That Bloke In The Big Smoke

"But my father summed it up pretty well by saying, "Nobody in our family has ever voted Conservative, without a stiff drink before, and afterwards."" ~David Owen

If a week is a long time in politics¹, what about a lifetime? Tasked with the challenge of teasing out salient introspections from the life and times of some of Britain's grandees, is the contemporary political historian, Peter Hennessy. He delivers an insightful programme, as it launches its third series with the enigmatic David Owen. Having listened to several episodes, Owen's is among the best. I also recommend the one with John Major from last year. In all, Hennessy has talked to:

01. Shirley Williams
02. Jack Straw
03. Norman Tebbit
04. Neil Kinnock
05. John Major
06. Roy Hattersley
07. David Steel
08. Margaret Beckett
09. David Owen

And by the end of this series he will have interviewed Norman Lamont and Clare Short too. Each episode is either 28 or 43 minutes (depending on the series), with the latter forming the perfect length to explore a lifetime without inducing boredom and avoid glossing over multiple events or issues. But there are a few peripheral shortcomings. For instance, by the end of this series the uneven ratio of guests by political party will have been exacerbated to comprise: 5 Labour, 3 Tories, 2 SDP/Lib Dems and 1 Liberal. Given that Williams and Owen were also cabinet secretaries with Labour, you could question whether the breakdown was a matter of design, bad timing or lack of Conservative enthusiasm (I find this doubtful). This only matters because it's produced by the BBC. There's also the issue of gender ratio with three women out of eleven by the end of this series. And one other minor criticism about Hennessy's interview technique. When teasing out their reflections, he sometimes comes across as presumptuous, but it may have been an intended tactic or perhaps more likely, my imaginative nitpicking. Those minor quibbles apart, it is an absolutely fantastic programme and essential listening for the anorak.

¹ Possibly misattributed to former British prime minister and Labour leader, Harold Wilson.

Keen listeners of this delightful programme would not have been surprised to hear the contents of the recorded conversation between Thatcher and Reagan from 1983 that has just been released. The Radio 4 programme was broadcast in August last year, and we learnt from it via the Downing Street note of the conversation, that Reagan initially tried to defuse the situation, by suggesting he would first throw his hat into the room if he was in London, before walking in. We also learn that Reagan used the phrase 'zero hour' before he could do anything about it. Exactly as it is in the recording. If you've got 8 minutes, it's worth listening from about 3:40 to the whole section on Grenada from the UK Confidential episode. It includes a brief interview about the declassified documents with Lord Owen (former British Foreign Secretary) and an American diplomat who was working in the US Embassy (in London) at the time. It is rather instructive that the American diplomat had dinner with Geoffrey Howe (the then British Foreign Secretary), the night before the invasion, and yet neither knew anything about it! It is also worth noting that the American diplomat refers to the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, that killed nearly 300 American and French servicemen just a couple days before the invasion, as a tragedy so severe that it may have resulted in the invasion as a diversion.

On the recording, Reagan says he wanted to inform Thatcher of the invasion before some rogue informant did, but in an interview with the US President's authorised biographer on the wireless last night, this was quickly dismissed. The biographer was convinced Reagan was fibbing and had intentionally delayed informing her before it was too late (about 8 hours). However, the biographer also added that on two counts, Thatcher was somewhat embarrassed. One, was not responding to the situation in Grenada, having been requested (along with the French) to do so by their government, and two, she found herself in a similar situation to that of Reagan after Britain's own invasion of the Falklands, a year earlier. Yet despite these two foreign policy setbacks, they still seemed to share a politically intimate relationship. A point driven home by the biographer's final anecdote about a poster* Reagan kept in his stable, recreating the famous Rhett Butler-Vivien Leigh pose from Gone With The Wind, with the two of them on it instead. The biographer asked if he had shown it to Thatcher, to which Reagan said no-way, she'd get upset. The biographer apparently told him, on the contrary, I think she'd rather like it, mischievously adding that it was probably her ultimate fantasy... 

I also found it interesting that the biographer seemed to suggest that the Americans were justified in their actions on the pretext of protecting the 500 or so American students on the island. In contrast, Lord Owen suggests that the students didn't seem worried at all, lending credence to alternative theories. Either way, the release of the recording has thrown further light onto an important episode in the history of Anglo-American relations. One just wonders what else will be released to us in days, weeks, months, years...even decades to come, 

(* I don't think the picture above is the exact poster. This seems to be some anti-war poster from the 1980s, but I suspect it looked something like this.)

Radio 4's Today presenter James Naughtie interviewed the late Christopher Hitchens and his equally feisty brother Peter at the 2005 Hay Literary Festival about their controversial views, the Iraq war and religion. Listen here. There's also a transcript of another interview with the two from the same Festival. And below is an interview with a cancer-stricken Hitchens from last year.

Here's how Wikipedia describes it:

"Four regular panellists discuss moral and ethical issues relating to a recent news story. The debate is often combative and guest witnesses may be cross-examined aggressively. The programme is hosted by Michael Buerk. The format is loosely based on the Select Committee procedure at the House of Westminster, in which invited guests on a particular topic of discussion are mercilessly grilled (often to the point of humiliation) by a regular (and carefully chosen) panel (such as the MPs on the Select Committee).

Michael Buerk delivers a no-holds-barred (often irreverent) preamble launching the topic, then introduces the first witness. In the ensuing interrogation, the witnesses are teasingly goaded into philosophically tripping themselves up (contradicting their own beliefs). Platitudes are quickly exposed for their fragility. Witnesses taken unawares by the incisive, unceremonious questioning, may then replace civility for discourteousness - usually when their arguments have been hit for six. When being briefed for their appearances, witnesses were encouraged to be as aggressive as you like."

