The Story of the Jews (Part Three)

Simon Schama can certainly tell a story; indeed, the third part of his The Story of the Jews seemed to flash by, such was the power of his story-telling.

And it was a big story he had to tell.

"This is the story of an immense leap of faith, made on a promise of equality and toleration. It would carry the Jews of Europe from the certainties of tradition, and from the ghettos enforced by ancient prejudice, and expose them to the opportunities and to the threats of freedom in world transformed by revolution, technology, mass culture and nationalism."

"The consequences would be world-changing, as hopes born on the pages of books died in the flames of hatred and destruction."

I shall retell it here.

This episode followed the story of the Jews of Western Europe from the dawning of the Enlightenment through to its twilight in the late 19th/early 20th Century, ending just as night fell in 1933.

It began in 1656 with the expulsion of the great philosopher Baruch Spinoza from the Jewish community of Amsterdam for his rejection of Jewish tradition - a tradition which the Jews had cherished for the sake of their very survival for over two millennia. 

Simon Schama didn't demur from the view that Spinoza was the first philosopher of the Enlightenment and that his heretical, rational, optimistic vision of an all-embracing God/universe uniting all people of all creeds in a single harmony - a vision of toleration - was the wellspring of the Enlightenment, challenging the cherished traditions of the Jews but promising them something tantalising instead:

"It was in the 18th Century that the world of gentile learning and the world of the Jews finally came face to face, finally came to engage with each other. The philosophers of the Enlightenment held that everyone, Jews included, guided by the light of reason, could sweep away the inherited prejudices of centuries. So they made the Jews a special bargain. 'Come out of your mental ghetto. Expose yourself to modern languages, to learning, to science, and then you will become useful members of society. When that happens we will embrace you fully and legally in civil rights and you'll become something new. You'll become a citizen who happens to practise the Jewish faith.' Well, it was a noble idea. For that matter, it still is. The question is, 'Would it work?'"

Spinoza's challenge was taken up, just a few generations later, by another Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn - a man from a poor, provincial background who walked to Berlin and, embodying the Jewish Enlightenment, transformed the relationship between Jews and gentiles forever. Whilst cleaving to Judaism, he embraced science, learned languages galore, became a great friend of the German Enlightenment leader Gotthold Lessing and translated the Hebrew Bible into High German - albeit writing his German in Hebrew letters. For Moses Mendelssohn, that German and Hebrew were kindred spirits. His translation was "the bridge over which generations of Jews would cross from the Jewish world to the German world, from the religious to the secular."

Now there were European thinkers who felt that true 'enlightenment' could only be achieved through conversion to Christianity, and who challenged Moses on this, but Moses Mendelssohn insisted he would always remain a Jew, and expected his enlightened fellow Jews to hold fast to Judaism. 

His own children and grandchildren, however, embraced Christianity. His son Abraham, a successful banker, baptised his own children, Felix and Fanny, as Christians - and it was to the composer Felix Mendelssohn that Simon Schama now turned. For Felix, German culture rather than Jewish culture took the driving seat (though Norman Lebrecht believes that he was "in denial" about his Jewishness), and his music went straight to the heart of German (and British) culture.

Music, indeed, was "the royal road for Jews into the heart of German culture" (and beyond), and it was to another Jewish composer - Giacomo Meyerbeer - that Simon turned next. Meyerbeer and his highly successful family did not abandon their Jewish faith as they moved to the centre of sophisticated culture and then, though Giacomo, into dazzling success - a dazzling success, however, that mainly took place in Paris.

That dazzling success brought the first harbinger of the approaching darkness - a not-so-veiled denunciation of Giacomo Meyerbeer [and Mendelssohn] by Richard Wagner. We heard extracts from his notorious 1850 anti-Semitic tract Judaism in Music. Wagner himself pioneered a new, unexpected turn in German culture towards nationalism - Christian, mythic, Teutonic, German nationalism.

Still, by the 1860s, all still seemed to be going well with the Enlightenment project. Urban Jews lived like anyone else and thrived in places like Berlin, outperforming gentile children in education and becoming captain of the new industries and key figures in the old professions. They were patriotic pioneers of the new Germany, so much so that Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismark was in attendance at the opening (in 1866) of the New Synagogue in Berlin, just before the unification of Germany. "It was a marriage that seemed to be made in heaven between modernising Jewish history and the power of the new Germany," said Simon Schama. "Not a cloud on the horizon. Not yet anyway."

In France, the story was the same. Leading Jewish families, such as the Rothschilds, "were embedded in the project to modernise France" - successful, sophisticated, patriotic.

The Enlightenment project seem to be working. 

Then the world turned. 

With defeat for France in the Franco-Prussian war, everything changed. "Defeated nations are dangerous nations, prone to paranoia," said Simon Schama. "And that's exactly what happened." French nationalism transmuted into something "narrower", more "strident", more "tribal". A global stock-market crash followed and the tide of anti-Semitism broke. "All the medieval cliches about blood-sucking moneylenders resurfaced", and focused on the figure of "the Jewish banker". ["Now, of course, there were in fact Quaker bankers, Presbyterian bankers, to say nothing of the Catholic bankers to His Holiness, the Pope," Simon noted.] The victims of the crash suspected there had to a controlling group of people "whose loyalty was to each other rather than the nations in which they happened to reside" - and who else could that be but the Jews? Anti-Semitic tracts like Édouard Drumont's La France Juive (Jewish France) stoked this feverish mood up even further. 

The most primitive anti-Semitism erupted though with the Dreyfus affair. 

Simon Schama set the scene: The Jewish officer, falsely accused of passing French secrets to the Germans, being publicly dishonoured before a huge, baying crowd, then protesting, "An innocent man is being degraded. An innocent man is being dishonoured. Vive la France! Vive l'armée!", as he stepped over his ripped-off buttons and epaulettes and his broken sword.

"He stepped over the debris of what was not just his own personal career but the debris of a noble dream, the possibility of being a patriotic citizen, Frenchman and a Jew."

Among the crowds watching Dreyfus's humiliation was Theodore Herzl, a young Viennese journalist -and Jew. That was the moment when "something snapped" with Herzl -  the moment when he realised that the assimilation route "was never going to work out" in Europe, the moment when pessimistic realism confronted the optimism of the Jewish Enlightenment - and found it wanting. 

The Enlightenment was meant "to sweep away all the old prejudices". It failed. In Herzl's own Vienna, anti-Semitism was now rampant. The mayor was an anti-Semitic demagogue. So what was to be done? 

"He was coming to the conclusion that anti-Semitism could not be cured or defeated. You just had to get out of the way of it. And the problem for the Jews was they were a nation without a home. So in 1895 he wrote his little book, a booklet really, called Der Judenstaat ('The Jewish State'). And this is what he said in it:

"We have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the nations in which we live, seeking just to preserve the faith, the religion of our fathers, but this has not been allowed to us. It's been in vain that we've tried to enhance the fame of our countries in arts and sciences. It's in vain that we tried to increase its wealth by commerce and trade. We are still in the place where we've lived for centuries, decried as aliens, and often by people who were not even here when the sighs of our fathers have been heard for centuries."

