Nick Clegg in Luton

Last Sunday Luton Lib Dems were lucky enough to have Nick Clegg as our guest of honour at our "End of Eid Rally".

There were some anxious moments as the poor man was stuck on a non-moving train for at least 50 minutes. But we managed to keep the speeches going and our audience was made of stern stuff. So when he finally arrived over a hundred people got hear an excellent speech outlining the Lib Dem approach to crime and justice issues.

The essential theme of his speech was criticism of the other two main parties for putting the politics of fear at the heart of their approach to home affairs and that it was the Lib Dems job to counteract that by putting the politics of hope at the heart of ours. Personally it was really good to hear a clearly liberal take on these issues and I think it went down well with the audience.

Thanks to Nick for taking the time to come and speak to us.

NTL Hell

Maintaining this blog is proving difficult enough without the ongoing problems I am having with my NTL broadband connection. Just got off the phone to my third call to their technical support line in about a week. All very apologetic and they've booked me an engineer for Saturday. But as the last engineer I had booked didn't turn up, we shall see if that helps.

Tranquillity Sucks

According to the CPRE Luton is the third least tranquil place in the country, just behind Slough and Greater London.

Am I bovvered?

No, not really.

Tranquillity is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Junk Mail

One of my earlier posts referenced a Matthew Parris article in The Times (and yes I know I've promised a considered post on balanced parliaments - it will come eventually). Curiously I got a letter through the post the other week from a current member of the Liberal Democrats Federal Executive that enclosed a photocopy of the very same article and the suggestion that I "might be interested" in it.

Now as far as I am aware I have never met the person who sent me this letter, although I vaguely remember sitting across from him in a hotel lobby once, and I have no idea why he would think that I would be interested in this particular article. Obviously he could have read this blog, but then he would have known that I was already aware of the article and had no reason to inform me of it. So the reason why I have received this particular missive remains a mystery to me.

Of course, it would have nothing at all to do with the current elections for places on the Party's federal committees. Oh, no.

Blog Break

Well this blog got off to a good start. Regular posts and at least one healthy extended rant. But life has got in the way over the last few weeks and no posts for a while.

This will be rectified.

Education

I loved this quote from Frank Zappa that I heard on the radio documentary about him this morning: "If you want to get laid - go to college. If you want an education - go to a library."

In Defence of Mrs Pritchard

There has been a fair view reactions to last night's BBC1 drama "The Amazing Mrs Pritchard" (which I discover has its own website) in the Lib Dem blogosphere most of which seem to be negative. Paul Walter thinks it "a rather lukewarm show", Richard Huzzey was "disappointed by it" and thinks it "a missed opportunity", James Graham hasn't seen it but wouldn't have liked it if he had, and Alex Wilcock really, really, really didn't like it. As I have gone on record as saying I "really enjoyed watching" it, but only very briefly saying why, I feel I need to mount a defence of the amazing Mrs Pritchard.

But first a little story.

I have a strong recollection of reading a review of the first episode of Alan Bleasdale's TV drama G.B.H. by a prominent Labour MP. I forget precisely who it was. The MP attacked the drama for daring to portray the Labour Party and labour politics in such a negative light and accused Bleasdale of betraying his socialist beliefs for bringing such a work to the screen. Such a drama, he argued, would only bring comfort to the then Tory government.

G.B.H. is of course one of the greatest political dramas every broadcast on British TV.

I also recall that after several other episodes of the drama had been aired, and we had seen the story develop to include the council leader played by Robert Lindsay (obviously based on Derek Hatton) being exploited by sinister right-wing forces, the Labour MP published another review. This was a more balanced reaction to the drama and to his credit he retracted much of what he had said originally and apologised for some of those things.

What lessons should we learn from this? First, that politicians are probably not the best people to review political dramas. Those actively involved in politics and committed to a particular cause probably carry too much baggage with them to react to such a drama as the non-political person would. Particularly when the drama portrays professional politics in a negative light. I know I do. In my previous post I mentioned that I felt uncomfortable for moments while watching last nights drama. These moments all stemmed from my reacting as a politically engaged person, especially when "my" Party was coming off worse.

Second, that you shouldn't rush to judgement about a drama after only the first episode. There are apparently 5 more episodes of The Amazing Mrs Pritchard to go. This first episode established the basic premise (unknown woman wins election and becomes PM) and put out there a number of ideas and views about the way politics is in the UK. We don't yet know how the drama will explore those ideas. Will it reinforce them? Undermine them? Will it be subtle, contradictory and interesting in developing them? Or will it fluff it? We'll have to wait and see!

Now before I look at some of the specific criticisms leveled at this programme can I just say "calm down". This is not a serious political drama aimed at us saddo politicos who like to quote dialogue from the West Wing at each other. This is a "fantasy satire" aimed at a prime time evening TV audience requiring some suspension of disbelief. Some of the comments I've read this evening are taking the whole thing far too seriously. Lighten up guys.

The portrayal of politicians

One criticism leveled at the drama is they way it portrays professional politicians and the three main parties. It is accused (by Alex) of "presenting every single ‘politician’ as a slimy, worthless piece of scum all the same as each other". And Richard feels "the criticism that stings most deeply, as I watched it, is the rejection of political parties as obstructive and ‘all the same as each other’." There is a lot of truth in those comments. But consider this is fantasy drama, Mrs P and the Purple Alliance are the good guys so the bad guys have to be, well, bad.

