A love letter

Last week, after nearly eight years, I left the BBC (I started at WaterAid on Monday). What follows here is my love letter to the Corporation. It's not a technical argument for it, though I am happy to have that argument (if increasingly sceptical of its value) nor any kind of defence of some of our unsavoury employees anymore than it is a tribute to the wonderful colleagues I have left. This is simply my farewell. It does of course repeat many of the things I said at my leaving drinks so isn't worth reading if you were there.

I shall miss the BBC terribly. I've been lucky enough to work across almost all of it, though I've seen some bits more closely than others. And I loved it because I got to defend things I loved. 

My affection for those things is deep rooted. When I think about the BBC, it comes saturated with memory. So saturated that some of those memories come from a time before I was born. I remember being played classic radio comedy as a child from the 1960s, so that I can still recite sketches from Round the Horne (e.g.,) and I'm sorry I'll read that again. I'm not alone in this - think of the Dr Who fanatics younger than me who can go back to the same decade. As a twelve year old, I fell asleep to the 1992 election coverage on Radio 4 amid the glimmerings of the great victory. Obviously I woke up the following morning to Today, but I've done that since the age of about eleven. About the same time, my whole family always watched Noel's House Party. I still have an enormous soft spot for Mr Blobby. (This, with Will Carling, is objectively brilliant)

So far, I've got to about 1992 and the list could roll on and on, but there are plenty of more comprehensive lists out there. My own consumption has waxed and waned over the years in entirely predictable ways - when I watched Benedict Cumberbatch play Stephen Hawking in 2004 I was watching very little, but it was still one of the most extraordinary pieces of television I have ever seen. My current favourites are shaped by my child centred timetable and would be dominated by Radio (note especially this this wonderful gem on Shakespeare last month), News, Politics, and CBeebies. And Pointless. It would have drama in, but I rarely have the energy to engage with much now, and I can't bring myself to watch War and Peace until I've reread the book again.

However, my favourites aren't really the point. That list could be entirely different and just as strong. The BBC is a place where magical things get made, lots of them, and many done in ways that commercial TV and Radio can't do and certainly can't sustain. This time last year, in the grip of a small baby and a lot of hours to fill, I listened to Serial. Frankly, I was dreading it being better than regular speech radio. It wasn't, though it was fine: a good story, told well. We do things that good every week on Radio 4, some better, and many times over. Serial, which lost money, has found it harder to replicate its success. Our music is unsurpassed, Radio 4 inimitable, and our News coverage wider, better and more diverse than anyone else. I wouldn't be without the Spectator and the Economist, but I rely on BBC News. And I know no-one else has as many correspondents in as many places because I've counted them.

I found that experience typical. Working for the BBC only increased my affection for most of the output, if at times straining my patience with the internal and external constraints. Working in News taught me not just to appreciate, but to love, the English Regions. My favourite BBC statistic remains that the regional current affairs strand Inside Out has higher audiences than Panorama. The BBC taught me how to think about digital with the whole audience in mind. BBC Radio, which is the best part of the BBC, gave me such pleasure. There, I got Radio 2 Eurovision approved and saw, brilliantly, Brad Paisley in session. It was marvellous.

This isn't a structured policy argument about the BBC. The technical arguments for and about funding are a reasonable argument to have, though not always had reasonably. There are things one could and should change about the BBC. However, I think this misses the point. The BBC's future has been dressed up in technocratic discussion for over a decade, yet for me it's never been about that. It's been about the institution. And any position anyone takes on the debate is about how they feel about the institution and I suspect institutions generally. David Hatch, quondam Controller of Radio Four, talked about running that station as like inheriting a long-established country estate that has to be handed on intact. I feel that about the whole BBC (and indeed the great estates). It should be handed on. I fear it won't be.

For now though, I feel honoured to have manned some of the barricades. It was an enormous privilege.

Principle, pragmatics and honesty (I): cutting bits off babies

I meant to post this last week, but I got distracted, so some of the relevance has gone. Anyway:

I've been sucked into the circumcision debate, despite not really caring. On one side, it's said we can't do this kind of thing without consent, and babies can't give it (put, sensitively and with a title I have stolen, here). On the other, tradition weighs in, with some sidelines about Jews (though really this is about Muslims). Instinctively, I'd side with the latter.