"Now thus was born Zionism."

It was at this point that Simon Schama spoke straight to camera, looked each and every one of us in the eye, and said:

"Now Zionism has become a heavily-loaded term - for some people even a tragically loaded term - but not for me.

"I am a Zionist. I'm quite unapologetic about that. Because it comes down to this: Was Herzl, who had a sense of a catastrophic event just around the corner, telling the truth, or wasn't he, about whether it was possible still the live the Enlightenment dream, here in the German world?

"Of course he was.

"With that knowledge, with that sense of the Jews having never had the power of their own national home, how could you not be a Zionist?"

Indeed.

The programme's final Jewish composer, Arnold Schoenberg, living in Herzl's Vienna, wasn't yet prepared to give up the Enlightenment dream though, and confidently spearheaded the cultural revolution of modernism in early 20th Century music. Other cultural revolutions rocked the other arts, with many other Jews leading the way alongside non-Jews. 

Schoenberg had, like Felix Mendelssohn, converted to Christianity to "immunise himself" against the effects of anti-Semitism. 

It didn't work. When even his friend Kandinsky, the great abstract painter, made strongly anti-Semitic remarks, Schoenberg saw the truth. Even though Kandinsky said that Schoenberg himself was an "exception" from 'the Jewish question', Schoenberg said, "I do not want to be an exception...The events of the last year have forced on me a lesson, and it's one I'll never forget...I am no German. I am no European. Perhaps I'm not even a man, since Europeans seem to prefer even the worst of their race to me. I am a Jew." 

The Nazis forced him out. Heading to America, he paused in Paris. There Simon Schama prepared to bring his narrative to a close:

"This story of a great leap of faith began in a synagogue when a Jew was cast out by his own people. It ends in another synagogue, rather differently." 

On 24 July 1933, Schoenberg, who had become a Zionist, sought formal readmission to the community of Jews and Judaism. 1933?

"For more than a decade he'd been predicting that if Hitler and the Nazis ever came to power it would not just be the great experiment in cultural modernism that had begun perhaps since Spinoza and Moses Mendelssohn which would be a casualty but the entirety of Jews that would be engulfed in something utterly catastrophic. He knew that what had begun with words would end with terrifying violence. "

"That great dream of being Jewish and a cultural adventurer was about to disappear into the smoke of the crematoria."

Standing inside the Holocaust Museum, Simon Schama reflected:

"Was it all a delusion then, right from the start? I don't know. I like to think I would have been optimistic with Moses Mendelssohn and realistic with Theodore Herzl. I like to think that the humanity of the Enlightenment idea is not entirely cancelled out by the inhumanity of its incineration. To declare anything else is to declare victory for the murderers. I do know I grieve endlessly. Those here in Berlin, and all over Europe, who innocently imagined they could be Jews and citizens of their own countries and who, to the end, could not imagine the evil that would turn their books and their bodies into ash."

And so it begins...

Tony Abbott has been sworn in as Australia's new prime minister. So how does the BBC's new Sydney correspondent, Jon Donnison, choose to mark the occasion? 

By discussing the disappointment felt by some that Mr Abbott's cabinet has only one woman in it. 

This gives him the chance to link again to Julia Gillard on YouTube accusing Tony Abbott of being a misogynist. Jon Donnison's first non-YouTube link then (predictably) carries readers straight to the UK's very own Guardian newspaper (no fan of Mr Abbott's) to back up the charge than Mr Abbott has a case to answer. 

Going by what we've seen so far, the new Australian prime minister can expect plenty more snide, negative coverage from Jon Donnison in the years to come.

Will there be an 'Abbott as Hitler' poster up in the BBC's Sydney bureau soon?

Congressmen (not) on BBC America

According to the right-wing website Trending Central the BBC has been caught out over its "pro-Obama bias". 

The evidence? A report from the Pew Research Center think tank comparing the coverage of the Syrian Crisis by Al Jazeera America, BBC America, CNN, Fox and MSNBC. 

One of the sections in the Pew report examines the use of sources cited by each media organisation. 

Trending Central notes that all the media outlets relied heavily on Obama administration officials as sources but adds that "the BBC failed to balance its reporting by consulting many representatives of the U.S. House of Congress, the lower house of which is controlled by the Republican Party":

While Fox News, MSNBC, CNN and even Al Jazeera relied upon Obama administration sources for over 50 percent of their coverage on the crisis in Syria, the BBC used just 40 percent. But Fox and MSNBC used 36 and 38 percent Congressional sources, while Al Jazeera and CNN used sources in Congress 16 percent of the time. The BBC came in at just 2 percent on this measure.

Clinching proof of the BBC's pro-Obama, anti-Republican bias?

Tax, Lies and Videotape

So after all the hype, how did Panorama's Tax, Lies and Videotape pan out? 

Well, yes, Richard Brooks of Private Eye was a key figure in the programme, but the programme wasn't by any means an out-and-out piece of campaigning journalism.

Its central argument was that there's an uneasy tension between the government stated desire that everyone should pay their fair share of tax and the government's hope for Britain to remain an attractive place for large businesses to invest in. Do UK taxpayers lose out if foreign companies avoid paying their 'fair share' of tax? 

The programme did rather assume that all tax avoidance is a bad thing, ignoring the fact that most of us 'little people' engage in some form of it - and are, indeed, encouraged to do so by the government (ISAs, pensions, etc). 

Surely not all tax avoidance by 'big businesses' is wrong either, if it's legal. And any tax adviser worth his salt (maybe even the poor HMRC chap who was made to look shifty by the programme's use of fidgety undercover filming) is surely only doing his job if he advises a company - even a multinational company - how to pay the absolute minimum in tax that it is legally obliged to pay, so that it can continue to thrive as best it can. A legal loophole is a legal loophole after all.

Taking the High (Cost) Road

Talking about Scotland and the BBC, we buy a Scottish Sunday paper called The Sunday Post each week[I put it like that for any of you from even further south of the border who may never have heard of it] and it contained a wee article today which is somewhat germane to Edward Stourton and Samira Ahmed and their respective trips tae Glasgow this weekend:

Beeb lesson not as billed

With the Lib Dems convening in Glasgow for their conference this year, the event is literally a stone's throw from the BBC's Scottish HQ at Pacific Quay.

Yet instead of using Scots-based staff to cover the conference, the Beeb are flying up Westminister correspondents and putting them up in swanky hotels. 

Despite BBC bosses getting hauled over the coals at a Westminster select committee last week for their extravagance, they don't seem to have learned their lesson.

They never do.

