TRIGGERnometry - Robin Aitken on BBC Bias, Diversity and Social Liberalism

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:08.660 I'm Constantine Kishin.

00:00:09.980 And this is a show for you if you're bored with people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing about.

00:00:16.120 At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts, we ask the experts.

00:00:20.940 Our brilliant guest this week is a former BBC journalist and executive, Robin Akin. Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:27.200 Thank you very much.

00:00:28.660 Well, for anyone who doesn't know, you will get into the couple of books that you've written about bias at the BBC.

00:00:33.080 Tell us a little bit about how are you in this chair today?

00:00:35.740 What's been your journey through life?

00:00:37.140 And how have you come to be talking about the issues we'll be talking about today?

00:00:42.180 Yes, well, I'm a journalist and have been for 40 years and more.

00:00:47.920 So my journey through journalism, if you like, was a bit of a march back in time.

00:00:55.960 in the days that I started, I started out on a local newspaper. In fact, my pre-story was that

00:01:00.540 I was a medical student. And so I started out at medical school, and I was lazy and feckless.

00:01:09.240 And the dean of the medical school had me in and said, Mr. Aitken, you have been outstandingly idle,

00:01:15.540 and we can do without you. So I left, and I became a journalist.

00:01:21.000 There's only really two options from that point, journalist to become a comedian.

00:01:24.580 or a teacher. Yeah, absolutely. I discovered actually that idleness is not an advantage in

00:01:30.600 journalism. In fact, you know, it's a hardworking profession when you get into it. But I started,

00:01:35.040 because of this rather rocky start, I started at a bottom on a local newspaper in Walsall in the

00:01:40.540 West Midlands, the black country. Although I come from Somerset, I was brought up in Somerset.

00:01:45.840 And so that was a real education for me because the black country is a real working class area.

00:01:52.160 And I had been brought up in Bath and in Somerset in a middle-class environment.

00:01:59.640 So I learned an awful lot through that.

00:02:01.960 By various stages, I made my way, first of all, to local radio for the BBC.

00:02:06.540 And then I was appointed to a reporting job in Scotland.

00:02:10.960 And I was the economics and business correspondent for BBC Scotland for some years in the middle of the 1980s.

00:02:17.960 after that I moved down to London I came down to work for BBC News so I was working on the

00:02:27.100 main news outlets what we used to call the fireman's service so you were sort of sitting

00:02:31.440 there on the taxi rink and whatever came up you went and did it involved a fair bit of travel

00:02:36.320 and you got to do you know everything from air crashes to I can't think of a suitable

00:02:44.920 opening a supermarket

00:02:46.580 BBC wasn't really into that in those days

00:02:50.160 but you know I did everything

00:02:51.400 and everything and anything

00:02:52.700 and then I went to the money program

00:02:55.360 and I worked there for a few years

00:02:57.100 and then a program called

00:02:59.100 On the Record which is a politics program

00:03:01.440 that did a bit of news again

00:03:04.920 and eventually I was hired by

00:03:06.260 the Today program

00:03:08.000 and Rod Little was the editor in those days

00:03:11.320 and he hoiked me out of obscurity

00:03:14.160 put me on the Today program, and those were my best years as a reporter, really.

00:03:18.940 It's a strange, dystopian, kind of unrecognizable world that you describe where

00:03:23.580 Rod Little could be on the Today program. I don't imagine that happening today,

00:03:28.400 which I suppose is the subject we're really talking about. So you're a conservative,

00:03:33.660 as I understand it, and you've worked your way through the BBC, and your books are essentially

00:03:39.560 your reflections on being a conservative at the BBC. What is that like?

00:03:44.440 Okay, well, let me just explain something to you constantly. I am a conservative, that

00:03:48.380 is true. I'm a conservative, a social conservative, I would say. And I make the distinction because

00:03:54.640 I think that social conservative values are the ones that matter most to me, and they

00:04:00.140 are the ones which are most neglected and most discriminated against by the BBC. I also

00:04:06.320 happened to be, and have been in the past, a supporter of the Conservative Party itself.

00:04:13.440 So I'm a conservative in both senses, in those terms. But what matters most to me is

00:04:20.440 social conservatism. What was it like being at the BBC? It was like being the only black 1.00

00:04:29.780 guy in a crowd of white men. So when I was at the BBC, I've always been interested in 0.90

00:04:39.440 politics, and I always used to quiz my colleagues about their political affiliations. And it

00:04:46.740 became very clear to me from an early stage in my BBC career that I was surrounded by

00:04:53.580 left-wingers, really, in short. A lot of people were liberal Democrats, or they thought of

00:04:59.700 themselves as centrists, but essentially they were on the left, or slightly on the left,

00:05:05.040 sort of center left. It became particularly apparent during the Thatcher years because

00:05:10.520 Thatcher was such a divisive figure. I had, as I said, I worked as an economics correspondent,

00:05:17.800 and it became clear to me that in purely economic terms, the way we were running the country 0.91

00:05:24.480 in the 1970s, where we had large, hugely loss-making nationalized industries, this was a foolish

00:05:31.940 way to run our economy, because what we ended up doing was putting a lot of money into industries

00:05:40.800 which were increasingly uncompetitive.

00:05:45.640 And if you take Adam Smith, the great economist and his Wealth of Nations, the idea that the

00:05:54.100 The simple idea boils down to this, that there's something called competitive advantage.

00:05:59.300 So Iceland has a competitive advantage in producing fish.

00:06:09.340 Germany does not. 0.80

00:06:10.560 Why is that?

00:06:11.560 Well, Iceland's in the middle of the ocean, has lots of trawler men.

00:06:15.020 Germany's in the middle of Europe and doesn't. 0.95

00:06:17.940 So you let Iceland produce the fish, Germany produce the cars, right? 0.88

00:06:25.520 In our case, in Britain, we were very good at some things and still are very good at

00:06:29.120 some things.

00:06:30.120 For instance, we're very good at many of the service industries like architecture,

00:06:36.820 marketing, advertising, banking, these big service industries.

00:06:41.340 We're excellent at those.

00:06:42.340 In fact, we're world beaters at those.

00:06:44.680 not so good as it happens at making steel and there are reasons for that, built in reasons

00:06:50.860 why we're not particularly competitive when it comes to steel making. Thatcher realised

00:06:56.300 that and her whole economic thrust was to move money away from these loss making industries, 1.00

00:07:03.220 free them up, sell them off, see how they could do in the free market and allow the

00:07:07.560 wealth of our nation to be put into more productive ends.

00:07:12.680 But the consequence of that, social consequence of that, was hugely disruptive and very divisive.

00:07:18.980 People lost their jobs.

00:07:19.980 It was absolutely awful for many people.

00:07:22.860 And the human pain and misery which resulted from that shouldn't be underestimated.

00:07:27.680 But I took the view that this was a necessary form of shock treatment to get the country's

00:07:34.040 economy back on track.

00:07:36.660 Within the BBC, you could count on one hand the number of people who thought like that.

00:07:42.500 I found myself in the position often of working on programs where they were quite explicitly

00:07:48.000 hostile to Thatcher.

00:07:50.440 And this hostility was an ideological hostility to what Thatcher herself was doing. 0.95

00:07:56.200 Although she won three big election victories and was obviously popular, people understood

00:08:02.840 in the country what she was doing.

