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Giles Audio 

How Giles Fraser got under my skin

Melanie, ,

Giles Fraser is a turbulent priest. The left-wing rector of a church in south London, he is also my fellow panellist on BBC Radio’s Moral Maze where, to general astonishment, he and I often make common cause against the brutal utilitarians of both left and right. We have also had some spectacular bust-ups on air, particularly over Israel and Palestinian terrorism. Despite these and other differences of opinion between us, we have a warm and cordial relationship. Unlike so many on the left, Giles is devoid of bitterness or rancour…

Audio 

A post-Covid world in the moral maze

Melanie, , ,

On BBC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, the 30th birthday of the show and the last in the current series, we discussed morality in a post-Covid world (if there is ever to be such a world..!) To mark the occasion, the show used a novel format. Instead of having one proposition for debate, each of us four panellists proposed a moral principle or something else we had learned from the pandemic crisis that we thought was important for the future of our society. Tim Stanley said we needed to be…

nbh Audio 

The future of the city in the moral maze

Melanie, ,

On BBC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, we discussed whether there was a moral duty to rescue the city from the blight that has descended upon it as a result of the pandemic. Is the city the jewel in the crown of a civilisation, or would it be better to live in smaller towns and villages? Does a city bring us together, with high density living forcing us to get along with each other and broadening our minds by making us encounter people from different backgrounds and cultures, or does…

appearance Audio Culture wars 

Groupthink in the moral maze

Melanie, ,

On BBC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, we discussed “groupthink”, the term for opinions enforced by condign social pressure towards conformity. Those who don’t subscribe to this coerced consensus are being subjected to public denunciation, ostracism and dismissal from their jobs. As the Maze website puts it: “Those accused of this kind of ‘groupthink’ reject that criticism and believe that all public figures should be held accountable for their views. Once made public, they argue, those views can have a direct and adverse impact on people’s lives, so they become…

Britain Culture wars 

Why so many “experts” make such disastrous errors

Melanie, , ,

If you want to discover why so many of our experts are getting things so terribly wrong, Giles Fraser’s interview on Unherd’s “Confessions” with the former Bank of England governor, Lord King, is essential listening. King asks what it means to be rational in an age of deep uncertainty. Many experts, he says, have come to believe that mathematical calculations and computer modelling provide us with an authoritative representation of reality. This is hopelessly wrong because such calculations can never encompass the uncertainties that help form human behaviour. Yet these…

appearance Israel 

Self-isolating in the moral maze

Melanie, ,

On this week’s edition of BBC Radio’s Moral Maze – the last in the current series – we discussed the desirability and effects of the strategy of social isolation imposed to combat the coronavirus crisis. Never has there been such an identification of form with content! For the show was put on with all nine contributors – four panellists, four witnesses and one chairman – not in the studio as usual but participating remotely down nine separate lines. For a show which depends so much on eye-balling each other round…

nbh Audio 

In the moral maze with coronavirus

Melanie,

On BBC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, we discussed the moral dilemmas potentially involved in dealing with the coronavirus. We are already seeing, in Britain and around the world, restrictions on activity of varying degrees of severity and with knock-on effects already becoming apparent in cancelled airline flights, conferences and sporting events. If a pandemic develops, what is the right balance to be struck between the necessity of saving lives and the need to protect our way of life? Should we accept martial law, the isolation of towns and cities,…

BBC Audio Britain 

The moral maze that is the BBC

Melanie,

On BBC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, we discussed the moral purpose of the BBC. Does it even have one? With the government boycotting Radio Four’s Today programme in protest at its perceived bias, and now threatening to destroy it altogether through a fundamental change to its funding structure, we asked whether the Beeb’s original aim of uniting the nation has now become impossible in such an era of technological and cultural fragmentation. Can it or should it compete with Netflix, or does it still have a unique role to…

BBC Audio 

The fashion of clothing in the moral maze

Melanie, , ,

On BbC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, we discussed the morality of fashion. What, you didn’t know fashion was a moral issue? Tsk! According to designer-of-clothing-for-the-fabulously-rich Stella McCartney, we shouldn’t wash or dry-clean our clothes in order to protect the environment. Some performers at this year’s Glastonbury festival denounced “throwaway fashion” and are encouraging fans to buy their outfits second-hand (or “pre-cherished”). Is so-cheap-you-can-chuck-it clothing, or the sweatshop conditions in which some of it is produced, proof that capitalism is rotten to the last fibre? Or is this all literally…

appearance Audio 

Comedy and responsibility in the moral maze

Melanie, ,

In the wake of comedian Jo Brand’s joke about throwing battery acid over Nigel Farage, my fellow panellists and I discussed comedy on this week’s edition of BBC Radio’s Moral Maze. Should humour have any limits, and if so where should these be drawn? Some people worry that our society is now far too quick to take offence and to shut down any expression they don’t like. Giving offence, after all, never did anyone any harm. But are some expressions likely to cause actual harm to be done? Does humour…