'Sunday' from Pacific Quay

Time for this week's review of Radio 4's Sunday - a special edition from Glasgow.

What drew Edward Stourton to the city? It certainly doesn't appear to have been the lure of a million shops. (Well, it felt like a million to me after I was dragged round most of them recently). Nor was it the city's fascinating mix of old and new architecture (the splendour of Kelvingrove v that thing which looks like a hypodermic needle).

No, it was (a) the Liberal Democrat Conference (well, who could have resisted that?), (b) the installation of a new Catholic archbishop in Scotland to replace the disgraced Cardinal Keith O'Brien, and (c) it being almost one year to the day until the Scottish independence referendum. Being Sunday and Edward Stourton, there was a particularly strong emphasis on (b), Catholic matters.

7.10 Introduction

7.11 Liberal Democrat Conference. The Lib Dem Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, recently declared that "God must be a Liberal", so Edward Stourton interviewed him about that - and about Sarah Teather. [Edward himself, I suspect, believes Him to be a small-'l' liberal, in the U.S. sense of the word]. Mr Webb's basic theological point is that freedom to choose (which he thinks is what his party is really about) is important to human dignity, and that this extraordinary freedom lies at the heart of the gospels. He said that the Lib Dems have a reputation for being a secular party, but he's wants Christians to feel at home in his party. 

Edward brought up Mrs Thatcher's use of religion and said that 'the gospel of the poor' was something that backs Labour's position [what, still?]. As for Sarah Teather, she'd written a piece in Steve's book saying it wasn't Christian to be mean to immigrants and benefit scroungers [I paraphrase somewhat], noted Edward. Steve Webb said she was pretty much right about that.

7.15 The Pope's Astronomer. An interview with Brother Guy Consolmagno, papal astronomer, on the question of the relationship between the Vatican and science? 'Why does the pope have an astronomer?', asked Edwards Stourton. Brother Guy said that the official answer is to show that the Catholic Church supports science, but the 'real reason' is that "it's one of those things that makes us human". He himself joined the Peace Corp and went to Africa, where people wanted him to teach them astronomy. Their interest in astronomy was his inspiration. 

He explained that the post of papal astronomer arose in the 1500s to help reform the calender and to work out a simple formula that would help the Church get the date of Easter right. Edward raised Galileo (of course), and Brother Guy claimed that much of the story of the Church's ill-treatment of him is a 19th Century myth. [Really?]. Edward also said that the Church was anti-science in late 19th & early 20th centuries. Brother Guy said, no, it opposed things like eugenics but wasn't opposed to science in general. Does the "practical" Pope Francis [as opposed, presumably, to the intellectual Pope Benedict?] approve, Ed wondered. He "understands what we do", replied Brother Guy.

7.21 Deprivation in Scotland. This was a report by Edward Stourton himself on a Church of Scotland project to tackle poverty, in Scotland. As it says on the programme's website: "Passage from India is a charity who are working to combat poverty with support from the Church of Scotland. Edward meets the volunteers in Glasgow to discover how a journey to India inspired them." 

The results aren't perhaps what you might be expecting [from a BBC report.] One volunteer said that people in Scotland are "held captive within the benefits system", which results in despair. A couple of women involved in the project then described how it works. Its aim is to build up people's savings by raising funds through things like lunch clubs, ironing, sewing, etc. The target is to boost people's savings to £5000, then encourage them to invest in a business. The two women in question want to open a launderette. Sounds good, doesn't it?

7.26 Chancel repair liability. Returning to a subject discussed last week, Edward read out two e-mails. One described it as an "insidious church tax" and has launched a Facebook campaign against it. A second, a parish councillor, said they wouldn't pursue the matter, except in the case of wealthy landowners, from whom they ask for voluntary contributions.

7.28 A new Catholic leader for Scotland. As the blurb puts it, "Edward speaks to the new Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, Leo Cushley, who will replace the disgraced Cardinal Keith O'Brien, to find out what his vision is for the future of the Catholic Church in Scotland."

Edwards opening question to Mgr Cushley was, "You're returning to a Church in crisis". He denied that, saying just "one or two individuals" were to blame. Edward pressed him on this, and on the allegations of priestly abuse. He replied that it's the Vatican that is responsible for investigating senior Church leaders. His task is to find out personally what happened.

What about an apostolic visitation? "Many people" don't think that's enough, said Edward, and want an independent inquiry. Leo Cushley rejected both ideas as being an "exaggerated" response. Edward pressed him on it.

What about the return of Keith O'Brien to Scotland? After some pressing, he said he thought it was unlikely to return he'd return and that it would be wiser and more helpful if he were to stay away from Scotland.

On the independence referendum, he said the Church has nothing to say.

Edward speculated that a 'yes' vote could put at risk the tradition of faith schools. Mgr Cushley said the Church would fight hard to protect them.

What about bigotry in Scotland? He said he's disturbed by anti-Catholic bigotry but isn't sure how big a problem it is, having only just arrived back in the country.

And what of celibacy, about which Cardinal O'Brien had been mooting a change? Mgr Cushley replied that he's "happy with celibacy".

What about women in the Church? "A lot of people" are interested in that, says Edward. Ed pressed him over the issue of leadership roles for women, laughingly pointing out that they don't want just to arrange flowers. Mgr Cushley said, indeed not but there aren't going to be any women priests.

7.36 Catholic clerical abuse. Returning to last week's story about Fr Patrick Lawson, dismissed from his position in the Scottish Catholic Church for talking about his own abuse at the hands of a priest [and keeping on with the theme that interests Sunday more than most others], Edward talked to George Gardiner, a parishioner who is backing Fr Lawson and who protested against the move by walking out of a mass held by a stand-in priest. 

7.38 The State of the Catholic Church in Scotland. Gavin Walker reported. Beginning with the sexual scandal surrounding Keith O'Brien, we heard from the congregation of his former parish who are feeling "a mixture of excitement, trepidation and relief". We also heard from Stephen McGinty of The Scotman, who says that the continuing abuse stories are the main thing facing his replacement. Peter Kearney, a Catholic Church spokesman, said that the Church may not publish everything that it finds out about Keith O'Brien, as some of the information will have to remain private. 

What other problems face the Catholic Church? Edinburgh University's Prof. Tom Devine says its internal crisis is the biggest facing it since the Reformation and that the demoralisation caused by Mgr Cushley's predecessor was exacerbated by the fact that several other figures in the Church were also "actors in the process", leading the accusations against their former leader.

Prof. Devine pointed to a significant change in the Scottish Catholic Church's demographics. While it was predominantly poor, Irish  and working class back in the 1950s, by 2001 reached Scottish Catholics had reached "parity" with Protestants, becoming largely middle class. A Catholic Student Union said its membership has risen sharply recently. 