With a passion for politics and as a budding lawyer, The Moral Maze should've been essential listening every week. But for some reason I hadn't appreciated its value until recently. Better late than never. Each forty-five minute episode examines the moral issues behind one of the week's news stories, and in the past month we've had discussions about the morality of income tax, the point of having prisons, science & morality, public figures & public morality, and slut walks.

364 runs, 6 wickets. A brilliant double-century and some inept bowling barring P Kumar's stellar effort. Two performances added to the Lord's Honours Board. A decent day's cricket. I hope our batsmen get stuck in tomorrow and eke out a draw because there is only one other possible result: an England win. Ishant Sharma needs to sort himself out and Sreesanth better stop heaping praise on Twitter and prepare for Trent Bridge. He was rubbish at Taunton and will need to step it up if Zaheer is unavailable. However there were encouraging signs of Zak working out at the Lord's gym which suggests the injury/niggle is not serious. Let's hope for the best!

In other interesting developments, Lily Cooper nee Allen was the secret guest at tea time on TMS. Her knowledge of the game was surprisingly good. Moreover she attends village cricket regularly. She provides the cakes and tea! Apparently she got into the game because of her partner whom she recently married. I remember the media interest generated by her previous appearance on TMS a couple years ago. Aggers was obviously having a good time, flirting on-air with the London-based singer. She also earned brownie points for turning down an ECB-inspired Twenty20 initiative to exploit her celebrity value because it wasn't Test cricket! [SCORECARD]

In the 1930s when the population of this most cosmopolitan of cities used to be between 700-800,000 about 300,000 was made up of Greeks. There was also a significant number of Armenians and Jews. But today there are no more than 20,000 Jews; 50,000 Armenians and less than 3,000 Greeks out of a population between 13 and 16 million. By any measure that is a shockingly disappointing transformation. I'd still love to visit it though.

The Now Show is one of my favourite programmes. It airs Fridays on BBC Radio 4 and is a satirical review of the week's news. The latest episode ended with a listener-generated list of low-budget film titles in response to the government's axing of the British Film Council. Enjoy!

The Devil Wears Primark
The Discount of Monte Cristo
Star Wars: The Empire Cuts Back
Bridge over the River Wey
Murder on the National Express
The Burger King and I
A Coupla Things I Hate About You
The Tramp and the Tramp
Schindler's Post-it Note
The Bargain Hunt for Red October
The Six Billion Zimbabwean Dollar Man
Honey I've Sold The Kids
The Bournemouth Ultimatum
The Mancunian Candidate
Seven Brides for £7.50
Breakfast at Ratners
Scratchcard Royale

You can tune into this programme and any other BBC Radio show from anywhere in the world for free. And if you miss the live transmission, all programmes are available for a week after the last live airing. And for several programmes, they are always available. You can also download the podcasts of many programmes from iTunes to access through your iDevice. Radio 3, 4 and the World Service produce the best Factual content, while Radio 7 is a brilliant source of Comedy and Drama along with Radio 4. And as I've just learned, unlike the restrictions on live football commentary even within the UK, TMS is freely available abroad! It's all worth taking advantage of while it's free.

Just finished listening to a fascinating radio discussion on the subject of "Entitlement". Here's the blurb from the Beeb's Programme Page:

"When did what we desire become what we feel we deserve? In an age when foreign holidays have become routine and over 25,000 public sector workers earn £100K a year and more, we tackle this mood of relentless entitlement with Heather Brooke, whose tireless use of the Freedom of Information Act helped to break the MPs expenses scandal; stand up Simon Evans, whose routine includes a description of his accent as exotic 'and that's because it is educated'; and Naomi Alderman whose first novel Disobedience won the Orange Award for Young Writers and who feels our sense of entitlement should be replaced by a purer feeling of gratitude."

Ever since I first heard about Heather Brooke during last year's expenses scandal, I have been extremely fascinated by her contribution to showing up the lack of transparency in British democracy. That it took an American-born journalist (of Liverpudlian parents) to shake up the system did not surprise me in the least. As she has pointed out several times in the past and in the aforementioned radio programme, kids in America are brought up (and ingrained) to believe that they are entitled or have a right to know how their taxes are spent. But in the UK as she discovered upon moving here at the age of twenty, there is a sense of deference in which the public usually accepts that those in power know what's best for us. To which the presenter of the show made a good point, that while in America the founding fathers were able to start from first principles when establishing the constitution, no such thing has happened over here. Moreover it would be fair to say that modern British democracy is largely a muddled result of piecemeal changes to a system dating back three-hundred twenty years to the Glorious Revolution! And even that was not a revolution in the sense of starting from scratch as resulted from American independence.

I'd definitely recommend listening to the half-hour programme which'll remain available on the BBC Radio Four website until 17 June - regardless of where you live. Unlike the Beeb's TV programming which is only available to those resident in these parts (except for some BBC News stuff), radio programmes are available everywhere. However if you are unable to listen to it or for whatever reason would like to download a copy of it instead, click here. People like Heather Brooke are good for society because they inject vitality into democracy. Her second and latest book hit the shelves in April and is titled, The Silent State: Secrets, Surveillance and the Myth of British Democracy. I've already ordered a copy for my summer reading. And if that's not enough, you can watch her BBC HARDtalk interview from 2 April here.