Prospects, Monday, 21 January, 2008
- 21 Jan 08, 10:26 AM
Today's programme producer is Simon Enright. Here's his early email to the production team - what do you think we should cover?
Hi all,
We should definitely do Northern Rock. What questions will we still need to answer at the end of today?
Feels like we should do the maths on the Lisbon Treaty - is it possible for the Government to lose the referendum amendment and what would happen if they did?
We also have an interview with the former Norwegian Prime Minister. Why? Because he is one of the few Western Leaders to take sick leave while in office due to mental illness. He was then re-elected. Would we have such a bold attitude to mental illness here?
We have a film from Steve Smith about pre-historic man-made mound Silbury Hill. He goes inside for the last time before it is sealed up.
Also possible today:
- There will be lots around on our approach to climate change this week. Should we include something today?
- Police Pay will also be a big theme this week. Should we take a step back and ask, like the IPPR, whether it needs totally restructuring?
- India should get permanent seat on the UN Security Council - so says Gordon Brown - along with a new place in the World Bank, IMF, and a redrawn G8.
Lots around. We can't fit it all in. What can we afford to NOT do.
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Hope Jeremy appears in his M&S socks and pants David Beckham eat your heart out ..the games over
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Oh Jeanette, I agree!! Perhaps we could have a slot devoted to the underpants & socks issue :-)
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MATHEMATICAL ERROR
Rather than βdoing the mathsβ on the Lisbon Treaty - akin to doing the (Stern) money on climate change β why not do the ethics? When challenged by Andrew Marr, Miliband roared, with all his imagined authority, that we are a βParliamentary Democracyβ implying: βI can do as I damned well like!β It is true that the rules for MPs DO allow them to do ATDWL, but an honourable gentleman with a side order of integrity might be expected to respond to what 80% of us b----y well want.
So: please, letβs get away from money, maths and rules and take a hard look at INTEGRITY and REPRESENTATION. Focus on Gordonβs wonky compass and perhaps send it back to the makers for re-calibrating. And as for Mr Miliband, he should check into the clinic for an omnipotence de-tox.
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I think there should definitely be a piece on underwear. Newsnight should have the balls to cover this story which is obviously bulging in the minds of Britain's men. I think newsnight should take the bull by the horn and get this protruding problem sorted.
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Yes forget Northern Rock instead let's look at Paxman's....
Sock
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I'm sure you've all seen that the underpants and socks story is HUGE today - from the Telegraph to The Times, The Sun, The Guardian, The Christian Today and even France 24 - it is a major story. Oh go on - have this as a story tonight!
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Jeremy should take a leaf out of Frank Bough's book and present the show in his socks and kecks. Line up a quick Β£1 a throw phone-in for viewers to decide quality up/down etc. Northern Rock won't get a look-in!
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Barrie (#3) Well said. On omnipotence, omniscience etc:
M&S Underpants & socks: Maybe Paxman can ask Sir Stuart if he expects the quality to improve now that they're not going to use any of that unethically produced Uzbek cotton? Maybe it's been bulked up with polymers mechanically recovered from persistently non-cooperative Uzbek children?
/blogs/newsnight/2008/01/newsnight_report_leads_to_cotton_ban.html
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I think the story about the Norweigan PM is pretty fascinating.
I take my hats off to the Norweigans for electing a PM who has / does suffer from mental illness.
Goes to show that if given the right support (i.e moral support) people with mental illness can achieve the highest things.
Just think of all the great artists, writers, musicians, poets, philosophers, scientists, and more who have suffered from mental illness. The list is enormous (Handel, I believe suffered from mental illness, and wrote the Messiah within two weeks after a bout of depression. Some believe that people such as John of the Cross 'dark night of the soul' might have suffered from some form of mental depression). And there are countless others who definetly suffered from mental illness (Sir Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Virginia Woolfe, Tennesse Williams, John Keats, Vivien Leigh, Beethoven, Van Gogh, Bobby Fischer, Michaelangelo and many, many more).
I am not sure if you could describe Winston Churchill's 'black dog' as mental illness but it certainly wasn't far off. Churchill was, as well as being a courageous man, was also, a genius in the way he led this country through the war in near-to-impossible odds.
There is certainly a strong connection between genius and mental illness.
I think that many kinds / varieites of mental illness allow people to achieve great things (in a way that many people without mental illness mightn't be able to achieve so effectively). I think that mental illness can be like a kind of beast that if you learn how to control - to one degree or another - can yield extraordinary results (but if it gets out of control can be a problem / a real problem).
People often turn away from people with mental illness too quickly. I think that if we gave more people with mental illness much more of a chance then they could do many more extraordinary things - in politics, business, marketing, science, arts, humanities, charity, entertainment, and so on.
Plus if more people with mental illness were given much more of a chance their problems might be greatly reduced (and so this would bring down costs in health care and other welfare costs).
So I definetly think that Newsnight should do a piece on mental illness from the point of view:
1. What people with mental illness could achieve in Politcs (if they were allowed / given more moral support / understanding at work).
2. What people with mental illness could achieve in business, marketing, the arts, entertainent and so on (if they were allowed / given more moral support / understanding at work).
3. That if we gave people more moral support / understanding at work etc .. then fighting mental illness wouldn't seem such as struggle and people with it would be able to do a lot more (with positive repercussions for everyone else).
People with mental illness are no worse or better than anyone else. They have just as much to contribute to society, the economy and the arts, as much as anyone else - but, sometimes, in a different way.
