Moral Maze

NCF director Peter Whittle was a guest yesterday evening on the Moral Maze on BBC Radio 4.

Michael Buerk chaired a debate on the issues surrounding banning the burqa.

You can hear the programme here (PW's contribution starts at approx 26:00)

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Radio Days

In the new edition of Standpoint, Nick Cohen writes about Radio 4's love affair with the alumni of the Revolutionary Communist Party:

In the 1990s, the party's leaders decided to give up on socialism and move into the media. And like good Leninists, the rank and file obeyed their superiors' orders and abandoned their previous convictions on demand. The Moral Maze is now its base at the BBC and is on the radio as I write. Claire Fox of the Institute of Ideas, which the party's cadres founded when they decided that Trotsky was wrong after all, is on the panel and one of the witnesses is a contributor to Spiked, the institute's online journal. When I last appeared on the programme, one of the witnesses was Brendan O'Neill, the editor of Spiked, and half the panel — the author Kenan Malik and James Panton, an Oxford academic — were Spiked regulars. I waited for Michael Buerk, the presenter, to tell listeners that a fair proportion of his guests came from this cosy coterie. He never did.

Nor do his colleagues. If you come across a new voice on a Radio 4 talk show, talking with loudmouthed conviction, the odds are that he or she will be from the RCP/Institute of Ideas. Indeed, if you want to become a talking head on Radio 4, the best advice I can give you is to join the RCP crowd...

Read the whole piece here . In the same edition, Peter Whittle is disappointed the new movie Whatever Works, Woody Allen's latest attempt to 'return to form':

Whatever Works: now there's a title that suggests the throwing in of towels. Woody Allen, having done his tour of London and Europe and produced a string of mostly critically mauled duds, has for his latest movie returned to Manhattan, to his own turf and people. That is, to the world of sophisticated liberal intellectual types who find it hard to use two words where 20 will do, who kvetch about love and God and what it all means and whether it's all worth it in the first place. And what has he come up with? A comedy, which, even while it goes through the motions, feels like an exhausted postscript to years of analysis. Can relationships really work? Who is the right person for us? How does the can-opener work? Well now, just relax: whatever gets you through the night....

Read the review here

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NCF Media Spots

NCF director Peter Whittle was a guest on BBC 1's The Big Questions show yesterday, Sunday 27th June.

The issue under discussion was 'Does Islam need better PR?'. You can see the whole show at the link above - the topic was the third and final one to be discussed.

Peter will be previewing the press on Sky News this coming Wednesday 30th June.

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Gays Abandoned by Left's Appeasement

NCF director Peter Whittle in this month's Standpoint

Consider this: an openly gay man works as a teacher in a state school in an area with a large Muslim population — say, Tower Hamlets in London's East End. Most of his pupils are Muslims. Some of the parents of these children decide that they're not keen on having their kids taught by a gay man. There is a stand-off. Should he stay or should he go? The Guardian's leader-writers scratch their heads. Whom should they support in such a "sensitive" situation?

The scenario is my invention. It is, as far as I know, still hypothetical, but it has the ring of feasibility. It throws into sharp relief the dilemma which has petrified the Left and its fellow-travellers within the social, educational and cultural establishment. When two parts of your worldview collide, when your traditional support for gay rights conflicts with your staunch and uncritical support of ethnic minority cultures, what do you do? Relativism has tied your hands. You conjure the possible intellectual somersaults you could perform to justify your reasoning. And then you stay silent.

The growth of Islam in Europe has consequences for gay men. But you wouldn't know it from a cursory perusal of the issues which preoccupy at any one time what is known as the "gay community". Civil partnerships, gay adoption or problems with Christian bed-and-breakfast owners and the allegedly latent homophobia of the Conservatives are all up there on the list. But, with a few honorable exceptions, such as the consistently principled activist Peter Tatchell, few voices are raised about the possible future problems for gay men in a rapidly changing demographic landscape.

Read the whole article

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