Also, this is a drama about the public's disengagement from and disenchantment with politics as it is currently conducted. Yes, the politicians in the drama are portrayed as unattractive. But wake up guys, for many people in this country politicians are unattractive. If you were to go out and ask the managers, staff and customers of the real world equivalents of Greengages supermarkets they would say that this drama's portrayal of politicians is, while a bit over the top, an accurate one.

Is that uncomfortable, worrying, disturbing? Yes! But true. That is the problem we've got.

But she's got no policies!

Well duh! The premise of the programme is that she becomes PM by accident. Of course she's got no policies, no worked out platform, no detailed analysis of the state of the nation. This is a fantasy drama about an ordinary woman who ends up running the country. If she had policies she wouldn't be ordinary - she'd be a politician!

Tory bias

I have to say I was wondering whether I detected a Tory bias in the programme. There were a number of things that suggested it, despite what I thought was a rather sympathetic portrayal of Blair at the end. I think this may be perceived bias rather than a real one again brought about by thinking like a politico. I think the jury is still out on that one.

The references to Thatcher? I don't think you make a drama about a woman becoming PM without some reference to the great she elephant.

Feminism

Finally, there is the charge that the drama makes the simplistic argument that it is men that are the problem and if only we put the women in charge things would be a whole lot better. Well yes it does. At least the first episode does. We will have to see how the plot develops and whether having set up that argument it continues to make it without qualification or whether it wants to knock it down.

I will admit there is a good deal of old fashioned feminist polemic about the drama. But that is no bad thing in my view. When was the last time we had some angry feminist polemic on prime time TV? And if you don't think there is good reason for having that kind of thing then, putting party political prejudices aside, ask yourself this - Why is it that George Osbourne has a more senior job in the Tory party than Theresa May? I think the writer of "The Amazing Mrs Pritchard" could hazard a guess at the answer. Can you?

OK. Here endeth my first proper rant on this blog and my defence of this TV programme.

Balance Delayed

I have been meaning to post a further article on the Lib Dem approach to a balanced parliament to follow up on my previous post on this subject and in response to Millenium's comments last week, but I keep getting distracted. However, It will appear eventually.

Monstrous Regiment

I really enjoyed watching "The Amazing Mrs Pritchard" tonight on BBC1. Some slightly uncomfortable moments, particularly early on when the floppy haired Lib Dem is rather cruelly dismissed, but overall an excellent and acute drama. I don't want to make great claims for what is essentially an entertaining fantasy, but there are a lot of serious points being made that those involved in politics would do well to listen to.

And I must say, superb casting!

I then turned over and came across "The Outsiders" on ITV. What is that all about? Not seen it before (was this the first episode?) but it is obviously an attempt at an updated Avengers style caper series. An attempt that seems to be failing. But what is Brian Cox doing in it?

Then bits of a slightly surreal Newsnight. A useless government spokesman floundering in the face of global climate change and an over supply of Rees-Moggs. Maybe "Mrs Pritchard" is not such a fantasy after all?

Compare and Contrast

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Joining the Dots

Radio 1 have recently changed their programme schedule and this could have caused me some difficulty this evening.

"Why is that?" you ask. "Surely you listen to Radio 4?"

Well yes, of course I do. Usually, I wake up to the Today programme and then go from there. However, within the last two years my habits, particularly on Sundays, have changed. I suppose I have been rediscovering music. And a large part of the responsibility for that, apart from buying an I-Pod, is down to the Radio 1 DJ Gilles Peterson.

Back in February 2005, thanks to my girlfriend of the time who organised the tickets, I went to a concert at the Barbican that was one of two that accompanied the BBC series Jazz Britannia, an excellent series exploring the history of british jazz. I've always been a jazz fan, having been influenced by my Dad, although his tastes are more trad and mine are more swing and be-bop, and the concert was superb. But the thing that stands out most from that evening was the DJ set that this guy who had been involved in organising the event did afterwards. Let's just say I thought it was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen.

So I went and found out more about this guy and discovered he had a regular Sunday night show on Radio 1. So I tuned in and was soon hooked by the variety and downright grooviness of the wide range of music that he plays. Jazz, funk, soul, hip-hop, broken beats and weirdness. Great stuff.

Becoming a regular listener to his show has turned me more on to music and has encouraged me to be more adventurous in my already eclectic musical tastes. I think having that kind of effect on people is probably the essence of what public service broadcasting is about.

So listening to Gilles became a regular a part of my Sunday night routine. When the Westminster Hour finished on 4 I'd switch over to Radio 1. Mix myself a cold martini and settle down to some great music.

Which takes me to my potential problem. Radio 1 have changed their programme schedule and moved Gilles Peterson to the 2.00am slot on a Thursday morning. Disaster!

Well no, not really.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet you can listen to almost every Radio 1 show when you choose to through "Listen again" on the BBC website. So I am writing this post while listening to my usual Sunday night radio even though it was broadcast earlier in the week.

Which brings me to the point of this post (well apart from "biggin up my man Gilles") which is to point out that it appears to me Radio 1 are doing something really quite interesting with the scheduling of their programmes.

Most BBC Radio stations make their programmes available on the internet. But Radio 1 seems to be the only one that is deliberately developing their schedule to make use of the potential internet audience. They appear to be using what used to be the "graveyard slot" of the early hours of the morning to put on high quality, often specialist, programmes. I suspect that they are aware that the broadcast audience for these will be limited - but that there is huge potential in the internet audience. People like me listening when I choose to.

For those interested in how new media is developing, once again the BBC are the ones to watch.