So this could be an interesting piece, not just from a political / social / economic point-of-view but also from a cultural point-of-view as well.
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IRRATIONALITIES
Barrie (#3) Well said. On omnipotence, omniscience etc:
Does today's FCO statement mean that 'we' DO support the closing of SOME or MOST of the Gaza crossings?
"We do not support Israel's decision to close all crossings into Gaza, preventing the delivery of vital humanitarian supplies as well as fuel to the Gaza power station."
And, as has been asked before, how does one explain that up to 10% of our House of Lords is Jewish when they comprise less than 0.5% of one percent of the population? Why are there (seemingly) so many Jewish fund-raisers, advisors, commentators and donors etc in the news given their population base rate? Is this not hard to explain democratically in terms of the equalities policies championed by New Labour? Where are all of the voices (in the CRE aka the Equality and Human Rights Commission) who are very happy to complain about the statistical UNDER-representation of Blacks when it comes to statistical OVER-representation of Jews? How is this to be explained? And how can we, as a nation, expect to be treated seriously when we send Jewish (or Jewish backed) envoys to the Middle East when all Jews have the Right of Return by birthright? May I suggest that if this government is serious about fighting 'terrorism' and inequality, it puts its own house in order? Or is that too politically incorrect to ask?
M&S Underpants & socks: Maybe Jeremy Paxman can ask Sir Stuart if he expects the quality to improve now that they're not going to use any of that unethically produced Uzbek cotton? Maybe it's been bulked up with polymers mechanically recovered from persistently non-cooperative Uzbek children?
/blogs/newsnight/2008/01/newsnight_report_leads_to_cotton_ban.html
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Ref: EAMON (No9 at this point in time - but who can tell . . .)
I don't think mental illness has ever been a problem in UK either. Did you study the Aaronovitch "Blair Years"? Listen to his words (watch his face) and register the unexpressed - the censored. Further, sane folk do not say : "We are a grandmother" nor set up a "Cones Hotline". As for Brown's finger nails: either he has tried to stop and failed, or he has chosen to continue. Neither speaks well for his state of mind while imagining himself a world figure.
PS Thanks Adrienne.
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In the light of today's FTSE fall, is there any likelihood of Mr Brown taking a few weeks holiday :-)
Eamon (#9) Having the ability to do a job, becoming ill, recovering, and then being passed as fit to work again, is entirely different from being diagnosed as ill and unfit for work. Surely you don't think we should be governed by psychotics and psychopaths - who knows what they'd cook up? I suspect you may be taking New Labour's diversity and equal opportunities ideas a tad too far. Isn't it demonstrably bad enough already ;-)
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'Having the ability to do a job, becoming ill, recovering, and then being passed as fit to work again, is entirely different from being diagnosed as ill and unfit for work. Surely you don't think we should be governed by psychotics and psychopaths - who knows what they'd cook up?'
Of course not, and I never infered that. I gave examples of famous people who suffered from mental illness.
Mental illness can be connected to madness. What is madness (Shakespeare devoted two of his plays to this subject - Was Hamlet really mad? Was King Lear really mad? Was Poor Tom and the Fool really mand? Was Gloucester really mad?)
I work in advertising account planning and it is my job to look at things that on the surface seem like bad ideas but underneath are not. Words such as 'ideas', 'innovation', 'entreprenerial', 'genius' are words that fascinate me, and in reading about these words / phrases i have discovered that a lot of people involved in these have also suffered from mental illness.
All i am saying is that we should be a little slower to jump to conclusions about people who suffer from mental illness - that is all.
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Eamon (#13) The advertising industry, a refuge for miscreants and spin-doctors? Say no more ;-)
But more seriously (!) - the stigma is something we COULD do without, if and only if we could dispense with the 'mental' dimension altogether given that it's really just a modus vivendi for our current scientific (physical) ignorance.
But there's the problem.
Where we have no alternative, and we have no way of appositely managing behavioural diversity in the best interests of all concerned, we're inevitably stuck with prejudice, superstition and risk/uncertainty management. Aside from that, politics is a dirty game at the best of times.
Despite the brief (reactive) burn-out/helplessness (and stated good intentions) of the former Norwegian Prime Minister, clinical depression is often life-long, debilitating, and often impacts severely on work performance (as does pregnancy and motherhood mind you - which is why, paradoxically, we now have a self-destructively low birth rate as many females now trade motherhood for careers and economic 'independence').
The reality is that these new 'equalities' measures impact very significantly on productivity and costs whilst bringing very few, if any, benefits to employers and communities, despite all of the idealistic, romantic talk. It burdens other workers who take up the slack, and slowly undermines the culture if not economy (by absenteeism and its impact on the birth rate). There are marked sex differences in prevalence rates for depression, borderline personality disorder....and the ability to give birth of course ;-)
In brief, older, more traditional practices may well have been iniquitous, but they provided more security (for most) than do current practices, and thus more personal and collective social and economic stability. We appear to be reaping the whirlwind in the wake of naive equalities legislation and policies, and I fear instability and uncertainty is only likely to get worse as a consequence of the FCHR articles which despite the red-lines are bound to be coming our way.
But then maybe, just maybe, that's the idea? A (pernicious) tool for social/political change which most people will naively embrace in the short-term without looking at the long-term costs?
PS. Citing the odd dramatic example (which may or may not be grounded in fact), is not the way to make a credible case. Nor is reference to a brief episode as in the case of the Nowegian ex PM I hasten to add.
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