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PRESENTER: Jonathan Dimbleby
PANELLISTS: Digby Jones
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
John Kampfner
Claire Fox
FROM: The Barnfield Theatre, Exeter
DIMBLEBY
Welcome to Exeter for the first programme in our new run. We're in the centre of this fine cathedral city at the Barnfield Theatre, which has had a variety of functions since it was opened in 1890. It became later a telephone exchange, then it was used for civil defence but for the last 33 years it's been used as a community theatre for a wide range of professional and amateur productions. Last week indeed it was Sooty and His Friends, now it's me and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who began his culinary career as a sous chef at the River Café in London. Familiar now as a writer, programme maker, commentator and critic, he's a campaigner for organic food and farming and the star of the television programme River Cottage, which is also the home to which he moved after leaving London for what he described as "the good life" and he's never regretted it.
Sir Digby Jones served in the Royal Navy before making his name as a corporate lawyer. In 2000 he became Director General of the CBI on a five year non-renewable contract. But his members kicked up rough at the prospect of his departure this year, so they simply changed the rules and his contract was extended, so he's now there at least until the end of next year.
Claire Fox used to publish a magazine called LM, which emerged from the chrysalis of Living Marxism. Now she's the Director of the Institute of Ideas, which is an eclectic think tank, which must suit her, as she suits the Moral Maze, to which she's a regular contributor.
John Kampfner worked as a foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph before his appointment as chief political correspondent at the Financial Times. After that he became political commentator for the Today programme, then came three years as political editor of the New Statesman, from which role he was levitated to the editor's chair just over three months ago. And he's the fourth member of our panel. [CLAPPING]
Our first question please.
MOUNTJOY
Sue Mountjoy. Will Hurrican Katrina prove to be a defining moment in the history of the USA?
DIMBLEBY Sir Digby Jones.
JONES Most certainly yes and it's going to be a defining moment in the history of the presidency of George W. Bush for sure. I find it absolutely amazing that the most powerful and the richest country on Earth can take five days to even go and drop a helicopter full of food for its own people. [CLAPPING] If - and I've just flown in this morning from New Delhi, I've been in Beijing and Delhi all week, and over there America's image through this - I have to tell you it is just amazingly embarrassing. And those pictures we all saw - we're used to seeing pictures like that about developing world countries with starvation and disease ravaging everywhere, instead of which this is the most powerful nation on Earth and it frankly is not where America should be. And it's harmed her image, it harms President Bush's ability to get things done in America. It's very difficult now, as a president, to force things through when your political street cred is so low. That affects Europe, it affects Britain, it affects China because how can you ask her to - America to get these things done when he's got to fight political battles at home when he's lost a lot of his street cred? And I do - we've just heard on the news haven't we the boss of the Homeland Security Department saying that they're recalling Michael Hahn - oh he's done "everything he could do" - I don't agree with that.
DIMBLEBY He was the coordinator - is the ...
JONES I don't agree with that at all. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY Claire Fox.
FOX Well it shouldn't be a defining moment in America and I think we do have to be cautious at least of getting over excited about this, we've just actually heard on the news that the body count has been much overstated and I think that there's a slight problem with the way we are viewing the hurricane in the present context, it's almost become a kind of vehicle for every free floating fear around. So some people are using it to panic about global warming, some people say oh this has all happened because of what's happened in Iraq - it's become a very confident mechanism for expressing anti-Americanism and anti-Bush sentiments, which we know are more broadly expressed. And so I think we have to be cautious that actually this is a natural disaster, we should be less quick to blame, less quick to get hysterical and possibly encourage America, as an important nation, but as part of the Western world, to actually dust itself off and get back on its feet again and to actually solve this problem, rather than panicking in relation to it.
DIMBLEBY John Kampfner.
KAMPFNER I profoundly disagree with you Claire. Out of this horror I hope some good will emerge. I hope there will be a defining moment, I'm not convinced it will be. And if you look at it - I mean what does this tell us about the state of modern America? Leave aside issues of morality, leave aside issues of emotion, just look at the pure economics. You have a president who has gone about dismantling the public sector, who has gone around - gone about dismantling the public space [CLAPPING] and as a result you can agree with the ideology, you can disagree with the ideology but it makes for terrible economics because of the tens of millions that they saved in not shoring up the levies in New Orleans, in not doing the other work, in not getting decent infrastructure not just in New Orleans and that part of the American Gulf but across the United States they will end up by spending billions to rectify their short term errors. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL Well we've seen a lot of shocking images and heard some shocking revelations in the past week and more of things like the relief convoys being held up for a matter of a day or more because of apparently the wrong paperwork. Police cars passing the sick and dying on the bridges. And it's possible to lay the blame for this kind of thing at the foot of George Bush and it's equally possible for him to wriggle out of it and on the news again we've heard that they have a scapegoat - Michael Hahn - he may well have done a poor job, he was defended by those who removed him, but he's certainly taken the brunt that some perhaps think Bush should have had to take. But what I find extraordinary is a man who's been promoted by - well by himself as the most powerful man in the world seemed able to do so little. And even if there were a lot of problems associated with bad bureaucracy and the wrong people in the wrong job, you'd have thought if there was one person who could cut through all that and make something happen quickly it was Bush and it didn't happen and I think a lot of Americans, particularly those who suffered in New Orleans, must be asking why that was the case. And I think the answer that many of them have found is that perhaps he didn't care enough. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY Sir Digby.