00:08:04.260 The BBC almost became the official opposition during that time.

00:08:07.840 So, I found myself as a conservative in the BBC, somebody who was politically friendless.

00:08:17.540 Although I have many friends at the BBC, you know, they're great people to work with.

00:08:23.180 People like, you know, they're well-educated, they're decent, polite people, but they overwhelmingly

00:08:29.200 They come from liberal social backgrounds, and they're overwhelmingly inclined to the left.

00:08:38.120 Now, I suppose a counter-argument to that is this.

00:08:41.580 Whenever I look at, you know, there's a Labour forum on Facebook, great people.

00:08:47.140 Not if you're Jewish. 1.00

00:08:47.800 Not if you're Jewish, yeah, I know. 1.00

00:08:49.700 But, you know, you've had a good run.

00:08:51.120 Anyway, all I see from the Labour forums are Brexit Broadcasting Corporation.

00:08:59.600 Why is Farage on there all the time?

00:09:01.840 You know, the BBC is right wing.

00:09:03.640 It's a cabal.

00:09:04.920 Is it not the fact that as the BBC, you know, they've got to put on left and right.

00:09:09.800 They're going to take a pummeling from both sides.

00:09:14.440 Well, funny enough, actually, what you say, Francis, is exactly the BBC, the argument,

00:09:19.300 the argument the BBC itself uses to justify its own stance. It says, well, look, we're

00:09:25.760 criticized from both sides, therefore we must be right. However, I don't know if either

00:09:35.340 of you saw, did either of you see the interview between a chap called Ben Shapiro and Andrew

00:09:40.620 Neal? Yes, we did, yeah.

00:09:41.780 Yeah. Okay. So I thought that was a very telling interview. And the reason I thought

00:09:46.900 it was telling was this, that Andrew O'Neill is the BBC's in-house right-winger. He's widely

00:09:53.780 recognized. I think you'd agree, wouldn't you? People see him as a very right-wing personality,

00:09:59.040 right? But that interview went off the rails because Andrew O'Neill started a line of questioning

00:10:08.920 about the abortion debate in the US. And he said, the words he used was, he said, yes, but some of

00:10:16.820 the laws being introduced in some of the states are taking us back to the dark ages. These are

00:10:21.360 barbaric laws. And he was talking about restrictive abortion laws in the US. And Shapiro, who is of

00:10:29.420 course a right-winger in American terms, is a social conservative. And he immediately bridled

00:10:35.680 that. He said to Andrea, he said, are you a comment journalist or are you an objective

00:10:43.440 journalist. The point he was making was that Andrew O'Neill had included in the question a

00:10:50.640 very loaded comment. That was that these laws which were trying to restrict abortion were

00:10:56.340 taking us back to the dark ages. What that showed to me was this, that the BBC's most notable,

00:11:04.180 most clearly right-wing journalist is actually a social liberal. When it comes down to it,

00:11:10.600 He's on the side of the social-liberal argument, the social-liberal argument which says that

00:11:21.800 we are liberal about issues like abortion, divorce, euthanasia, moral conduct in general.

00:11:32.880 We don't care what you do in your bedrooms. 1.00

00:11:34.660 You can do whatever you want in your bedrooms.

00:11:38.200 That's no concern of ours.

00:11:39.740 We approve it.

00:11:40.740 You can worship whoever you like.

00:11:42.400 We don't care about that.

00:11:43.460 We don't think it matters.

00:11:46.020 This is the social liberal position.

00:11:48.120 This is actually what one of your previous guests on this show, Sir John Curtis, is exactly

00:11:55.060 what he was saying, which is that the dividing line now in the Brexit debate is not between

00:12:01.740 left and right.

00:12:03.260 It's between social conservatives and social liberals.

00:12:05.620 And the point I'm trying to make to you is that, yes, the BBC gets criticised from the left, but underlying it, the BBC's stance is solidly socially liberal.

00:12:21.560 In fact, it has no, as far as I know, and believe me, I keep a close eye on it, there are no what I would call social conservative voices on the BBC.

00:12:32.300 And in fact, they don't invite on for interview social conservatives. So the things which concern

00:12:41.180 me as a social conservative are not subjects for debate on the BBC. Let me give you an example.

00:12:48.320 You told me, Francis, that you were a teacher in an East End school, a deprived East End London

00:12:53.420 school, right? And you recounted an anecdote about a child who came from a troubled background.

00:12:59.500 And one of the biggest problems facing the country, I think, in a social sense, is the

00:13:08.080 breakdown of family life. And the state can do many things, but it cannot act as a substitute

00:13:16.520 for proper parents. If you're a boy and you're brought up without a father, the consequences

00:13:24.360 of that can be dramatically bad because you have no proper role model. You might have

00:13:29.760 a mum who loves you, and I'm not knocking single mums, some of whom I know do a fantastic

00:13:36.240 job, a self-denying job, to raise their kids. But if you don't have a stable male figure

00:13:45.900 with the mum over a long period of time, you have bad consequences.

00:13:52.080 Now, that debate, which I think underpins so many of the other debates which are picked

00:13:58.720 up endlessly by the BBC. For instance, how many times have you heard on the BBC people

00:14:04.380 agonizing about the crisis in mental health amongst young people? The crisis in mental

00:14:09.800 health among young people is inseparable from the breakdown of family life because mental

00:14:16.220 disorders in young people are very often the result, not always, but very often the result

00:14:23.240 of family breakdown. We've had people want to talk about this on this show, so we are doing

00:14:28.500 the job the BBC is not doing. But to come back to your point about... Well, getting hate from left

00:14:32.920 wingers. We get hate from right wingers too. Every time we talk to anybody about anything

00:14:39.680 to do with Tommy Robinson, we just get this massive wall of hate of how we are cucks and

00:14:43.540 they're happening now the right now is you're watching that's what's happening so we get a lot

00:14:51.980 of that but my point to you about andrew neal a counterpoint might be i personally agree with you

00:14:56.580 i think the bbc seems to me as a socially liberally dominated institution but andrew neal has

00:15:03.980 eviscerated people like owen jones and munro burgdorff and ken livingston beautifully right

00:15:10.580 So you could argue that the reason that he was putting that point to Ben Shapiro isn't that that is his point of view, is that the style of interview that Andrew Neal does is to put the opposite side of the point of view that he's challenging in as strong and sometimes emotive terms as possible in order to, I mean, let's be honest, create clickbait.

00:15:33.280 Sure.

00:15:34.060 And you make a very good point that Neil is a hostile interviewer and a very good interviewer.

00:15:39.460 I mean, I would say he's probably the most effective interrogator the BBC has on the front line.

00:15:48.660 However, the reason that interview, the one with Shapiro, you know, we're talking about it now,

00:15:54.720 because it was a bit of pickup in the press because it was seen as a bit of a car crash.