7.44 The Independence Referendum. In the wake of the vote, to be held on 18 September 2014, Edward Stourton talked to politics professor John Curtice, politics professor Tom Gallagher and Church of Scotland minister Sally Foster-Fulton about the state of religion in Scotland and the role that it may play in the run up to the referendum. [No open supporters of independence on that panel.]

Is Scotland a religious country?, wondered Edward.  Prof. Curtice said, "no". Even ten years ago 20% went to church, now that's just 12%-13%, and around 70% never attend a church service. So, it's become just as secular as England.

What about the Catholic Church's authority? Prof. Gallagher said it has "not enjoyed success" in persuading politicians for some time. Even before Keith O'Brien, the Church was already "marginalised politically".

Rev. Sally said the Church of Scotland supported the founding of the Scottish parliament but will stay impartial over independence, concentrating on consulting, encouraging and warning over such things as renewable energy, pay day loans, and welfare.

Prof. Curtice said that Catholics and those of no religion were slightly more pro-independence than Church of Scotland followers. That though was because Church of Scotland adherents tend to be much older and more wedded to their British identity. He didn't think religion would play a role in the independence debate.

What about sectarianism? Prof. Gallagher said it's a part of Scottish culture, that Scotland is "a distrustful, factional society". Prof. Curtice agreed, up to a point, saying that as far as day to day discourse goes, yes, it's still a problem for Catholics but as far as active discrimination over, say, jobs is concerned, no, it's no longer the problem it was. Rev. Sally agreed that sectarianism is deeply embedded in Scottish society, calling it a "symptom of a very unequal society".

Mining the Data

Alan at Biased BBC caught a rather striking example of a certain way of thinking at the BBC, as put into words by Nicky Campbell on Radio 5 Live during an interview with Labour MP Fabian Hamilton:

Would you like to do to the arms industry what people say Mrs Thatcher did to the coal mining industry, would you like to phase it out and close it down?

Alan describes this as a "schoolboy error" on Nicky Campbell's part, and presents the data to support it.

I can only add a little more data - but it's strikingly revealing data, and confirms that those "people" who Nicky Campbell mentions have only half the story (at best). The figures come from the National Coal Mining Museum in Wakefield.

Here are the number of people employed in the coal mines since the start of the 20th Century:

1900 - 780,000
1910 - 1,049,000
1920 - 1,248,000
1930 - 914,000
1944 - 710,000
1947 - 704,000
1950 - 691,000
1955 - 699,000
1960 - 602,000
1965 - 456,000
1970 - 287,000
1975 - 247,000
1980 - 230,000
1985 - 138,000
1990 - 57,000
1995 - 15,000
2000 - 8,000
2004 - 6,000

As you can see, the most dramatic drop happened between 1920 and 1930 - a fall of 334,000 (presumably something to do with the General Strike?). 

The next most most dramatic plunge came between 1960 and 1970 - a fall of 315,000.

The fall between 1980 and 1990 - a drop of 173,000 - was significantly smaller. 

The decline in coal mining jobs was well under way before Mrs Thatcher came to power, having already plummeted by over a million (an 81.6% fall) between 1920 and 1980. 

That may surprise some people, especially at the BBC perhaps.

Update: Many thanks to David for sending us the following fascinating graphs, which makes the story of the long decline of coal mining even starker.

This Sceptred Island

A blog is a blog is a blog (a 'web log', a personal take, a collection of ramblings), so please forgive me for straying (yet again) far from the strict path of BBC bias hunting to pass on the words, from this week's More or Less (BBC Radio 4), of Professor Godfrey Baldacchino, Professor of Island Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada, and editor of the Island Studies Journal, in response to the snub allegedly made against our very own island kingdom by an aide to President Putin - that we are "a small island no one listens to."

Britain is a fairly large island, as far as islands go. Of course, it's always going to be problematic to define how large an island is in order to define itself as an island. There are usually cut-off points at the very top end and the lower end. At the top end we usually define the very largest islands as 'continents', for example, and from a geographical point of view there are four huge continents in the world - Eurasia-Africa being the largest, of course, then America, Antarctica and Australia, in that order. So, if we include those as mega-islands, large islands, Britain would actually be the lucky 13 - the 13th island on that list in terms of land size. [If you take the continents out of the equation, we stand in 9th place.]

If we switch our parameters and go for population instead of land, then Britain would score even higher up the list. It would be the fourth largest island by population in the world - I'm talking exclusively about island nations, the largest being Indonesia, followed by Japan and the Philippines.

So by no stretch of the imagination is Britain a small island.

And then there's nothing wrong about small islands having a stature, a clout, a footprint much larger than they would suggest. I'll just mention the island of Manhattan, which is much, much smaller than Britain and, of course, it's an island that one could call at the very centre of the world.

There are differing definitions of what an island is. Where does an island start off? Is a rock an island? Is a coral atoll...you know, a few feet across or a few miles across...an island?

So it's very difficult to come up with these hard-and-fast scientific definitions.

As far as populated islands go, Britain is definitely one of the largest. It is not just an island. It is an archipeligo. It is surrounded by other islands.

It has also, of course, been the centre of an Empire. Britain shares a historical position with very few other civilisations, including Tonga in the Pacific, including Crete in the Mediterranean, including Venice in the Mediterranean, as having been - in the case of Britain, of course, for many centuries -  the centre of a sprawling global empire. 

Alas, the good professor went a wee bit astray at this point.

One other distinction is that Britain is one of the few islands that officially calls itself 'Great'. Now I'm not sure whether that's a gesture of pomposity or presumptuousness, but it could merely be a factual indication of its relevance on the world's stage.

There are many others [that call themselves 'Great'] but they are usually much smaller.

Now, I don't know about you, but even I could field that question - the question of why Britain calls itself 'Great' (something Tim Harford didn't seem to know, surprisingly). It's something I learned at school. 

Britain was called 'Great Britain' (Grand Bretagne) to distinguish it from 'Little Britain' (Bretagne, ie. Brittany), both lands being inhabited (in Celtic days) by Britons (Bretons). 

Here endeth the geography lesson.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake

Given my own biases, I'd be delighted to have lots more Douglas Murray and Richard Dawkins on the BBC. Preferably together. 

That's not something that's likely to happen.

So in lieu of that, and whilst I'm waiting for the BBC to oblige (and for pigs to fly), there's always Douglas Murray's recent interview with the blessed Richard in the Spectator. 

(The first part of his autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder: the Making of a Scientist, is out within the next couple of weeks.)

What struck me most, as a lapsed but grateful Anglican, is Richard's take on his own Anglican inheritance. It reflects my own way of thinking.

I’m kind of grateful to the Anglican tradition for its benign tolerance. I sort of suspect that many who profess Anglicanism probably don’t believe any of it at all in any case but vaguely enjoy, as I do… I suppose I’m a cultural Anglican and I see evensong in a country church through much the same eyes as I see a village cricket match on the village green. I have a certain love for it.