However, apart from alerting me to the fact that Princes Charles, Andrew and Edward are circumcised (who knew?), it's not been a very well argued debate and there are red herrings aplenty. Here are a few:

• Bodily integrity. This won't do: we stab infants with needles, cut off cords and generally do a variety of things for medical benefit. Later in life, we pierce the ears of children too, sometimes not much later, and certainly not for medical benefit. Clearly, benefits need only be trivial or imagined for bodily integrity to be violated (and a jolly good thing too).
• Medical necessity (a). Necessity won't bear the weight its given here - immunisation is not necessary, merely beneficial. Not a reason not to do it, but let's not pretend we can point to medical necessity. Circumcision is necessary in the eyes of Jews and Muslims.
• Medical necessity (b). Did we ask some doctors? Did they put this up the top of child harm? Do we listen when they do raise things? No, no and no. On booze for example, the law explicitly rejects the medical advice about children.
• Racism. Some have claimed that a ban of circumcision is the worst attack on Jewish life since the holocaust. This is obviously not true, but it probably would have been better if it hadn't be a German court.
• Harm. This is a bit of a battleground, with the practitioners claiming it doesn't do any, and others claiming it does. I think the former are being a bit weak here. Clearly, it's not very dangerous, but it's a big deal - it's Abraham's covenant with God. I think reducing the argument to harmlessness rather weakens it.
• Irreversibility. I hesitate to put this down as a red herring, as I think it's the strongest argument for the ban - though of course, it's meant to be irreversible. That's the point. However, although I am open to persuasion, I do think it is a red herring. Firstly, it's a conditional criticism: in the argument irreversibly good is clearly OK, e.g., inoculations. So this is just a subset of the harm discussion. Secondly, I don't think it's unique: some very negative, legal, things are irreversible, for example, damage done by parents smoking in the home. 

So far, so good. But knocking down some messy logic doesn't win arguments. The critical thing for me is that people seem to be arguing about the wrong thing: specifically, they're arguing about whether people should circumcise, whereas they should be arguing about whether there should be a law stopping them. This distinction is important.  The test of a good law is the impact it has: we should be asking if passing a law against circumcision would make the people as a whole better off, and I suspect it won't. Most importantly,  some people will get it done clandestinely, which could be much more dangerous; secondly, it will rip some people away from their roots, which I don't like very much and I think is undesirable socially. One the other hands I think the gains are pretty minimal. That equation may change, but at present I think that's how it stacks up.

I'd also like a bit of honesty about this. The rejection of circumcision is - at essence - one of some people essentially wanting other people to think like them. This is perfectly reasonable, I'd like people to think like me. However, people don't think like them, and they want to do this. In many cases, they really, really want to do it. And this tension is about how genuinely plural we want society to be. I'm not sure I want a very plural society, so I'd force a lot of things down some fairly narrow paths. In principle, this might be one of them (see practical caveat above). I think that would be good for people; I don't think it would be very plural. Those seeking a ban should admit that too.

That was longer than I intended. As an aside, I think the same issues attend Lords reform through a different angle. I'll do that tomorrow.

Why are we still talking about the marriage thing?

I didn't watch QT last night, but everyone (well, everyone on twitter) seems to think Mary Beard was excellent. I'm not surprised, though of course I've not actually seen any of her programmes, but I do enjoy her blog.

MB and I disagree politically though, so it was nice to see her in complete accord with me (or v.v.) on her latest. Fittingly, this was based on what was prepared for last night, not what was said. Expecting a question of gay marriage, she'd worked out her answer. Here it is:

First, get some bright civil servant to ... get the rules tidied up and simplified. Second, give everyone gay or straight a civil partnership, and make that the gold-standard and leave "marriage" as the optional extra, the religious ceremony, on whatever terms the religions concerned manage to hammer out (and no business of the state at all). 

I had started to write a longer version of this two months ago when the consultation kicked off, but I think that's a succinct as it needs to be. It also stops the quite frankly bizarre spectacle of heterosexuals saying they are discriminated against because they don't have access to the lesser form (supported by Peter Tatchell).