00:15:59.320 car crash interviews reveal something usually not about the interviewee but about the interviewer

00:16:08.720 you think of Kathy Newman and Peter Jordan that's exactly where my head went the moment you said

00:16:13.660 that right okay so there you had um so the point of these interviews supposedly is to is to put

00:16:20.640 the interviewee on the spot if the interviewer shows their cards and becomes instead of being

00:16:28.380 the interrogator becomes a protagonist in the debate, lets their own opinions, as it were,

00:16:36.540 go up against those of the interviewee, not in the formula of some people would say,

00:16:44.660 or some people might think, but as Andrew Neal, now in that interview, he didn't preface his

00:16:51.280 remarks with some people might think. He actually said, but these laws are taking us back to the

00:16:58.160 dark ages. That's worth his words, right? It was quite clear after, I mean, no one, after that

00:17:04.540 interview, I thought, well, I didn't learn a lot about George, I didn't learn very much about Ben

00:17:08.660 Shapiro's views, or nothing I couldn't have guessed. I learned something about Andrew Neill's views.

00:17:14.900 I actually tweeted about this that I thought they both came out of it badly in a way. And

00:17:21.540 actually, I say they both, we all came out of it badly, because you watched an interview with

00:17:27.080 somebody for 16 minutes and you learn nothing about them. If you hadn't known who Ben Shapiro

00:17:32.080 was before then, you've learned almost nothing about what are their point of views, why is he

00:17:36.560 so incredibly popular in America, what is it that he's saying, what is his view on Donald Trump,

00:17:42.060 which is quite nuanced and not just massively pro-Trump. So you spend 16 minutes of your life

00:17:48.240 listening to something that tells you nothing about the person to whom you just listened.

00:17:54.120 See, for me, the difference between the Cathy Newman interview

00:17:57.320 and the Andrew Neal is I think it actually did show something about Shapiro.

00:18:01.080 And I think it was an inability to cope under pressure.

00:18:04.160 And the moment we had a direct question,

00:18:06.680 because Shapiro likes to portray himself as someone who goes up against students

00:18:09.620 and essentially truth bullets and all the rest of it.

00:18:12.340 But when he came up as somebody who was at the similar level,

00:18:15.060 I don't think he could cope under pressure.

00:18:17.600 That was the impression that I got from it.

00:18:20.140 Well, I'd agree with that, actually.

00:18:21.560 And in fact, I agree with both of you. 0.98

00:18:24.740 I think they were both losers in a sense. 0.87

00:18:28.420 And I do think that Shapiro to me came across as a very brittle, rather thin-skinned individual. 0.95

00:18:36.280 And he couldn't cope with Andrew Neal's gravitas.

00:18:41.200 I mean, you know, Neal, he is a really serious journalist.

00:18:47.860 You know, he has held all these positions.

00:18:50.440 You know, he's been the editor of the Sunday Times and Times.

00:18:54.680 You know, he heads up the – what I'm saying is he's a seasoned journalist.

00:18:59.560 He's bloody good at what he does.

00:19:00.400 He's bloody good at what he does.

00:19:02.020 We really want you to show him.

00:19:04.680 And really, to me, Shapiro looked a lightweight.

00:19:10.960 He looked young and almost scared, really.

00:19:14.240 I mean, he didn't handle it at all well.

00:19:17.280 But also, I didn't – I would like to have known what it was about Shapiro that, as you say, made him – why is he popular?

00:19:28.200 Why was Andrew Neil bothering to interview this guy Shapiro?

00:19:35.000 Because he's got this huge following in the States.

00:19:36.860 Why?

00:19:37.480 What is it that he's saying?

00:19:38.820 We never got to that point because we got sidetracked into all this kind of – into this battle between the two of them.

00:19:44.300 But also, I would say to Francis as well, Ben Shapiro, I think, came out of it badly because he didn't know who Andrew Neal was and he was unprepared.

00:19:52.980 The reason Ben Shapiro is as big as he is is you go and watch him being interviewed by Piers Morgan while Piers Morgan was doing his American show on gun control, which is a very difficult issue.

00:20:02.960 And he comes across as very, very calm and measured, but also very strong.

00:20:08.140 So it's an issue where everybody did badly, I feel, and we all came out of it very badly.

00:20:14.300 I mean, I think a more prescient interview, and I know this will go out when this goes out, you know, the European elections will be done and dusted.

00:20:21.320 But Andrew Marr's interview with Farage, I thought, was a disgrace.

00:20:24.660 And I'm not pro-Brexit.

00:20:26.440 And I was watching this going, why are you not addressing about Brexit?

00:20:29.880 Why are you talking about events that happened five, ten whatever years ago?

00:20:34.160 I could not agree with you more.

00:20:36.380 I thought, I tell you, OK, a lot of people don't know the mechanism of these things.

00:20:42.780 I do.

00:20:43.220 And I know what happens, right? You've got a big political interview on a show like The Mar Show. That is thoroughly prepared for. So the production team, you know, first of all, they land their man midweek and then they have a few days and there's some usually bright young junior producer who puts together a brief and the brief is presented to Mar so he knows everything he might care to know.

00:21:10.780 You know, often with little embarrassing quotes or little gaffes that the guy has made.

00:21:16.180 And then the Ma and the editor, senior producer types, would sit around and they'd try to plan an interview, right?

00:21:24.560 So this is how we're going to play it.

00:21:26.180 We're going to start on this and then at this point, you know, we'll start quizzing him about these things which are supposedly embarrassing.

00:21:34.720 Now, I think that was the wrong game plan because we're not electing a prime minister.

00:21:40.160 You know, we're not electing a prime minister in these Euro elections.

00:21:43.540 However well Farage does, he's not going to be walking in the gates of number 10.

00:21:48.180 By the time this interview comes out, you never know.

00:21:50.280 Maybe he will be.

00:21:51.960 He may well be already there, Robert.

00:21:54.360 But, you know, I mean, you know, basically the thing is, so all this stuff that Ma threw at Farage, you know, did he say this about the NHS?

00:22:04.020 What about the poster?

00:22:06.040 These were irrelevant issues, as Farage rightly pointed out, as Farage kept trying to bring the

00:22:11.940 thing back on track and saying, but you know, you're ignoring what the issue is here. And I

00:22:16.740 do think that Farage is right when he made the issue of democratic accountability the central

00:22:26.420 thing he wanted to talk about, because that is certainly one of the big issues, or the big issue

00:22:32.560 really in in these elections which are now a few days away from us but by the time you see this

00:22:38.100 will be done and dusted and i suspect we know how that's that's going to turn out but on the bbc

00:22:44.040 just carrying on one of the things francis and i were just we were talking on the phone before

00:22:48.580 this interview and just talking about what's happened to the bbc in general beyond the bias

00:22:56.040 issue that you talk about. I remember watching Question Time religiously. I remember watching

00:23:02.940 Andrew Marshall religiously. I obviously am interested in politics. I've been in the audience

00:23:07.000 of Question Time. That's how interested I was in it. And I watched Question Time probably for the

00:23:13.460 first time in a year, a couple of weeks back when Nigel Farage was on it. And they were talking

00:23:19.780 endlessly about Brexit, which is an important issue. And the only conclusion I came away with

00:23:24.080 is that we must leave question time with no deal.

00:23:28.640 Because it's just, it's unwatchable.

00:23:32.680 I know, I couldn't agree more.

00:23:34.560 And it's not because it's Farage or someone else.

00:23:36.740 Every time I've tried to watch it in the last year,

00:23:38.540 I maybe watch a five-minute clip.

00:23:39.960 I just can't watch it.

00:23:41.640 It's unwatchable.

00:23:42.760 So what is happening to an institution

00:23:45.280 that I personally think is very important

00:23:47.000 in British public life?