[If there weren't any churches] I would feel deprived in the same spirit of the English cricket match that I mentioned, that is close to my heart. Yes, I would feel a loss there. I would feel an aesthetic loss. I would miss church bells, that kind of thing.

I am thoroughly in favour of educating people in this country in the Bible, so you know where phrases like “through a glass darkly” come from.

I don’t think you have to [learn to Koran] actually, because if the justification for it is a literary one — since in this country we are on the whole not studying Arabic literature — it’s enough to know the King James Bible, like you have to know Shakespeare. European history you can’t begin to understand without knowing about the perennial hostility between Catholics and Protestants so I suppose for history we need to. But I don’t buy the feeling that because we have Christian faith schools we therefore have to have Buddhist and Muslim and Hindu faith schools as well.’

Now, come on, all you Richard Dawkins haters out there, doesn't that make you want to agree with Douglas Murray, that "As we say our goodbyes it guiltily occurs to me that Richard Dawkins is a man more sinned against than sinning"?

Controversial stuff

Here are some investigative high japes for you, concerning the BBC's use of the word 'controversial'. 

The BBC's use of the word 'controversial' is itself controversial - well, at least in BBC bias-hunting circles - as some BBC bashers (including yours truly, from time to time) claim that BBC reporters use the word to cast a biased cloud over things of which they themselves disapprove. 

The underlying assumption here, if I think about it, seems to be that calling something 'controversial' makes it sound suspect. Which it does.

For example, if you call someone 'a historian' no value judgements are implied and no one will immediately think better or worse of the historian in question as a result; however, call them 'a controversial historian' and the listener/reader will immediately be primed to listen to that historian in a different way - a less immediately trusting way.

Now, the counter argument argument to that is that some things - and some people - just are controversial, in that they cause controversy, or that they are the object of genuine controversy. 

This shouldn't, in itself, be a controversial point, as it's pretty self-evident - and it's on this ground that the BBC tends to defend itself. 

So it might (or might not) be interesting to list the things the BBC describes as 'controversial', just to test the hypothesis that the BBC uses the word in a biased way. 

As I've deliberately not tested this out already, it will be as big a surprise (or non-surprise) to me as it will be to you. 

How to test it? Simply type 'controversial' into the BBC News website's search engine and check all the news results. 

Er...(gulp!)...well not all the news results, as there are 37,817 of them. 

OK. Let me just write down all the things described as 'controversial', starting from today and working backgrounds until I get bored rigid, and let's see what happens. A full-blown, rigorous academic study will have to wait.

Here goes.

14/9: "cuts to the subsidy for people with unused spare rooms" ['the bedroom tax'], D.H. Lawrence,

13/9: Narendra Modi of the BJP [India's new right-wing opposition leader], paramilitary murals in Northern Ireland [in the wake of a new loyalist mural], [Hong Kong's use of] shark fins, fracking, fracking again, the EU bailout deal with Greece, right-wing Indian leader Narenda Modi again, the "issues of flags, parading and the past" in Northern Ireland, retired F1-driver-turned-commentator James Hunt,  a nuclear cooperation deal between George W Bush's U.S. and India and fracking yet again. 

12/9: a deal between the SNP government in Scotland and a businessman [following an accusation from Labour, Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, a dam project in Laos, Rwanda's involvement in the DRC, "plans to fell trees in a forest which is home to red squirrels on Anglesey", "killings and attacks carried out by all sides, including state agents" in Northern Ireland, the EU's Common Fisheries Policy, US Koran-burning pastor Terry Jones, local councils selling publicly-owned art works because of budget cuts and rising costs, India's [left-wing] Dalit leader Mayawati and a new "super-sewer" under London.

11/9: "the controversial issues of flags, parading and how to deal with the past" in Northern Ireland, again, Russia's gay rights laws, [the pro-India, pro-Hindu] parts of a speech by Pakistan's founder Jinnah, "the controversial issues of flags, parading and how to deal with the past" (now where have I heard that before?) in Northern Ireland, and elevated roads.  

10/9: the trial of Kenya's deputy pm for war crimes at The Hague; Irish politician Brian Lenihan; "the controversial issues of flags, parading and how to deal with the past" in (guess where?) Northern Ireland, a possible financial transaction tax in several EU member states, Ed Miliband's plans to change the way unions fund the Labour Party, and GCHQ.

9/9: the Dangerous Dogs Act of 1991; a parade where IRA terrorists were honoured; the BBC's redundancy payments; BBC severance payments; labour camps in China; Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Tesco, an anti-terrorism law in Turkey [targeted at the Kurdish leftist PKK], anti-terrorism laws in Australia, re-education camps in China again, and zero hour contracts.

Well, I'm bored rigid already, even though there are just over 37,700 to go.

So a mere six days' worth of data - but feel free to continue the survey for yourselves ad infinitum - and what do we find?

Some things that might back up our (rightist) claims of BBC bias but, frankly, quite a few others that don't; indeed, to be fair, most, if not all, of the things in this list can fairly be defended as being, objectively-speaking, 'controversial'.

Well, that was an interesting experiment anyhow, as I'm sure Rachel Reeves would agree.

Oddly, I feel like having an early night tonight though. As Ian Katz would say, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

[Had it proved BBC bias, I probably wouldn't have been snoring though.]

Getting complaints from both sides

This week's Newswatch was a special from Glasgow on the BBC's reporting of the Scottish independence debate. 

Presenter Samira Ahmed said that "most of the complaints received by Newswatch" have accused the corporation of "an anti-independence bias". 

Some of those were read out :

Why should we, the Scottish people, pay a licence fee to be fed propaganda on a daily basis by an alleged 'neutral' TV channel? 

I am writing with regards to 'Reporting Scotland' and their constant negativity and 'warnings' about Scottish independence. I went into the referendum with an open mind, and the BBC are offering absolutely nothing to viewers like myself, who may be on the fence. 

When it came to the interview with the relevant BBC manager, John Boothman, Head of News & Current Affairs at BBC Scotland, Samira put the bias point to him. 

BBC managers often get mocked on BBC-monitoring blogs for always trotting out the same old line whenever the issue of bias is raised on Newswatch - 'We get complaints from both sides, which shows we're getting it about right'. 

Mr Boothman didn't disappoint in that respect. It wasn't long before he said,

"To be fair, we have complaints not just from one side, from both sides."

When Samira pressed him on the point, he simply replied,

"It depends who you talk to, and it an polarised debate you're going to get complaints from both sides."

And that was that. His expression said, 'Case closed.' Samira moved on.

Now, as I've noted before, there really does seem to be a lot more criticism of BBC bias from the pro-independence side of the argument - as can be seen from the wealth of websites and social media sites that campaign against the BBC on the issue. So the 'to be fair, we have complaints from both sides' argument doesn't necessarily hold water. 