So, abolish all civil marriage. I really don't see how this is complicated, and I really don't see why we need a consultation. Even Britain's Got Talent montages refered to civil partnerships as marriages this week, and that's on ITV.

As an aside, I note that for all the rhetoric about change and equality and different lifestyles, there is never a campaign to recognise polygamy (or I suppose polyandry), yet by the same logic the State should allow those kind of partnerships too. I suspect quite a few people are squeamish about that, but that's just bad logic.

We're keeping Easter

The Prime Minister has put out a short, bland, Easter message. It's here: it says some nice things about Jesus, and chooses to avoid some of the trickier elements of the gospel in favour of emphasising the being nice bits. I this that's fairly understandable, and it's quite nice, if a little dull.

Some people don't think it's dull though. On the contrary, they're very annoyed, because apparently he said 'we Christians' and because 'Easter is NOT historically a Christian festival'. There's more sniping on this, but I can't really be bothered to document it all. The Guardian is running a poll on whether Prime Ministers should do God in public, which broadly agrees he shouldn't - though it's not clear how many people have voted (presumably this is a minority interest topic).

This is just silly. It's Easter. Our Prime Minister is a Christian so he puts out a message. He's excited about some other things too, like the Olympics. He used 'we' last week about that too. Precisely no-one complained. He used 'we' in an Easter context because it refers to people who share his views - it's the first person plural. He's not limited to things that everyone believes in because then he couldn't use it for anything. By the way, he put out a passover message as well. He didn't use 'we' then, because - obviously - he's not Jewish. This is entirely unmerited opposition and it's the kind of pontificating that gets secularism a bad name. 

And this is because Easter is so obviously and unambiguously Christian. It's the big one; it's the point of the faith, the apex of the Christian year. I'm not even going to dignify the nonsense that Easter is not historically a Christian festival, which is just flat out wrong. There is no general cultural resonance of Easter; it's not Christmas, where most people worship at the branding triumph of Coca-Cola. You certainly wouldn't have the holiday then otherwise. It's a nightmare: movable, further crowding days off into one section of the year, and to state the obvious again, it's a double bank holiday where people don't have anything special to do unless they go to Church. We're keeping it.

So, if there is something to object to in the public realm, it's Easter bank holidays. Rail against them, and ask for them to be transferred to October. Don't sulk about a Christian marking the Christian festival. That's silly; it's not even worth the anathema.

What do we want? Er...

I popped over to St Paul's yesterday, on the way back from actual church. I thought I'd go see the protests before I passed judgement. It's rather better than I thought: there is no aggravation, it's quite tidy (with refuse separation that would make any council glad), it doesn't really affect the church at all - more on that in another post - and everyone seems very good natured. They have put up a lot of posters, but it's impossible to be angry with them. It's like a picturesque cross between a student protest* and a festival, with a few crusty hippies and a lot of nice youths taking things very seriously indeed. Many of them have beards, which every ex-student knows is a sign that you are very serious about politics (this only works on the left).

Not that I am any clearer about what they want. For the last week, I've been asking that question of those who might be in sympathy with them and they don't know. I'm thinking of adding it to my list of fun games to play to bait the left (current favourite: which of BP, BA and BT should the government own? Hint: till 1997, the Labour party thought the answer was all three). Going there doesn't help either. Their posters are the usual ragbag of radical socialism, anti-capitalist hoo ha, along with an amusing placard against usury.

'Helpfully,' they've posted their statement up online. It's not entirely clear this is a good idea for them. Of the nine points, three aren't debatable or are meaningless (2,5,8) and four are just poorly thought through left of centre posturing (3,4,6,7) - I don't believe for a second that they have thought through global justice and equality issues. However, it's the remaining two points that are most irritating.

It's because they think that they have arrived at some profound critique of the system: 'this is what democracy looks like. Come and join us!.' This strikes me as a depressing and deep failure to understand the world and a childish refusal to accept that it's more complicated than they think. This approach is widespread and I would categorise the Tory rebellion on Europe in exactly the same way. In this case though, it's why they can't put forward a coherent position forward - they simply haven't done the work, and they're not equipped to. They have diagnosed that something has gone wrong, and they think that having a lot of meetings will help. It won't.