00:23:48.280 Well, you would get many BBC people who would say

00:23:50.340 and would acknowledge the fact that question time,

00:23:52.780 has been, and still is in some people's eyes, one of the most important political programs of the

00:23:59.060 week. So what's happened to it? Well, it has become trivialized in a certain way, I think.

00:24:09.420 I've stopped watching it, actually, because I find, like you, there is something about it which

00:24:16.340 no longer

00:24:19.860 does what it says on the tin.

00:24:23.300 So what you want from a program,

00:24:24.820 or what I want from a program like that,

00:24:26.800 is to see serious...

00:24:30.660 I want to see

00:24:31.740 the questions which are in the mind of the public

00:24:35.720 put to serious people

00:24:39.240 in politics

00:24:41.280 and hear what their responses are.

00:24:44.540 And I think that as a format

00:24:46.220 is a very respectable, honorable, in fact, vital thing to do in a way.

00:24:54.340 But somehow, Question Time seems to have lost the ability to do that properly.

00:24:59.700 I'm not quite sure why, actually.

00:25:04.260 Maybe it's to do with, I know that they have their, you know, that if you,

00:25:08.420 I know that, I know someone actually who has worked on Question Time,

00:25:13.580 as no longer does, but she was telling me how difficult it is for them to balance the

00:25:23.700 panel, right? You know, it's very difficult at a time when politics seems to be fragmenting

00:25:29.540 to get every point of view. So that's one problem. But also, I think sometimes, you

00:25:36.360 know, I was talking to someone else on a slightly different issue, but I was talking to someone

00:25:41.800 a friend recently, and we were talking about it. And I was saying, you know, something

00:25:45.420 that's happened in my lifetime is that 30, 40 years ago, no one gave a tinkers about

00:25:55.560 what actors thought about politics, right?

00:26:02.700 Actors had their place, and they might be very engaging and good at what they do, but 0.96

00:26:08.420 No one gave a fuck about what they thought. 0.60

00:26:12.000 Same with comedians. 0.92

00:26:13.740 Because, you know, actors spend their whole time pretending to be somebody else.

00:26:21.920 What credentials are those?

00:26:24.640 What is it about being an actor that qualifies you to appear on Question Time,

00:26:30.260 to answer questions about Brexit?

00:26:32.660 Well, frankly, the answer to that is absolutely nothing.

00:26:38.420 But, over the course of the last 30 years, with the rise of the celebrity culture, we've

00:26:48.380 all been sucked into that and somehow, suddenly, what Hollywood thinks matters.

00:26:55.040 I think that's one of the problems with question time.

00:26:59.220 So the personnel, if you like, has been somewhat watered down, downgraded in a way.

00:27:07.240 They're no longer quite serious people that they should be.

00:27:13.980 But see, this is where I agree with you in theory,

00:27:16.900 but I think in practice it's actually quite often the other way around.

00:27:20.700 Our good friend Jeff Norcott, who we've had on the show, who's a comedian,

00:27:24.300 every time he goes on there, he seems to be the lone voice of reason.

00:27:27.960 You know what I mean?

00:27:28.800 Yeah.

00:27:28.940 And so what I'm talking about isn't so much that they've watered down

00:27:32.720 the intellectual talent or whatever.

00:27:34.520 It's just that they're just bickering.

00:27:38.160 Yeah, well, that's a very interesting observation.

00:27:41.780 So what does that really, if they're just bickering,

00:27:46.120 that's actually a very good description of what you do see.

00:27:50.380 So that would tell you, wouldn't it, that they're not arguing about substantial issues.

00:27:55.660 What they're doing is they're squabbling over their own little position.

00:28:00.520 They're fighting their own little corner.

00:28:02.000 But actually, in a way, all the politicians are in somehow, they have more in common with each other than they do with the rest of us.

00:28:13.180 But actually, you know, the political class, as it were, and I think this is becoming clearer and clearer.

00:28:21.040 Actually, because of the rather harsh light that the Brexit debate has shone on our politics.

00:28:27.020 It's becoming clearer and clearer that our politicians and the ruling class, the media

00:28:38.480 class, so the politicians, the senior journalists, the senior academics, senior civil servants,

00:28:48.580 they're united.

00:28:50.920 They all share the same view.

00:28:53.300 They're almost to a man, anti-Brexit.

00:28:57.020 I mean, you wouldn't have the problem we've had with Brexit, were it not for the very simple fact that in the House of Commons, you've got nearly 80% of MPs who are personally opposed to Brexit.

00:29:08.260 They voted to remain.

00:29:09.560 That's one factor.

00:29:10.480 In the House of Lords, it's probably 95%.

00:29:13.160 So what you've got is you've got a ruling class of politicians who are sitting there on top of the pile running the mechanism, which is supposed to get us out.

00:29:23.220 But they all want to stay in.

00:29:25.220 It's no great surprise that, you know, we've ended up in the muddle we have.

00:29:28.580 And I think maybe that's what's on show in question time now.

00:29:34.960 You know, it's kind of politicians against the people somehow.

00:29:39.040 Do you think the BBC is engaged in a race to the bottom because of social media,

00:29:43.420 because everybody wants to see a two-minute clip where so-and-so gets, in inverted commas, destroyed or whatever else?

00:29:49.220 So they feel that need to buy into it, hence the bickering, hence the talking over one and each other,

00:29:54.360 Hence, you know, the lack of listening.

00:29:56.680 Before you answer, if you could just destroy Francis for us, that would be brilliant.

00:30:00.940 I don't need to, mate. I destroy myself on a regular basis.

00:30:04.620 No, no. What do I think about that?

00:30:07.860 I think, well, I think that there is an ineluctable pressure to go down market in certain respects.

00:30:17.760 So the BBC is, although it's publicly funded, of course it feels pressure from commercial rivals.

00:30:29.180 And so inevitably, it has to compete in the same market, right?

00:30:37.460 In a way, it hasn't gone quite as low as some of the other outlets.

00:30:47.760 For instance, I don't know, have you ever watched Naked Attraction?

00:30:50.740 Yeah, I do.

00:30:52.060 I bet you do.

00:30:54.180 It's a great program.

00:30:56.120 I hadn't seen it, but when I was researching the book,

00:31:02.700 I was thinking about the way in which, for instance, now we can access pornography, right?

00:31:10.980 At the press of a button, you can see anything you want.

00:31:13.740 Really?

00:31:14.000 even my wife doesn't watch trigonometry i'm sorry to have shocked you i mean

00:31:26.160 this must be i'm a moral conservative you've led a sheltered life yeah so anyway i i am for the

00:31:32.940 first time i i had heard about naked attraction i watched it and you know for anyone who hasn't 0.91

00:31:38.180 watched it basically it's a it's a genital beautiful beauty parade right so you people

00:31:42.960 they they uh they stand there they hold their brakes down and you get a look at either willie 0.92

00:31:49.180 or fanny and oh this one i like this one i don't oh this one's a bit sort of tattooed oh this one's

00:31:54.080 a bit droopy but this happens on the bbc this happens on now this is channel four okay can i

00:31:59.180 just say can i just interrupt i never thought this interview would go this way well and what

00:32:06.120 The point I'm making is that this, I mean, you know, can we go lower than that? 0.77

00:32:13.940 I mean, the point is, if that is, you know, that is trash culture, right?