You could have 1,000 complaints from one side, and 30 from the other. Those from one side could be genuine complaints while the ones from the other side could be essentially disingenuous. One side could outline specific, detailed examples of bias, the other could just make unsupported assertions. 

So, there's a quantity and a quality issue with regards to the BBC's habitual 'you're going to get complaints from both sides' defence. 

Plus, just because both sides say you are biased it doesn't necessarily follow that both sides are wrong. One side could be wrong; the other right. 

Still, none of that will prevent BBC editors from continuing to appear on Newswatch and repeating the mantra that 'We get complaints from both sides, which shows we're getting it about right', over and over and over again. They clearly think it's a knock-down argument. 

It isn't.

'Panorama', and alarm bells ringing

Anticipating Monday's upcoming edition of Panorama, Tax, Lies and Videotape, I hoped four days ago  - as you may recall - for proper investigative journalism rather than out-and-out campaigning from the programme, as befits an impartial BBC, and mentioned some things to look out for in order to help us decide whether the programme is engaged in campaigning:

So look out for the names Richard Murphy, Nicholas Shaxson and Prem Sikka. If any of these people appear, and if they are introduced by the presenter as some kind of independent expert, or labelled on screen as some kind of independent expert, then Panorama is at it again. 

Also look out for the name of their campaigning colleague at Private Eye, Richard Brooks. 

Time will tell whether this coming Panorama will prove to be a beacon of firm-but-fair investigative journalism, or a piece of campaigning journalism instead. 

Well, the first thing to say is that the programme has already taken a major scalp, even before it has been broadcast:

HMRC's David Heaton quits after offering tips on avoiding tax

A government tax adviser who was secretly filmed offering tips on how to keep money "out of the chancellor's grubby mits" has resigned.

David Heaton, who advised HM Revenue and Customs on tax avoidance, was filmed at a London conference in a probe by BBC Panorama and Private Eye.

The last few words there - "a probe by BBC Panorama and Private Eye" - have led my eyebrows to take a Paxman-like upwards turn there. Surely the BBC can't be doing their investigation in tandem with Richard Brooks of Private Eye? 

If they are, that would place the Panorama team behind the programme far too close, in my opinion, to the campaigners' camp. Mr Brooks is allied to the Tax Justice Network and was the inspiration for UK Uncut. That would hardly look good for the BBC's reputation for impartiality, would it?

This one will be worth watching on Monday.

Friends in high places

It looks as if he wagons are being drawn around the BBC, following the Public Affairs Committee debacle last Monday. 

Among those firing their pistols at the approaching native Americans is the BBC's Head of Strategy, former New Labour minister James Purnell. He's trying to fend off (Conservative) Culture Secretary Maria Miller's attempts to give the National Audit Office full access to the BBC's accounts, and he's receiving the backing of senior Labour Party figures like Harriet Harman.  

Now calls for Ofcom to either regulate the BBC in place of the BBC Trust or to become the custodian of the licence fee are being resisted by, of all people, Ed Richards, head of Ofcom (a former advisor to both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown). He says Ofcom shouldn't get involved with the governance of the BBC.

By one of those remarkable coincidences which seem to arise a lot these days...and I read nothing into it, of course...Mr Richards is a friend of James Purnell's (according to the Mail and the Guardian) and collaborated with him on Labour 1992 election manifesto. They spent years playing football together too. 

In one of those other fascinating coincidences, Ofcom was actually the brainchild of James Purnell and, just to make your head spin a little more, Mr Richards used to be Controller of Corporate Strategy at the BBC. 

Which all goes to show that it's a very small world. 

[Does Ed Richards, by any chance, have a secretary called Miss Purnell, and James Purnell have a secretary called Miss Richards?]

Ray Dolby (1933-2013)

Today's The World at One marked the death of the inventor Ray Dolby. 

Dr. Dolby was the man who took the hiss away from sound recordings (oh, how I appreciated that Dolby button on my cassette recorder!) and revolutionised the sound of the cinema, making it the overpowering experience we all know so well today (or at least we do if we actually go to the cinema). 

The programme put in a call to Thomas Dolby, whose pop hits included She Blinded Me With Science and Hyperactive!, as you may (or may not) recall. He shares the same surname as Ray Dolby (as you may have spotted).

Thomas Dolby wasn't born with that surname though, adopting it in honour of Ray Dolby. Unfortunately for him, Dr. Dolby then took him to court to choosing such a stage-name. 

According to Wikipedia, the courts - after a protracted legal battle - eventually decided that Dolby Labs had no right to stop him using that name. According to Thomas Dolby himself though (on The World at One), what actually happened was that Ray Dolby realised he was no Ozzy Osborne or Marilyn Manson, but merely an ordinary bloke who created great music (according to Thomas Dolby), and who then gave way and became his friend. Also, according to Thomas, Ray Dolby then named his own son (writer Tom Dolby) after him - though Wikipedia says that's a coincidence! (Who to believe - Thomas Dolby or Wikipedia?)

Radio 4's obituary show Last Word also led with Ray Dolby, discussing him, his life and his achievements with a former MD at Audio International Studios and a Professor of Film and Media History. 

Ray Dolby's first venture into cinema came with Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.  (Not a film I've ever seen). So here, as a tribute, is its title music - a distortion of one of my favourite pieces of music, the march from the Funeral Music for Queen Mary by Henry Purcell.

(It's not every BBC bias-related blog that gives you the theme music to A Clockwork Orange!)

The latest British Social Attitudes Survey - and clinching proof of BBC bias

'Long post' warning, but hopefully you'll find it interesting....

The latest British Social Attitudes Survey makes absorbing reading - especially its interactive charts showing, in graphic detail (pun intended), how British public opinion has changed between 1983 and 2013. 

I'll try to summarise the findings here.

Economy

1. Should the government increase tax and spend?

Those saying it should rise increased from 32% in 1983 to a peak of 65% in 1991, dipped a little (and wobbled around) before climbing back to a peak of 63% in 2002, before falling all the way back to 34% in 2012. This is good news for those on the Right politically.

2. What should be the priority for extra government spending?

No surprises here. In 1983 63% said heath and 50% education, and in 2012 that stood at 71% for health and 61% for education. 

As for the fraught issue of overseas aid, that stood at 1% in 1983 and it still stands at 1% in 2012 (so it's never been much of a priority for the British public). 

Defence has taken a predictable course. It was 8% in 1983 (after the Falklands), then immediately began falling away as a priority hovering around 2-3% for much of the 1990s and early 2000s. It began climbing again from 2004, thanks (presumably) to the Iraq and Afghan Wars, reaching a peak of 11% in 2011. 

Welfare

3. Attitudes towards unemployment

The trajectory here is very clear - towards a tougher attitude towards benefit recipients. This is good news for those on the Right politically.