By itself, this wouldn't be an issue. They're not important, real politics gets done elsewhere. But it adds to a public debate that will not consider trade-offs, only propositions, and that's a disaster. Take the banks for example, the line that we should not pay for bank's losses is seductive, but obviously nonsense. There's an oddity anyway about taking tax from bankers to pay for the state and then declaring you want nothing to do with them. In making this argument, the protests ironically are making the same antisocial transactional calculation they would accuse the bankers of. However, the obvious real issue is that that's the wrong question; the right one is to ask what would be the best way to minimise pain for everyone, given we are in this situation. Governments can stop the bankers making money, but will it help? In this case therefore we are really debating between flavours of how best to regulate the financial system. That's not very seductive, but it's very important, and it's hard. We aren't going to navigate that or any other problem by sitting in tents and having daily discussions without decisions. Such an approach is at best self-indulgent, and at worst outright dangerous. It doesn't matter that I can't point to specific demands coming out of the St Paul's camp, it does that people in general don't seen have any, because it means they can't discriminate between options in anyway. To govern is to choose, not to express your dislike about things.

So, I hope they enjoy their protest; and I really hope no-one listens.

 *As an aside, my favourite student protest story ever is when Oxford's left occupied some university buildings, and about an hour before they were evicted, the leadership told all the lawyers to leave as it might affect their careers if legal proceedings were taken against. And they all left. I wonder if the same spirit pervades the St Paul's protest.

Sleeping at night

I don't have time to really meditate on this, but I'd recommend everyone who missed it listen to this very moving interview with Denis Avey this morning. There's some backstory linked to on the site about his role in the war and his actions in the camps. He's obviously an astonishing man, but more importantly, represents a sense of moral obligation that I don't think we've lost exactly, but we don't really consider in same way.

When he speaks of what he did, he explains that without doing it, he couldn't sleep at night; now, when we are called to do something as trivial as give some money to the poor, we expect the state to organise it for us, which - of course, they don't. We shouldn't exaggerate this, plenty of people volunteer and do an enormous amount, and not all men in the 40s were heroes. But, we do miss that feeling of moral obligation, obfuscated by a discomfort about moral absolutes, which is both facile and dangerous. Stories like this remind us of the prize for not thinking like that.

I'm not entirely a fan of a British national commemoration of the holocaust, and I'm glad these cases are - as is proper - being looked at by Yad Vashem as well. For Mr Avey though, I'm delighted, and much moved.

Freecycle

In principle, I think freecycle is a brilliant idea. We have things we just want to get rid of, and we can give them to people who want them. eBay is all very well, but requires things to be useful and effort around packaging them up.

However, it falls down on the total uselessness and unreliability of individuals. I have found people's behaviour to be shockingly bad. We're trying to get rid of a plant, which at 6 foot is simply too big for our bathroom. I've put it up on freecycle and twice have arranged to have to it picked up, but once the lady in question forgot and the second time, another lady decided on the day that she couldn't wait for half an hour having moved the time of collection without giving me chance to react.

The issue is of course the discipline of pricing. Without it, people are just rubbish. Conventional economic theory argues that transaction costs should be zero, but this suggests that people are reliable - when they are not. One of the fundamental benefits of putting transaction costs on things is that people don't do this kind of stuff. And here's hoping they don't do so; otherwise it's going on eBay.

The end of an era

Mine and my father's house are in mourning today: John Nettles is to leave Midsomer murders. No more will we be able to sample the absurd and fantastical plots - a ranking of episodes may follow this post - and his ability to reduce the range of human emotion to approximately three expression: bewilderment, irritation, and benign neutrality. The producers say they will continue without him, but this seems unlikely to be successful.

And, he looks bit like my dad. who was mistaken for him in the bazaar in Marrakesh.

Pretty in Mink

I'm not the sort of person that often points out calendars full of pictures of young ladies, but this rather provocative one is really going to irritate vegetarians and that has to be a good thing.

I've never seen the real fuss about fur. Yes, it's probably not the nicest way to treat an animal, and it's not necessary, but as is true of almost all activities relating to animals, I fail to see why it makes it to the top of the canon of sins above, say, battery farming (the same applies to hunting of course, which is at least old-fashioned class warfare masquerading as conscience). So good on this lot - it's only a shame we couldn't do one in Britain.

