourse
David Harvie
It has been an odd, not to say disturbing, period for public discourse recently. Not surprising, mind you, just not quite satisfactory; actually, to be honest, not much good at all. Several issues have arisen in a bit of a rush, and all of them have produced degrees of hostility, vitriol and manipulation sufficient to blight the reasoned debate that ought to have prevailed. That assumed bastion of reason and critical debate, BBC Radio Four’s ‘Today’ programme, was the focus of one sorry manifestation.
I am theoretically a ‘Today’ fan, and wake to it every morning, but have long regretted the satisfaction with which it ‘covers’ contentious issues by finding polar opposites in the debate and giving them three minutes to slog it out. Too often, you could supply the script yourself, and too often there is smoke and flame but little in the way of much-needed illumination of the more unfamiliar centre-ground. All a bit bit too much like the law, which has an adversarial default setting.
To take things in roughly chronological order, the philosopher A C Grayling – already professor at the universities of London and Oxford – announced the intention of establishing a US-style New College of the Humanities, with premises in Bloomsbury and a headline list of professorial talent (most apparently offering only a very few lecturing hours per year). This new establishment, it was quickly made clear, would charge students £18,000 per year. Rather rashly it seemed to me, he described his fellow academic midwives as, ‘pink around the gills and a little bit left of centre’.
The following day, it was coincidentally revealed that, of the public universities, 105 out of 124 intended to charge the new highest-permitted fees of £9,000 per annum – somewhat at odds with the government’s stated intention that only in exceptional cases would charging the highest fees be sanctioned. Grayling’s plan seemed destined to become a lightning rod for everything related to educational provision, and so it proved.
The academic and literary critic Terry Eagleton launched a ferocious attack, with which I sympathised at the emotional level (although Eagleton has himself been accused of working in the US Ivy League territory that he claims to despise). The American academic Sarah Churchwell (based at an English university) responded with a fair-minded but ‘pro tem’ defence of Grayling’s plan, deliciously pointing out on the way that: ‘What the US system shares with the UK is that most of its state-funded universities are going broke, partly because both nations are full of people who fervently believe in the principle of universal education and just as fervently object to paying higher taxes or tuition fees’.
It would be dismal to think that the public has relegated the value of fair debate, or lost both its appetite for and its ability to identify and value sweet reason; so much noise, so little sense.
As an outside observer, that seems to me to be the nub of the issue, even if the last four are the giveaway killer words. If political parties – especially ‘progressive’ or dare I say it ‘socialist’ parties – continue to reject progressive taxation then we will continue to be in trouble.
Almost instantly, the wires were hot and the blogging and twittering classes were in full flood with torrents of hostility; what was depressing was the apparent insistence of so many that various others with whom they disagreed had no business airing their views. Needless to say, Grayling (who was smoke-bombed out of a talk at Foyle’s Bookshop in London) was the focus of most of the vitriol. While that affair was still blowing hot, a turbulent priest arrived with the intervention into the pages of the New Statesman of Rowan Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury, who wrote that the coalition government was forcing through ‘radical policies for which no one voted’.
Almost inevitably, this proved an incandescent intervention, and without fail comment in the press, radio, television and the blogosphere became focussed on whether Williams ‘should have been allowed’ to speak out. It seemed that the issues he raised were of passing interest en route to the apparently more important matter of the outrage that he had said anything at all. It would be dismal to think that the public has relegated the value of fair debate, or lost both its appetite for and its ability to identify and value sweet reason; so much noise, so little sense.
Then there was the ‘Today’ spat. The writer and director Graham Linehan had been invited specifically to talk about the issues involved in adapting a version of the famous Ealing film comedy ‘The Ladykillers’ for the stage. However, when he arrived at the studio and encountered the theatre critic Michael Billington in the green room, the latter revealed, apparently with some embarrassment, that he had been invited specifically to argue against attempting such an adaptation at all.
The discussion proceeded uneasily, with Linehan clearly feeling under pre-arranged attack and unwilling to be railroaded by a production team that he felt had been dishonest in its intentions. As he awkwardly played his straight bat, the ‘Today’ presenter Justin Webb arrogantly complained to Linehan that he was ‘as bad as a cabinet minister’ not being prepared to tell the ‘Today’ programme something before parliament was informed.