46% thought unemployment benefits were too low in 1983, now that's just 22%. Similarly, the number agreeing that if welfare benefits were less generous people would be better able to stand on their own two feet has risen from a low of 25% in 1993 to 53% in 2012.

4. What should be the priority for extra government spending on benefits?

The top answer here has always been retirement pensions (somewhere between 64% and 80%), with disability benefits coming second (usually around the 55-60% mark). Support for child benefits has risen from 20% in 1983 to 38% in 2012; however, reflecting the trend found in the previous question, the support for extra spending on unemployment benefits has halved from 32% in 1983 to 16% in 2012.

Morality 

5. Attitudes to marriage 

The liberal trend here is unsurprising. Though the numbers saying that extramarital sex is wrong have remained constant - and high (around 85%) - those saying that premarital sex is wrong have fallen from 28% in 1983 to 11% in 2012. Most dramatically, those agreeing that people who want children should marry has fallen sharply from 70% in 1989 to 42% in 2012.

6. Attitudes to homosexuality

The liberal trend here is even more marked. Those saying that homosexuality is always/mostly wrong stood at 74% in 1987. That has plummeted to just 28% in 2012.

7. Which religion do you belong to?

In 1985 the top answer was 'Church of England' with 36%. 'No religion' came second with 34%, followed by 'Other Christian' at 17% , 'Roman Catholic' at 11% and 'Non Christian' at just 2%. 

In 2012 the top answer was 'No religion' with 48%, followed (a long way behind) by 'Church of England', falling sharply to 20%, 'Other Christian' remaining steady at 17%, 'Roman Catholic' falling slightly to 9% and 'Non Christian' leaping to 6%.

This is hardly unexpected.

Politics 

8. Do we trust politicians?

The answer is 'no'. This is terrible news for politicians - not that it should come as a surprise to them. Though the figures have periodically risen and fallen - they have fallen overall from 38% in 1986 to a mere 18% in 2012. The low was 16% in 2009, presumably because of the expenses scandal.

9. How important is it for Britain to have a monarchy?

Great news for monarchists. In 1983 86% said it was quite/very important to have a monarchy. That had fallen to 59% by 2003, but is now back up to 75% in 2012. As for those supporting abolition, that was just 3% in 1983 and just 5% in 2013. 

10. Is it your duty to vote?

Those saying it is your duty to vote stood at 68% in 1994 and remains fairly high at 62% in 2012. The number of people identifying with no particular party has risen from 6% in 1984 to 21% in 2012 (with a particularly steep rise over the last seven years).

11. Attitudes to the European Union

The number of those who want us to continue in the European Union has fallen, but not quite as significantly as I'd expected. From high points of support of 74% in the 1990s, the figure now stands at 61%; however, those supporting withdrawal has risen quite steeply from 11% in 1993 to 31%. As for those wanting us to be part of a single EU government, they have fallen in number from a lowly 9% in 1993 to a paltry 3% in 2012. Not good news for the likes of Lord Heseltine then. 

The NHS

12. Are you satisfied with the NHS?

The overall trend for satisfaction with the NHS overall fell from 51% in 1984 to 34% in 1997 but - and this will please Labour - then rose to a peak of 70% in 2010. In 2012 (the year of Danny Boyle's Olympic hymn to the NHS) it still stood at 64%. Where it will be after the scandals of the last year, it will be interesting to see over the coming years.

The Environment

13. Attitudes to the environment

There were two questions here. The first question asked, "Do you agree that people should be allowed to use their cars as much as they like even if it damages the environment?" This saw 19% agreeing in 1991 and 26% agreeing in 2012. Perhaps suggesting those low figures are a case of people not daring to tell the pollsters the whole truth, the second question asked, "Do you agree car users should pay higher taxes for the sake of the environment?", and resulted in 26% agreeing in 1991 but only 15% agreeing in 2012. The Green Party won't be happy.

*************

The media coverage of the survey has been rather disappointing.

The Guardian gave a couple of decent overviews, though (being the Guardian) they managed to ferret out the faintest glimmer of good news for Ed Miliband - Changing British attitudes: rise in support for benefits since last year - and ran with it, by-passing the fact that the overall trend has been dramatically running against Ed Miliband for the last thirty years. Still, that's a left-wing newspaper's prerogative - to spin a story any way it likes. If it's readers don't like it, they can lump it or stop reading the paper. 

For the blessed Daily Telegraph, predictably, the morality findings were of greatest interest - Revolution in attitudes to homosexuality is biggest change in generation; Marriage 'no longer the foundation stone of family life'; Sexual revolution? Not when it comes to the dishes - though they also touched on class - Riddle of the vanishing – and reappearing – British working class.

The right-wing Daily Mail (and for any passing BBC employees, Boo!) gave the survey a good bit of coverage, but took the opposite angle to the left-wing Guardian - Now even claimants admit they are getting too much in benefits: 59 per cent of those given handouts think they discourage work, and Pensioners are more deserving than jobless say UK's young voters as poll shows drift to the right. They also covered the Telegraph's terrain too, concentrating on the morality findings - Britain has become a 'live and let live' society over last 30 years with landmark changes in how homosexuality and religion are viewed; Only 42% back marrying before children: Belief a couple should wed before having a family falls sharply over past 20 years. They also touched on class - Middle class? Not us: 60% say they are working class... the same as 1983.

What of the BBC? Well, surprisingly, there's nothing yet from Mark Easton, their Home Affairs editor. He's usually keen on this sort of thing. It surely can't be because he doesn't want to report the decline in support for tax and spend or the marked hardening of attitudes to welfare over the last thirty years, can it?

As ever with such a mega-sized monolith as the BBC, it's impossible to have seen or heard everything, but I've seen and heard very little about this survey on the BBC.

I saw a bit about the findings on class on Newsnight - an interview with socialist Terry Christian - but the only angle the BBC seemed to be interested in, in this whole vast treasury of information, was...wait for it...

British Social Attitudes Report finds softening attitudes to benefits

Yes, exactly the same helpful angle the Guardian ferreted out to help Labour.

Except that - unlike the Guardian - the BBC article (and Today followed suit) barely even makes the most perfunctory attempt to concede that the British Social Attitudes Survey went much beyond that.

Please read the British Social Attitudes Survey linked to above and then compare it to that BBC's article, with its selective citing of marginal rises in support for benefit payments in the last couple of years. The BBC article is an absolute travesty, isn't it?

It plugs away at that single point like a robotic (Labour) politician (not mentioning Rachel Reeves's name) banging away at the same narrow furrow throughout the course of an interview. It's really quite something.

I'm trying very hard not to rant here, but that BBC's take is so partial - and so inadequate - that it leaves me almost speechless.

Thankfully, this is a blog and I don't need to speak, merely write.