As far as I can see, the institute that does it is largely mad, but the point remains sound.

Everything louder than everything else

I'm in the middle of a glut of cultural activity at the moment, as a coincidence of tickets etc seem to have come in at the same time. Last night I went out to see The Dog Roses play in Kennington, which was great fun. It's times like this when you realise that you are blessed in London with an abundance of cultural activities - I've just booked Richard Thompson in Feb to complete the picture.

However, at the risk of sounding old before my time, they were loud, though by no means as loud as other bands I have seen. They were playing in a pretty small room and they weren't very far away so I feel they could have turned it down a little. Their interval act, a man who has been listening to a lot of Dylan (not that that's a bad thing), managed to easily fill the room without any amplification. Now, clearly they are meant to be louder, but do we really the fiddle to amplified to such a degree.

Of course, this is not a new development, and the loudness war (I'm delighted that this is its name) has been knocking around for a while and has been bemoaned by many. I notice it more now that I have an iPod, when the contrast between old and new recordings is striking. It's also pretty much impossible to listen to some tracks on a busy train as they are simply too quiet, though these are mostly spoken word or the like.

However, it's a little hypocritical for any of us - as consumers of amplified music - to really complain about this development, when the real gripe remains with classical aficionados. Amplification robbed a massed orchestra of the title of being the loudest music act one could seem and now, a handful of boys with electronics can outdo a large collection of classical instruments. (I always this record was held by the Who, but apparently no longer). However, I do think it has got worse and shops and pubs have become complicit in robbing spaces of quiet.

So, consistency forbids the anathema, but I still wish people would just turn the music down a little.

Another child gone

I nearly expired from ranting this morning. multimedia technology enabled me to simultaneously read an infuriating work email at the same time as listen to this story on the radio. So angry was I with both of these that I exploded into a coughing fit that took some minutes to subside, and hurt.

At the time, work irritated me most, but during the commute the schooling story just depressed me. Here is Radio 4's summary:

A mother is refusing to send her daughter to school because it will not let her wear earrings. Eight-year-old Alisha Dixon has not attended school for nearly a month.

It's a fair summary, but it doesn't convey the problem once the mother started talking - the interview was just bleak listening. The school is probably being inflexible and a little bit overly draconian on uniform - I neither like nor defend uniform policy in general. However, as soon as the mother started you realised it doomed. Having revealed that she pierced the girl's ears at four initially, she argued that once she had done them again at eight, she wasn't letting them be done again. She ended up saying 'I went to the papers because no-one was listening to me.' It had clearly never occured to her that four year olds, and probably eight year olds simply shouldn't have pierced ears, and people ignored her because this just isn't important.

However, this isn't really the point. What is central to this is her assumption that her view is so important that the school should abandon their policy (albeit one I also don't agree with) and - most importantly - such trivia are more important than her daughter's education. And you know - right there - that's a another child gone - education of so little consequence in the family that it would be a miracle if she comes out engaged and given the tools for a future career. People witter on about academic routes not being best for everyone, but it's pretty much a disaster if they don't even get to find out.

I'm sure the mother has nothing but her daughter's best interests at heart and it's this that makes it so depressing. She sounded caring, and interested in her daughter, but there was obviously no-one to tell her to grow up, stop wasting time, take the earrings out and send her back. Society isn't great to those without opportunities, but there are times when people really don't help themselves.

Anthony Stewart Head

A quick hurrah for Anthony Stewart Head, famous now for Little Britain, but initially for coffee adverts that I never saw, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I watched endlessly.

It was my sister's birthday yesterday, and having time to kill before lunch with my parents, she (who has also watched Buffy endlessly) bought a Buffy book to read. At lunch (at which I was not there - the perils of working in White City), they spotted the actor in question and my father made the slightly trepidatious approach. I'm reliably informed he was lovely, came over, wished my sister happy birthday, signed the book (with some astonishment that someone would accidentally have it on them), and made a point of coming over again when he left to repeat his best wishes for the day.

He's not stratospherically famous but must get this quite a bit, so I think all credit must be given to him for being lovely about it all.

Such stories should be told.