00:32:20.680 I mean, you know, we, we, we, okay, we're all guys here in the room. 0.94

00:32:25.860 We're all smirking, right?

00:32:26.940 It's, you know, and it's, you know, wow, you know, Fanny is on the TV.

00:32:30.480 That's great, you know. 0.97

00:32:31.460 But actually, you know, when you think about it, to be a man, to stand up and be a man and not to be led by your dick your whole life, to exercise some self-restraint as best you can is a lesson that every man needs to learn and put into action. 0.92

00:32:51.660 If you pander constantly to the sexual urge in males, A, it's almost irresistible for young males and for old males too. 0.88

00:33:02.820 I mean, look, I'm not dead yet, but the sex drive is immensely powerful and it can be exploited for commercial reasons, which is what pornography does.

00:33:18.060 In my view, pornography exploits both women, sometimes, not always, but certainly men.

00:33:25.260 Because males have this biological imperative.

00:33:30.460 We're fascinated by the subject.

00:33:32.300 We can't resist images of the other sex and the sex act itself. 1.00

00:33:38.920 And these things just are immensely powerful drivers of male behavior.

00:33:44.180 And if you allow that unrestricted access to that, you do damage because I do think actually that, I mean, Naked Attraction is an example of a sort of creeping pornification of television.

00:34:00.380 and it's on mainstream, it's in its third or fourth series now.

00:34:07.280 So, and, you know, actually, funnily enough, you know,

00:34:11.120 when it first came on, there were some complaints to Ofcom,

00:34:14.980 the regulator, right?

00:34:16.300 So people said, you know, this is an indecent show. 1.00

00:34:19.500 Ofcom had a look at it and they said,

00:34:21.580 well, actually, we don't think it's indecent

00:34:23.000 because basically what this is doing,

00:34:25.320 it's just a variant on a dating show.

00:34:27.220 And because there's no actual sexual contact,

00:34:30.380 it's fine. Well, forgive me, but I think that is a really feeble and a pathetic response from 0.98

00:34:41.080 Ofcom. But then Ofcom is entirely staffed by social liberals who presumably see nothing at 0.62

00:34:47.220 all wrong with a show like that. Whereas I think actually that it's debasing and degrading. It

00:34:54.420 degrades the culture. It degrades the individuals who are involved in it. It degrades the audience

00:34:59.340 for watching it. And I think we'd be a better, happier, healthier country without that kind of

00:35:05.640 crap. Now, what you've talked about with social liberals, do you not think that the problem and 0.98

00:35:11.480 the challenges that a lot of these broadcasters face is that certain types of people are attracted

00:35:16.380 to certain professions? For example, bankers, naturally, they're going to be more materialistic.

00:35:22.120 They're going to be, you know, less, you could argue, less socially conscious. They're going to

00:35:25.840 be more driven because more prone to cocaine more prone to cocaine absolutely all these all these

00:35:31.640 things i mean they're stereotypes but there's a reason that they exist yes and do you not think

00:35:36.520 that socially liberal people are more attracted to being journalists because a lot of people when

00:35:40.560 they go into journalism they have this fantasy you know that they're going to be the one

00:35:43.940 bringing down you know this evil corporation with a big scoop and all the rest of it how do you bring

00:35:49.720 a corporation down with a scoop well look well look look what's happened to the news of the world

00:35:54.920 yeah that got brought to its knees sorry it was just a terrible pun yeah all right um oh i just

00:36:01.540 oh don't ever do that again i'm going to look for a new presenter apologies right a number of

00:36:06.880 interesting points one is you're absolutely right that journalists play up to the mental image of

00:36:11.740 the journalist as hero um so you know there's this long standing tradition of uh movies and

00:36:18.900 television programs and books where the journalist is the hero character, right? He's the seeker

00:36:25.660 after truth who brings down the big corporation or whatever it is. So journalists are very

00:36:30.000 attracted to that as an idea. But the other point that you make about isn't it the case

00:36:40.280 that bankers naturally, that a mercenary instinct is the sort of selector, is the reason why

00:36:52.460 people might go into banking and they might not go into journalism.

00:36:57.680 But my point is slightly different, which is that probably you would find, in fact you

00:37:01.420 would certainly find, that the upper reaches of the banking profession is just as socially

00:37:06.540 liberal as are the upper echelons of the journalistic profession. There was a sociologist

00:37:16.020 by the name of Peter Berger, and he was very prominent in the 1960s in America. And he

00:37:25.480 wrote a very influential book about secularization theory. And what he predicted was, he said

00:37:34.480 that by the 21st century, so he was writing in 1968, I think, or thereabouts, he wrote

00:37:41.240 a very prominent piece in the New York Times, and it said that by the 21st century, religious

00:37:47.820 believers would be restricted to isolated pockets beleaguered in a sea of a secular 1.00

00:37:56.880 world. And he saw this as the future of the world. This is 1968, right?

00:38:03.040 So in the succeeding 40 years, you had what?

00:38:07.760 You had the Iranian Revolution and the Ayatollahs kicking out the Shah.

00:38:12.480 You had the fall of the Soviet Union precipitated, let us remember, by a Roman Catholic subversive 1.00

00:38:20.720 resistance in Poland, which was the thing which sparked the whole thing off.

00:38:24.540 You've had the rise of Islamic State.

00:38:27.380 You've had all these phenomena, and you've had actually the reconversion of Russia back 0.85

00:38:32.660 into a much more religious state than it used to be.

00:38:36.360 So far from fulfilling Berger's prediction that the world would become secularized, in

00:38:43.720 fact religion has not gone away, and in some ways religion has become more prominent in

00:38:48.040 our world today than it was back in the 1960s.

00:38:51.480 But, now, Berger is very, very interesting and very intelligent.

00:38:56.660 You know, he's someone well worth reading, actually.

00:38:58.680 But he, so he had a long life.

00:39:01.240 And in the, about 10 years ago, he thoroughly recanted secularization theory.

00:39:07.400 He said, I got it wrong.

00:39:09.580 His new take is this.

00:39:11.020 He says that secularization theory is carried by a very select elite group of Western people, Western type people.

00:39:23.380 They have some things in common.

00:39:25.340 They are all very well educated.

00:39:28.460 They all come from well educated backgrounds.

00:39:31.920 And they occupy senior positions in all those professions and occupations which mold our current reality.

00:39:45.380 So in the law, in government, in the media, you've got people who basically subscribe to secularization theory.

00:39:56.680 they are themselves secular. They're not believers. They are atheistic and materialistic

00:40:03.940 and secular. But because of their influential position, because they sit in these very influential

00:40:11.200 jobs, they, of course, have a massively disproportionate influence on the way the rest of us think.

00:40:20.300 I've slightly lost my train of thought.

00:40:22.260 But we were talking about why, you know, journalists, social liberal people are attracted to journalism.

00:40:30.100 So what I'm saying is that basically it's the same sort of people you would find very similar attitudes in the boardroom of Goldman Sachs as you would in the boardroom at the BBC or in the boardroom at Channel 4 or in the newsroom at Channel 4.

00:40:56.460 But I guess France's point is that when we talk about the BBC being biased, that's not because evil BBC directors are hiring only people that they agree with.

