Roy Hattersley's Liberal Rhetoric(Comments RSS)
I have just enjoyed listening to Roy Hattersley and Kelvin Mackenzie going head to head in the argument over educational selection (Grammar Schools vs Secondary Moderns etc) on the "Any Questions" show on Radio 4. Each of them had some good points, made fairly unequivocally. Great radio.
But did I hear it right when the debate came to an end, with Roy Hattersley "proving his point" by essentially resorting to making a personal attack on Mr Mackenzie? One might have expected it to have been the other way round, given that Hattersley is supposedly the man of politics and debate while Mackenzie is the man of tabloid hysteria. But no.
I had thought that Roy Hattersley could not go lower in my estimation. He managed to today.
But then, I confess that I have long considered Hattersley to be an arrogant and overstated man, basking in the light of his own ego, so perhaps I should not be so surprised.
But did I hear it right when the debate came to an end, with Roy Hattersley "proving his point" by essentially resorting to making a personal attack on Mr Mackenzie? One might have expected it to have been the other way round, given that Hattersley is supposedly the man of politics and debate while Mackenzie is the man of tabloid hysteria. But no.
I had thought that Roy Hattersley could not go lower in my estimation. He managed to today.
But then, I confess that I have long considered Hattersley to be an arrogant and overstated man, basking in the light of his own ego, so perhaps I should not be so surprised.
19/12/2009 3:31 PM
Hattersley was on 'Any Questions' again last night. At the very end of the programme, somebody asked what three presents the members of the team would give to the baby Jesus. There were three quite intelligent replies, and then it came to Hattersley. "I knew this question would come up," he burbled, "and for me there's only one possible answer. My dog Buster died six weeks ago and I just want him back." The audience all went "Aaaah!" in deep sympathy and the programme came to a glum conclusion. All very sad, of course, but totally irrelevant. It indicated that Hattersley had not bothered to listen to either the question or to the responses made to it by his fellow team members: he'd simply decided in advance that it was certaiin to be "What would the members of the team like for Christmas?" and answered accordingly.Peter Rowland