Gotcha

There has been much hand-wringing about the BNP's membership being leaked, and clearly it's not pleasant to have emails leaked, but but I find it very difficult to care about any rights infringement. After all, I am very happy for people to know my politics - it's presumably only a problem if it's really embarrassing.

Anyway, a spreadsheet to play with is too great a temptation. There can be some difficulty in locating it, but it's easily available here. And the heat map is great, though I think it needs some percentage analysis, I would do this in a table, but getting hold of the relevant census data is all but impossible online - outrageously.

However, at least as fun is the comments you can read on the details, except for the kids who get included because of their nutter parents. Some of these are just a reflection of the oddity of people - I can imagine mine would read oddly - but some you can only reflect BNP members, or sit incongruously with the rest of the BNP policy. Here are some of my favourites:

• Hobbies: motocycling, Staffordshire bull terriers
• State registered nurse. Orthopaedic nursing Cert. & Diploma in Nursing. Hobbies: walking, caravanning, cross-stitch & knitting, helping people in need
• Will not be renewing 07 (objects to being told he shouldn't wear a bomber jacket)
• Hobbies: freemasonry, church singing - activist
• Member of the Toastmasters Association
• Active Odinist/member of Pagan organisations. Hobbies: folklore
• member describes himself as a witch: potential embarrassment if active
• Retired antique dealer. Owner: tourist attraction in Canada. Former racing driver (British champion 1958). Hobbies: competition shooting, sword collector. Author.
• Retired historian, teacher & tutor. BA (Hons) History. Hobbies: occasional speaker (nationalist views); writing poetry

And of course there are there are the ones who live abroad. Six live in France, what do they say about foreigners there?

The second time as farce

I've deliberately not said much on the Ross / Brand stuff, for obvious reasons, but I find the news that Ross has been replaced by Angus Deayton for the comedy awards hugely amusing. It calls Marx's old adage to mind, though I wouldn't call Deayton's original firing as tragedy; and I'm not commenting on Ross.

Abomination

News that councils have begun to ban Latinisms truly deserves the anathema. I wouldn't go as far as Mary Beard here who describes it as ethnic cleansing, but I'm not far off.


There is a long involved explanation for why it is terrible, but essentially it suggests that people should be assumed to be morons, incapable of looking anything up or reading about anything they don't encounter elsewhere. Now, a lot of people are morons who are incapable of doing any of the above, but we let them vote and pretend their opinions matter, so tough. We can't have it both ways.

In addition, latin really shouldn't get banned just because we have refused to give state school children access to the intellectual heritage of the West. Pick on something else.

All that Glitters...

I haven't done very well at keeping this ticking over recently, but I thought I would summon some words on the fall of Paul Gadd.


I have the now dubious distinction of having been to his 90s Christmas concerts on no less than two occasions, and they were great: gloriously silly and over top pantomime pop, with some great tracks. To this day, I remain very fond my Best of Gary Glitter (well about half of it, he wasn't that good) - and I defy anyone to listen to Rock 'n' Roll (Part 2) without a glimmer of a smile.*


But it's all over now. And it's sad. While he may not deserve any sympathy (and I'm not sure about that) we (certainly I) have lost something. When someone who occupied a rather splendid, frivolous and joyful part of our cultural life turns out to be something different, there is a sadness and a sense of innocence lost. And I want know how long this all went on. His first child pornography arrest was 1997. Was he clean up to then, or has this been a recurring activity? For obviously reasons, I know I would like the former to be true.

The whole think also highlights our approach to paedophilia in general, which is hysterical and unhelpful. The coverage hasn't been particularly edifying, which is surprising given how perfectly it was all parodied seven years ago by Chris Morris.

But in some senses, we shouldn't be surprised. We've always been rubbish at this. The term itself is difficult, partly because people don't understand the word, and partly because it confuses prepubescents with older teenagers into the same category, when clearly they are not. And the violent thuggish pronouncements of this kind of site only divert attention from the real issues. I found the account of Roger Took's activities provoked a far more visceral feeling of horror than any amount of Glitter-baiting or ranting.

And for something to find me on the side opposed to ranting means it must be serious indeed.

*As an aside, this puts me on the side of the 'Art independent of morals' camp - no surprises there I suspect. What might be is that some time you have been able to do courses in it. Why?

Sacrilege

I think this might be.