00:41:07.020 It's because what he's saying, I think, is that it naturally attracts a certain type of person.

00:41:12.120 And therefore, you get this naturally created, naturally occurring bias, if you like.

00:41:16.660 right um yeah i think there is certainly i mean there is obviously truth in that because um you

00:41:24.500 know you don't become a journalist unless you like writing you know it's all it's all you've got to

00:41:29.060 be able to write and you've got to be able to think straight and you've got to be able you've

00:41:32.520 got to have an intellectual curiosity about the world i mean i i'd say about you know in my own

00:41:38.040 experience um i went to some fascinating places did some fascinating jobs but what ended up

00:41:45.020 fascinating me most was the organization I was working for. And I found it highly resistant to

00:41:51.000 the idea of any critical analysis. The BBC's capability when it comes to self-examination

00:41:58.500 are not great. And so, but of course, so yes, I mean, in one sense, of course, you're right. And

00:42:10.900 And no one who is innumerate goes into banking, I suspect, and no one who is illiterate goes into journalism.

00:42:16.740 So in that sense, you're absolutely right.

00:42:18.160 The point I'm making there is that, in fact, the elite in Western societies all share, by and large, the same outlook on life.

00:42:32.740 I was we were at a conference last week and I was talking to a particularly notable academic from

00:42:39.660 one of the best universities not not in the UK in the world and he was saying that he cancelled his

00:42:44.740 BBC subscription which first of all blew my mind that you know somebody would do it and I said why

00:42:49.760 and he said I don't like the way the BBC reports on certain subjects on certain topics in particular

00:42:56.060 the gilets jaunes and he used that as an example and he said that the BBC were ignoring that

00:43:02.200 because it did not fit with their political outlook.

00:43:05.600 Would you agree with that?

00:43:07.360 100%.

00:43:07.960 100%.

00:43:09.880 You know, I think it's deeply ironic

00:43:14.780 that the BBC keeps reporting on this idea of fake news, right?

00:43:20.100 So the BBC has made, I mean, the BBC has made it absolutely plain

00:43:26.020 that it hates everything to do with Donald Trump.

00:43:29.600 He can't stand the man, can't stand his platform,

00:43:33.260 and this shows through in everything it reports about him.

00:43:40.080 Now, the BBC picked up on this phrase which originated with Trump,

00:43:45.580 or at least he popularized this phrase of fake news,

00:43:49.100 and he said, you know, the mainstream media in the US was full of fake news.

00:43:55.760 Now, what did he mean by that?

00:43:57.140 You see, I think that this is the critical distinction which people miss.

00:44:03.360 Things can be accurate.

00:44:05.460 News can be accurate but still unfair.

00:44:09.400 So if I only relay accurate but negative information about you on my news program, I'm being accurate.

00:44:20.340 I'm fair.

00:44:23.340 But, you know, but I'm not.

00:44:25.020 You're just being like my mom.

00:44:25.920 That's all you're doing there.

00:44:27.960 But you're not being fair.

00:44:30.140 You know, so I was raised a Catholic,

00:44:33.280 and the good nuns who raised me used to teach me

00:44:37.060 about the difference between calumny and detraction, right?

00:44:41.200 So calumny is when you tell a lie about somebody.

00:44:45.060 Detraction, on the other hand, is when you tell a truth about somebody,

00:44:48.520 but a truth which ought not to be told.

00:44:50.560 So maybe private information which is greatly to their disadvantage.

00:44:53.620 The BBC is a great detractor of Trump. It doesn't lie about him. What it does is it

00:45:03.300 only tells the negative side of the story. The gilets jaunes are the flip side of that

00:45:10.120 coin. I mean, the gilets jaunes are the French version of that. The gilets jaunes, as I understand

00:45:16.020 it, I haven't had minimal contact with them personally, and that was at a roadblock in

00:45:22.820 northern france i found them absolutely charming well we've had someone on to talk about to talk

00:45:29.200 about them but i this is france you and i were discussing as well with the fact that what when

00:45:33.920 i look at the bbc news website which is still the place that i go to yeah to see some of the news

00:45:38.780 what i notice is not i don't feel that the stories are inaccurate it's just they're clearly selected

00:45:45.800 to present a very particular view exactly and nowhere is is that more true in my opinion than

00:45:51.160 the diversity agenda. And one of the things I wanted to ask you about is the BBC now has policies

00:45:57.540 in place to increase the representation of certain minority groups. They have this, I saw an article

00:46:05.780 the other day that the BBC want to make sure that one out of seven headline TV presenters is gay or

00:46:14.200 lesbian, which made me wonder why they want to reduce the number of gay people in TV, to be honest,

00:46:19.180 Right. So they've got this agenda, it seems like to me, in hiring.

00:46:24.540 There's positive discrimination in favor of certain ethnic minorities.

00:46:30.700 And that seems to me now in the world that we live in to be part of a particular mindset.

00:46:35.200 That isn't just something that people do just because.

00:46:38.400 That seems to be a reflection of a particular view.

00:46:40.580 Do you think those things are connected?

00:46:42.360 I do.

00:46:42.680 And, you know, the diversity agenda, so-called, always amuses me in regard to the BBC because, okay, I'd like to see diversity at the BBC.

00:46:56.380 I really would.

00:46:57.680 I think it would be a huge advance if we had proper diversity at the BBC.

00:47:02.280 Some political diversity, for instance, and maybe some diversity from the current monoculture of social liberalism.

00:47:12.340 and a few social conservatives.

00:47:14.240 That would be a kind of diversity, would it not?

00:47:17.340 I mean, the fact is that simply having a color chart,

00:47:20.280 you know, a color code chart,

00:47:21.360 and making sure you've got every, you know,

00:47:23.180 the right proportion of everyone from black to albino

00:47:27.200 and everything in between

00:47:28.920 guarantees nothing about the fairness of the output.

00:47:38.400 All it means is that you have window-dressed the screen

00:47:41.840 in some way which is thought to reflect modern Britain

00:47:46.740 without doing anything to seriously consider

00:47:51.580 the content of what you're broadcasting,

00:47:55.560 which is surely the important thing.

00:47:57.940 You know, there is no diversity in the BBC in that sense.

00:48:02.000 They are all social liberals.

00:48:03.660 As we started talking about Andrew Neil,

00:48:06.380 the great right winger, he's a social liberal.

00:48:09.080 There are no social conservatives at the BBC.

00:48:11.500 Robin wants his job back.

00:48:14.340 How many albinos do you reckon there are at the BBC?

00:48:16.820 I reckon there's somebody discussing it now in a diversity office.

00:48:20.700 We have no albinos. This needs to change.

00:48:23.040 They want that guy from the Da Vinci Code back.

00:48:25.060 Yeah.

00:48:28.420 But you see this a lot in comedy, and this is one of my bugbears.

00:48:33.240 The majority of people in the referendum voted Brexit.

00:48:37.100 There is only one pro-Brexit comedian on the BBC.

00:48:40.040 it's Jeff Norcock

00:48:40.880 we love you Jeff

00:48:41.580 you're brilliant

00:48:42.040 there should be other comedians

00:48:43.420 why is there not any more?

