Monday 3 November 2014

Vampires, zombies and BBC audiences


The upshoot of that biased-sounding panel for this week's Start the Week on 'The Language of Money' (see previous post) was....(drum roll)....a biased programme. 

John Lanchester attacked neo-liberalism from the Left, Martin Wolf savaged the government's austerity programme from a Keynesian standpoint, John Kampfner focused on inequality and the super-rich from a 'Cookite' position and Naomi Alderman talked about how vampires represent the rich during booms and zombies the poor during busts from a socialist perspective. 

Austerity, neo-liberalism, the bankers, the rich, the present government...all the expected targets were hit.

The programme, though on Radio 4, formed part of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking festival - which kind of suggests that BBC Radio 3's idea of free thinking about matters economic covers a rather small range of (left-wing) opinions. No right-wingers were free to think here. 

Except for presenter Anne McElvoy, who at least tried from time to time to put a contrary point...and, in the spirit of 'free thinking' permitted by certain sections of the Left, got heckled by the audience for so doing!

Yep, it yet was another of those BBC audiences, loudly clapping the most familiar left-wing points. 

Free thinking, eh? Hmm.

Saying all that though, I still rather enjoyed it. Everyone (with one glaring exception) made some interesting points, some more persuasive than others. It got me thinking too, freely.

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