So I'll note that the other points the BBC articles deigns to report are (a) "for the first time in 30 years, more people said they were interested in politics than in the previous 12 months", (b) some 18% said they trusted the government to regularly place the country's needs above their own party's interests, compared with 38% in 1987, (c) the reputation of the monarchy has been enhanced recently, with 45% believing it "very important" for it to remain, compared with 27% in 2006, (d) the survey suggests that Britain has become significantly more tolerant of same-sex relationships, with 22% declaring them "always wrong", compared with 64% in 1987 and (e) nine out of 10 people trusted banks when the survey began in 1983 - that has fallen to just two out of 10.

So people like politics, don't like the government, like the monarch, don't mind same-sex relationships and don't trust banks.

Except for the pro-monarchy bit - and along with the pro-benefits point - this is as clear an example of what interests the BBC as it's possible to get. It ignores so much in the survey which is inconvenient - or merely uninteresting - to a certain (left-of-centre) mindset that it is, I think, as clear a proof of BBC bias as you can get.

Do you agree?

Tzom kal

Now, I'm well aware than many of you won't like the idea of a piece of music by modernist, twelve-toner Arnold Schoenberg...and I can see some of you rushing to the exits already...but as this evening marks the start of Yom Kippur and I love Schoenberg's lovely tonal choral/orchestral piece Kol Nidre, I'm posting it anyhow!

Enjoy - and for all our Jewish readers, have an easy fast.

Party Conference Watch 2013: The Greens

I used to closely monitor political interviews but I haven't done so for quite some time, nor felt any great inclination to do so either; but, as this is a blog (mainly) about BBC bias, a small-scale examination of how the BBC covers this year's UK party conferences might be of interest. 

I'm just sticking to Today's coverage, however. (That's manageable.)

Does any party get disproportionate treatment? Does any party get a rougher ride? What angles do the Today presenters take during their interviews with party leaders?

The conference season gets under way today with the Green Party. Their newish leader Natalie Bennett was interviewed at around 8.45 this morning, with Sarah Montague doing the interviewing. 

8.45 isn't, of course, the coveted 8.10 spot - when most listeners are assumed to be listening - but it's not the graveyard 7.10 spot either. A time of day apt for the leader of a party with one MP then? 

The interview lasted 2 minutes 40 seconds precisely (well, precisely enough. I could have used an atomic clock, but they're rather pricey at the moment). So, not a long interview, but probably appropriate for the leader of a party with one MP then.

As a test of the toughness of the interview, was Natalie Bennett interrupted by Sarah Montague? No, there were no interruptions. 

Were any of her answers challenged? No. Each question asked put a different question.

Were the questions hard ones? Well, here's where subjectivity comes in, so while I'm saying 'no' to that, you might have a different opinion. So the only way to let you decide is to quote all of Sarah Montague's introductory remarks and questions:

Well, the Green Party meets for their annual conference today, and their leader Natalie Bennett will be taking to the stage, and she joins us from Brighton now. Good morning.

And the main message seems to be from you that...I suppose it's back to the party's raison d'etre, that of climate change, climate change needs to be at the fore again?

And I suppose it's always a problem for the Green Party of how you identify yourself, how you are seen. It leads some to say that, actually, you should change your name. Are you sympathetic to that argument?

And do you think the argument over fracking, for which you're very much opposed...do you think you can still win that?

OK, and just a brief thought about UKIP because, of course, people aren't talking about the main parties, they seem to be talking about UKIP...it rather, sort of, eclipses you and any talk about the Greens?

Natalie Bennett may not have been given a great deal of time but she was allowed to make the points she wanted to make, succinctly outlining her party's main talking points. She used the platform she was given well. She even declined the offer, implicit in that final question, to diss UKIP, saying that both parties are benefiting from the public's disenchantment with the three main parties.

The only other discussion of the Green Party conference came around 6.13am, when Sarah talked to BBC political correspondent, Chris Mason, for a couple of minutes. 

Chris outlined what Natalie Bennett was going to say in her speech and then rehearsed the debate within the party about whether the Greens should stick to emphasising climate change or whether they should offer a much broader range of policies. He quoted their deputy leader wondering whether the party still wants to be seen as 'muesli knitters' and an unknown activist speculating about a possible name change [to the Muesli Knitters Party?].

As far as the UK-wide parties are concerned, the Lib Dems are up next, I believe, then UKIP, Labour and the Conservatives.


Update: Having just listened to The World at One's Green Party conference coverage I was tempted to expand my survey.

But, no, there must be no mission creep, lest I end up reviewing PM and the Daily Politics (etc), monitoring the entirety of the BBC News Channel, and invading Syria.

Charles Moore on 'The corruption of the BBC'

A less favourable take on the BBC's financial affairs than Ms Harman's comes from Charles Moore at the Spectator: 

‘Corruption’ is a subtle word, because it describes a process rather than an event. It does not merely mean bad behaviour: it means behaviour that becomes rotten out of something which was once good. That is why it often afflicts high-minded organisations more than ordinary businesses. People who think they are collectively moral are more self-deceiving than the average market trader.

Hence the current embarrassments of the BBC about huge pay-offs. The reason that the Trust and executives are now publicly blaming each other over the issue is not because one side was in the wrong and the other in the right, but because, at the time, no one involved could see any serious problem with paying the equivalent of literally hundreds of thousands of annual television licence fees to top staff to go away.

The BBC was good; the executives were good; the departure of some of these good people was unfortunately necessary, and so they were paid good money in compensation. That is how it looked from the inside. Now they realise, too late, that it looks completely different from the outside. That difference of perception is how corruption starts.

Birds of a Feather

Ah, so BBC Head of Strategy James Purnell's warning against the government's plan to allow the National Audit Office unfettered access to the BBC's accounts (in the wake of the latest scandal over excessive pay-offs) has now received the strong support of his former cabinet colleague, Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour Party:

"[Culture Secretary Maria Miller] is suggesting a lessening of the BBC's ability to set the terms of reference for what the NAO does … and let the NAO set the agenda.

"It is important to think through the principles of this. I'm on the sceptical side but it depends how it was done and whether there are proper safeguards. I don't think we should do a Dangerous Dogs Act on the BBC, rush to do something everyone agrees is good but doesn't really work.

"This is a difficult time for the BBC, and change does need to happen. When it comes to governance we mustn't reach for a quick-fix answer on this issue, accountability at the BBC is a thorny and complex issue."

Again, as with Mr Purnell, Harriet Harman doesn't exactly seem to have a clear argument as to why Mrs Miller is wrong. It all seems to amount to: The BBC's independence is important, things are just too "thorny and complex", we mustn't rush into things, the Dangerous Dogs Act, blah, blah. 

Why is letting the National Audit Office access the BBC's accounts at a time of its rather than the BBC's choosing a risk to the corporation's editorial independence? 

And what is it with BBC types and politicians being so resistant to having outside watchdogs interfering in their already-proven-to-be-dodgy financial affairs?