00:48:45.780 well

00:48:45.920 right wingers aren't funny

00:48:50.000 but as we all know

00:48:52.580 Brexit is not a right wing issue

00:48:54.140 Constantine

00:48:54.880 we've had about 1800 episodes

00:48:57.060 talking about this fact

00:48:57.340 I just had to say that

00:48:58.280 because that's what people say

00:48:59.480 as if being on different sides

00:49:02.000 of the political spectrum

00:49:02.900 somehow affects how funny you are 0.96

00:49:04.400 it's ridiculous 0.97

00:49:06.360 well I mean 0.95

00:49:07.600 you know

00:49:08.920 So why is that? Okay, it's a very interesting question. You know, I often wondered why it

00:49:15.680 was that Jeremy Hardy, RIP, bless him, who I didn't find funny at all, I thought he

00:49:21.740 was merely a propagandist. You could not imagine someone, the obverse of Jeremy Hardy on the

00:49:34.420 right ever being given a platform by the BBC, it just wouldn't happen.

00:49:45.080 This comes down to the idea of what is at work here is a very pernicious and insidious

00:49:54.660 way of patrolling the reservation.

00:50:01.580 In the reservation, certain things are allowed.

00:50:04.740 We're all in the reservation, right?

00:50:06.660 And the reservation is guarded by a liberal elite which allows certain things to be said.

00:50:12.040 But certain things are not allowed to be said.

00:50:14.760 That's why I caught my book, The Noble Liar.

00:50:19.900 The idea behind the title of that book is this, that the BBC is not a malign organization

00:50:26.340 motivated to do us harm.

00:50:28.240 On the contrary, it thinks of itself as being a very good organisation, motivated by the

00:50:33.840 best of intentions, and it wants to do us all good.

00:50:37.240 And that's why it won't allow us to talk about certain things, which it doesn't feel

00:50:42.740 proper to talk about because they're nasty.

00:50:46.420 So for instance, one might say that the BBC has thrown its protective weight behind the

00:50:55.100 Muslim community in Britain.

00:50:57.800 So anybody who attempts to critique Islam is almost instantly labeled as an Islamophobe.

00:51:10.420 And the effect of that is to crush all comment about Islam and to bully those people who

00:51:19.820 have genuine concerns about Islam and the way that it operates, it's to bully them into 1.00

00:51:29.760 silence. That's why you don't hear those debates on the BBC. But there are lots of other things

00:51:34.980 they won't talk about. You know, the limitations of feminism. 1.00

00:51:39.800 Rob has decided to lighten the mood here with Islam and feminism. Let's keep going. 1.00

00:51:47.380 Yeah, look, as soon as he said feminism, his Russian is pricked up. 0.78

00:51:51.500 Yes, we must talk about feminism. 1.00

00:51:53.540 Excellent. 0.96

00:51:54.100 Tell me why women are inferior. 1.00

00:51:56.500 I'd just like to say that was racist and Francis is getting fired tomorrow. 0.81

00:52:01.240 Sorry, Robin.

00:52:02.140 Carry on.

00:52:02.520 Well, you know, I think that, look, my generation of men, British men, I was born in the 1950s.

00:52:15.220 And my generation of British men rapidly came to the conclusion that feminism was making 0.95

00:52:27.680 points which could not be refuted in it.

00:52:30.540 There is no reason why women shouldn't follow whatever career path they want. 1.00

00:52:35.760 There is no reason why when they're in that career they shouldn't be given exactly the

00:52:39.500 same opportunities as men.

00:52:42.980 um i've got so many jokes in my head i can't i can't keep them in it's okay

00:52:53.660 carry on robin we'll we'll have to strap him in a bit he's going to start foaming right

00:52:59.120 however an ideology which um which uh

00:53:06.000 So, feminism started as a crusade and it started as a sort of outsider crusade. It's now become 0.98

00:53:16.060 mainstream and its beliefs have hardened into an ideology which have the effect of suborning

00:53:23.660 the interests of others. And so you've got the paradoxical effect now that males, young

00:53:29.240 young males particularly, and I have met some young men who feel that the dice are now loaded

00:53:36.380 against them. In fact, feminism has become divisive and it is no recipe for harmony between 1.00

00:53:46.700 the sexes that we have this constant feminist crusade to achieve yet more equality. I mean, 0.99

00:53:57.020 I think equality has already... There are, of course, pockets of resistance. There always

00:54:04.600 will be. But look, the world isn't fair, and it never will be. You can't just wave

00:54:11.340 the magic wand and make things fair. Of course, you can pass laws which make things fairer.

00:54:16.780 But there will always be instances of unfairness. What we have to strive for is not to empower

00:54:22.980 one particular section of the community. But to look at us all as, we're all human beings.

00:54:29.380 We all deserve respect. We all deserve our own dignity. We deserve to fulfill ourselves

00:54:37.480 in the best way we can. Of course, all those things are absolutely true. But feminism to 1.00

00:54:42.500 to me now seems to be the—they're akin to—feminism to me looks like the soldier 1.00

00:54:53.000 on the battlefield going down bayoneting the wounded, right?

00:54:58.240 So they vanquished the foe, which was male chauvinism.

00:55:03.320 But they can't kick the habit of attacking men and maleness. 1.00

00:55:10.360 And actually, for all its apparent strengths and, you know, that kind of macho stuff, you know, underneath men are just as vulnerable as women by and large.

00:55:24.940 And I don't think that the continuation of the feminist crusade is doing us any favors. 0.62

00:55:32.800 It's very well put.

00:55:34.100 Now, we've had several people to talk about it on the show.

00:55:36.740 and we're not as articulate as you about it

00:55:41.120 when we probably haven't thought about it as carefully as you have

00:55:43.560 but this is the reason we started Trigonometry

00:55:46.180 is that we saw that all these conversations

00:55:48.560 that are crucial to the time that we live in

00:55:51.800 and to the future of our society

00:55:53.600 were not being had in the public media

00:55:56.280 and that's why we started the show

00:55:57.500 and that's why we're grateful for people like you

00:55:59.420 to come on and tell us your views and others that we've had.

00:56:03.100 We've got time for one last question for us.

00:56:05.200 Well, the last question is, what is the thing that we're not talking about, but we really should be talking about?

00:56:11.640 Right. Well, I've given that some thought.

00:56:13.980 And I think that what we should be thinking about and we're not thinking about is, and not talking about enough, is the place of God in society.

00:56:27.520 So it is my belief, and it's a firm belief of mine, that a belief in God, from a belief

00:56:39.380 in God, flow the things that a good society needs.

00:56:45.320 We need an objective morality which restrains us all from doing things which, though we

00:56:51.880 want to do them, are not good for us.

00:56:56.100 What I think is required is the humility.

00:57:04.100 It needs humility.

00:57:05.720 You need humility to recognize and accept the existence of God.

00:57:14.480 Scientism, the belief that science solves all and that science is in some ways a replacement

00:57:20.920 for God will lead us eventually down terrible blind alleys. We need to rediscover our sense

00:57:31.240 of our own insignificance and ignorance. We have to understand that we don't understand

00:57:41.860 and we never will understand. There are mysteries beyond human comprehension, I think. The pretense

00:57:49.600 that in some way we do fine without God is a huge mistake. So that's what I think we

00:57:57.660 should talk about. And I think that one of the things which is tearing the country apart

00:58:04.200 at the moment is the lack of any unifying belief system. We've got an elite which believes

00:58:12.720 in nothing beyond what is concrete and human and materialistic. And that ignores the experience,

00:58:24.020 the entire experience of humankind from its very beginning.