Does the constant pressure of the certainty of reaction mean that participants in debate subconsciously or otherwise adopt, or even encourage, increasingly polar positions? Maybe the lazy trick of ‘cutting to the chase’ simply avoids too much of the (more difficult) meat. I’m not hoping for less debate, but for better, more honest debate, without reliance on hostile, predetermined positions. Perhaps, when we can be instant, informed commentators without the leavening yoke of public responsibility, we all help to muddy the waters.
David Harvie was a film editor in a past life, and now writes in a variety
of guises
Islay’s pics
Islay McLeod
the polar
I am theoretically a ‘Today’ fan, and wake to it every morning, but have long regretted the satisfaction with which it ‘covers’ contentious issues by finding polar opposites in the debate and giving them three minutes to slog it out. Too often, you could supply the script yourself, and too often there is smoke and flame but little in the way of much-needed illumination of the more unfamiliar centre-ground. All a bit bit too much like the law, which has an adversarial default setting.
To take things in roughly chronological order, the philosopher A C Grayling – already professor at the universities of London and Oxford – announced the intention of establishing a US-style New College of the Humanities, with premises in Bloomsbury and a headline list of professorial talent (most apparently offering only a very few lecturing hours per year). This new establishment, it was quickly made clear, would charge students £18,000 per year. Rather rashly it seemed to me, he described his fellow academic midwives as, ‘pink around the gills and a little bit left of centre’.
The following day, it was coincidentally revealed that, of the public universities, 105 out of 124 intended to charge the new highest-permitted fees of £9,000 per annum – somewhat at odds with the government’s stated intention that only in exceptional cases would charging the highest fees be sanctioned. Grayling’s plan seemed destined to become a lightning rod for everything related to educational provision, and so it proved.
The academic and literary critic Terry Eagleton launched a ferocious attack, with which I sympathised at the emotional level (although Eagleton has himself been accused of working in the US Ivy League territory that he claims to despise). The American academic Sarah Churchwell (based at an English university) responded with a fair-minded but ‘pro tem’ defence of Grayling’s plan, deliciously pointing out on the way that: ‘What the US system shares with the UK is that most of its state-funded universities are going broke, partly because both nations are full of people who fervently believe in the principle of universal education and just as fervently object to paying higher taxes or tuition fees’.
Almost instantly, the wires were hot and the blogging and twittering classes were in full flood with torrents of hostility; what was depressing was the apparent insistence of so many that various others with whom they disagreed had no business airing their views. Needless to say, Grayling (who was smoke-bombed out of a talk at Foyle’s Bookshop in London) was the focus of most of the vitriol. While that affair was still blowing hot, a turbulent priest arrived with the intervention into the pages of the New Statesman of Rowan Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury, who wrote that the coalition government was forcing through ‘radical policies for which no one voted’.
Almost inevitably, this proved an incandescent intervention, and without fail comment in the press, radio, television and the blogosphere became focussed on whether Williams ‘should have been allowed’ to speak out. It seemed that the issues he raised were of passing interest en route to the apparently more important matter of the outrage that he had said anything at all. It would be dismal to think that the public has relegated the value of fair debate, or lost both its appetite for and its ability to identify and value sweet reason; so much noise, so little sense.
Then there was the ‘Today’ spat. The writer and director Graham Linehan had been invited specifically to talk about the issues involved in adapting a version of the famous Ealing film comedy ‘The Ladykillers’ for the stage. However, when he arrived at the studio and encountered the theatre critic Michael Billington in the green room, the latter revealed, apparently with some embarrassment, that he had been invited specifically to argue against attempting such an adaptation at all.
The discussion proceeded uneasily, with Linehan clearly feeling under pre-arranged attack and unwilling to be railroaded by a production team that he felt had been dishonest in its intentions. As he awkwardly played his straight bat, the ‘Today’ presenter Justin Webb arrogantly complained to Linehan that he was ‘as bad as a cabinet minister’ not being prepared to tell the ‘Today’ programme something before parliament was informed.
Does the constant pressure of the certainty of reaction mean that participants in debate subconsciously or otherwise adopt, or even encourage, increasingly polar positions? Maybe the lazy trick of ‘cutting to the chase’ simply avoids too much of the (more difficult) meat. I’m not hoping for less debate, but for better, more honest debate, without reliance on hostile, predetermined positions. Perhaps, when we can be instant, informed commentators without the leavening yoke of public responsibility, we all help to muddy the waters.
of guises
