Michael Buerk must be on holiday or something. So who is chairing The Moral Maze?
A man who was installed as President of the National Union of Students by the Communist Party when it was an agency of the Soviet Union, and who has never expressed one word of remorse. He duly cheered on Tony Blair in general and the Iraq War in particular, since he entirely correctly discerned that they were the triumph of the campus-based sectarian Left from that period. He is now, one need hardly add, a salaried employee of Rupert Murdoch.
People complain, not necessarily without cause, when Claire Fox and Kenan Malik are both on the panel at the same time, and especially when there is what is always guaranteed to be a provocative witness from that same stable of the former Revolutionary Communist Party, the former Living Marxism, and spiked online.
But no one seems to mind that for many years, going back to when Melanie Phillips and someone called Michael Gove were both on it every week, The Moral Maze has been Neocons' Big Night Out. These days, if it is not Melanie Phillips, then it is David Aaronovitch, and him in the chair. At least Phillips has sound views on many social issues.
Supposed balance came from Matthew Taylor, formerly Head of the Downing Street Policy Unit under Tony Blair, and from a Blair cheerleader turned Cameron cheerleader, Anne McElvoy. She went to the same school as I did, though not at the same time. But she openly says that she still goes to Mass for no reason except to secure acceptably upper-middle-class school places for her children without having to pay fees.
The rest of us had to make do with Clifford Longley, another Murdoch courtier and a glittering ornament of The Tablet. Imagine if Radio Four and the remaining higher-brow factual segments of BBC Television were required to have an orthodox Catholic every time that they had a secular Jew, or a homosexual atheist, or an overtly homosexual Anglican cleric (and one of my favourite Radio Four presenters is an overtly homosexual Anglican cleric). Just imagine it, if only for a moment.
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You should be on the panel of The Moral Maze. It would only be once, but it would be worth it.
ReplyDeleteOr, to put it another way, two out of four panellists were practising Catholics, two out of five if you count the chair. Are 40 or 50 percent of people in Britain practising Catholics?
ReplyDeleteBut these two did not have the David Lindsay Certificate of Orthodoxy. Apparently someone with that Certificate should always be required to "balance" any Jew or gay that the BBC might have the temerity to give airtime to.
The internal Labour feud between Old Right and New Left reasserting itself in the post New Labour age.
ReplyDeleteAnd a Muslim, David. Make them have an orthodox Catholic on every time that they have a Muslim. I am really starting to like this.
ReplyDeleteWhy not have Ann Farmer or Ruth Kelly presenting Woman's Hour once a week, with the same editorial control that is obviously enjoyed by Dame Jenni on her days? Ruth used to be a Cabinet Minister.
Where exactly do contributors to Thought for the Day come from?