00:58:29.220 You know, it's striking. You go to, I recently went to Mexico, and I saw these huge strange

00:58:39.500 Mayan temples out in the middle of the jungle. I'd never been before, and I know very little

00:58:46.740 about Mayan culture. But the striking thing is that everywhere you go in the world, as

00:58:53.460 you see the ancient structures, Notre Dame for instance, all these things are built to

00:58:59.620 the glory of gods, plural. They're all an expression of human belief in God.

00:59:08.880 actually, I don't think we can do without that. I don't think that, I mean, we think we can do

00:59:14.880 without it. And atheists are very chippy and sort of cocky about it, you know, we're done with all 1.00

00:59:21.500 that crap, you know, we don't need that rubbish. And, you know, that's not true. And because 1.00

00:59:31.860 in the end, the truth of the matter is that God does exist. And he is a reality, or she is a

00:59:43.660 reality, to billions of people in the world. And that's what humanists and the secular don't

00:59:53.480 really take into account. It's an interesting point because Francis and I are both non-believers.

00:59:58.780 but I hear a lot of what you're saying because I see the effects of our loss of God and we had

01:00:08.160 Douglas Murray on the show recently and this is one of the things that he said he said look I'm

01:00:11.460 a non-believer but I recognize that we need something higher than us in order to keep us

01:00:18.320 and our worst impulses in check and I also think that whether it's a belief in God or maybe just

01:00:24.580 some kind of maybe secular I don't know but there's something that comes with the the the

01:00:34.560 place where you pray that is a community something that binds you not only in a broader sense as a

01:00:41.280 society but also binds you to your nearby community that human beings absolutely need

01:00:46.120 and without which we struggle and we wither away and our mental health is affected and I I'm a

01:00:53.840 non-believer, but I see that. I can't ignore that. 1.00

01:00:58.760 You know, it's very interesting that I would expect both of you to be non-believers because 1.00

01:01:06.800 that is how society is, especially young blokes like you, well-educated, very aware of the world.

01:01:16.420 It's actually being, announcing yourself as a believer is actually a tricky thing to do,

01:01:23.620 and it takes a bit of courage to do it.

01:01:26.400 But it's strange that when you see people, for instance,

01:01:29.540 why do people go to art galleries?

01:01:31.860 Like, you get all these people who flock down

01:01:34.220 to Tate Modern.

01:01:36.860 Personally, I think it's just somewhere you warehouse junk,

01:01:40.060 as far as I can see.

01:01:40.980 But people stand in front,

01:01:45.780 but if you go to a true work of art,

01:01:49.160 a great work of art, you see people standing there,

01:01:52.280 and there is something numinous and beyond them because they are awed being in the presence of

01:02:00.660 something. They don't know what it is, and I can't put it into words because you can't put this thing

01:02:04.420 into words, but it's a feeling that there is something greater than us, right? And that to me

01:02:09.840 is like a sort of vestigial religious belief. It's the same instinct, seeking an explanation

01:02:16.700 for why it is, why things are as they are.

01:02:20.600 You stand in front of something, you think, 0.86

01:02:22.900 wow, this is fucking incredible, you know? 0.94

01:02:26.220 And it's sort of beyond human in some sort of way. 0.98

01:02:31.060 And that is, as I say, it springs from the same part

01:02:39.280 of the human experience, the same part of the human consciousness

01:02:43.200 where religion comes from.

01:02:45.260 and it's about recognising and developing that ability in ourselves to come to grips

01:02:57.780 with and try to understand what this thing is. That's where God comes from, actually.

01:03:06.740 It's something which is a society I think we need to rediscover

01:03:12.040 because I think that the headlong, you know,

01:03:18.200 the things which we've put in the place of religion

01:03:23.740 are unsatisfactory.

01:03:28.740 Naked attraction, for instance. 1.00

01:03:32.080 A trash culture. 1.00

01:03:33.980 Absolutely. 0.99

01:03:34.820 And what a wonderful way to end the interview.

01:03:36.580 So, Robin, thank you so much.

01:03:38.200 If people want to follow you on Twitter, on social media.

01:03:40.480 Do you use it, even?

01:03:41.260 Do you use it?

01:03:41.920 No, I didn't think you do.

01:03:43.040 But do buy Robin's book, The Noble Liar.

01:03:45.660 It's a brilliant, brilliant book.

01:03:47.260 And also, you wrote another one as well.

01:03:48.980 Yeah, well, that was the, yes.

01:03:52.160 I mean, no, get the latest one.

01:03:53.940 All right, get The Noble Liar.

01:03:54.940 Forget the other one.

01:03:56.260 Even Robin doesn't want to sell that one.

01:03:59.060 Get The Noble Liar.

01:03:59.900 It's brilliant.

01:04:00.500 Both Francis and I read it and thought there were some really good points, and I enjoyed it.

01:04:04.200 as always follow us on all the social media if you're not yet a patron of the show this is your

01:04:10.020 opportunity you can get one of these mugs if you give a certain amount and in general if you believe

01:04:14.280 in what we're doing and want to support us please do that and as always francis always says this and

01:04:19.380 it is really important every week every single week we get notifications of youtube unsubscribing

01:04:24.580 people from the channel and then you having to resubscribe if that is happening keep telling us

01:04:29.140 because we well we won't get anything out of them but at least we can fill late victims

01:04:33.320 And you've also forgotten one thing, Constantine.

01:04:35.900 You know what the thing is?

01:04:36.840 Constantine is doing an Edinburgh show.

01:04:38.560 Oh, yes.

01:04:39.260 How can I forget?

01:04:39.880 You need to come on.

01:04:41.360 Promote your Edinburgh show.

01:04:43.100 You were doing it.

01:04:44.080 What are you doing?

01:04:44.600 Okay, he's shy.

01:04:46.060 Bless him.

01:04:46.420 He's been in England too long.

01:04:47.480 Go and watch it.

01:04:48.220 It's going to be great.

01:04:49.480 It is on at what time?

01:04:51.040 7 p.m. at the Gilded Balloon for the whole of August.

01:04:53.980 It's called Orwell That Ends Well.

01:04:55.640 If you go to my Twitter, it's the pinned tweet there.

01:04:58.280 You can see a little trailer of what the show is going to be about.

01:05:00.400 and I'm doing two shows

01:05:01.760 at the Bill Murray in August

01:05:02.920 so come along for there

01:05:04.060 it's called Mixed Race White Bloke

01:05:05.500 and I'll pin something there

01:05:07.540 so come along and say hello

01:05:08.460 but guys thank you so much

01:05:10.040 please spread the word

01:05:11.280 share it

01:05:11.880 tweet it

01:05:12.380 we always get tagged

01:05:13.980 and we see you sharing it

01:05:14.700 we're sharing what we do

01:05:16.120 and we're really grateful

01:05:17.440 so thank you so much

01:05:18.500 leave us a nice review on iTunes

01:05:19.780 and we'll see you next week

01:05:20.880 bye bye

01:05:30.400 We'll be right back.

TRIGGERnometry - July 15, 2019

Robin Aitken on BBC Bias, Diversity and Social Liberalism

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