JONES
One thing I hope it will be a defining moment for is this - I hope Americans all over America have finally understood that if you can go down your high street, your main street, and buy a gun as easily as you can buy a pound of sugar don't be surprised when they use them. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY Claire Fox.
FOX In a way that's the way this issue has become, you know, that's the law and order point now, we're going to have as many points as you want thrown on this issue. Everything's become a defining moment - 9/11, 7/7 - everything changes the world, I think it tells us more about ourselves and our insecurity than it does about the issues. We should remember that for all panic about rapes and shootings and murders nobody has actually come forward who's said that they've been raped, there's been no witnesses, this is kind of ripe for scaremongering and frightening us and I think we just should be careful. This is turning into a moral story, the moral apparently is the arrogance of man building on a flood plain or the stupid Americans voting for Bush or whatever the story is. I just think that when New Orleans people built a city on a swamp and survived that we should just encourage them to build a bigger better city on a swamp this time instead of condemning them and using them for our own ends.
DIMBLEBY John Kampfner you were shaking your head.
KAMPFNER There's nothing about - there's nothing to do with anti-Americanism, look at the majority of victims - almost exclusively the victims in New Orleans and surrounding areas have been victims of 10, 20 years of voodoo economics in America, it's been predominantly poor black people who had no way of getting out of New Orleans [CLAPPING]. If ever you just want to look at pictures, sure, I mean I'm a journalist, I know what journalists can do, there may well be some exaggeration in figures, there may well be all manner of reporting that's not entirely absolutely on the spot but death figures you never know - you didn't know that for 9/11, you didn't know that for the atrocious bombings in London in 7/7 - but you only need to look at the pictures and if that isn't a morality tale about how not to run a country I don't know what is.
DIMBLEBY Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, quick thought.
FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL I think if there is something positive to take, we can obviously have a lot of compassion for the Americans but I think it's been something of a revelation just to see how much vulnerability, how much poverty there is in the country because they've done a very good job of putting a lid on that and masking that image to the whole of the rest of the world. And it's not a bad thing that we now know that that's the case.
DIMBLEBY We will leave that ...very quickly.
JONES One fact, as in the New York Times, a very respectable newspaper, infant mortality rates in Washington DC are twice as high as they are in Beijing. Are we talking about a country that has its priorities right?
DIMBLEBY We'll leave that [CLAPPING] there. First reminder of this season of the Any Answers number after the Saturday edition of Any Questions, it's 08700 100 444 and the e-mail address is any.answers@bbc.co.uk. We'll go to our next please.
HENDERSON
Alan Henderson. Is the current hysteria in the media about the fifth Test disproportionate to the value of cricket to society?
DIMBLEBY John Kampfner, I have reason to know that you attended - have attended part of this Test.
KAMPFNER I had the great fortune of attending much of today's play at the Oval and left only short before play was suspended. A wonderful occasion. I'm not one of those who believe that cricket is going to be just like everybody predicted that rugby was going to be after England won the World Cup fantastically, it was going to usurp everything else and was going to become the sport that everyone's playing. I think it's been a wonderful summer, it's been a wonderful spectacle, by and large the sportsmanship has been very good. I think it's been a great advertisement, unlike our so-called footballers and their venture on Wednesday, it's been a wonderful advertisement for sport at its best but I don't think it's going to go any further than that.
DIMBLEBY Hugh.
FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL I think it's been absolutely terrific. I've enjoyed - it's been an absolute boon for the summer. I think I've got a lot of courgettes that have turned into marrows now as a result of the Test. But I mean Australia are our great friends and our great enemies and they strut their stuff on the cricket field in a very, very impressive way, they've been socking it to us for years, it feels like we might be on the point of socking it back to them and wouldn't that be a great thing, and let's enjoy it if it happens, which I hope it will. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY Does the Institute of Ideas have views about the value of cricket to society?
FOX Well certainly both of my office do. I have to say that if I'd have had to pass Norman Tebbett's cricket test I'd have been deported by now because I neither know nor care. However, I've always been a great admirer - I've always been a great admirer ...
DIMBLEBY Can I just ask our audience - I'm just going to interrupt you - who thinks it's outrageous that Claire Fox neither knows nor cares about the cricket? Hands up. Who forgives her entirely? Claire, you've gained a small victory. Would you like to carry on?
FOX What I was going to say was I actually - a lot of my friends and a lot of my peers and I have a lot of admiration for people who are passionate about sport, who are genuinely passionate about sport, but the question was actually implying something else and there's been a lot of hype about this. Everybody I know who's got very excited about this cricket, apart from my office who are genuine fans of course, actually when I ask what an LBW is or ask them to explain the game they don't know. And you realise that they don't actually have a clue about cricket and in fact that this kind of - something weird is going on, which is a sort of an attempt at creating what some people have described as an SNE - a shared national experience - something we can all get very excited about, something we can all get very moved and passionate about even though we don't know what it is. And it's quite interesting because in the past, to put this into a social context, the things that you used to have kind of big parades around or that people used to get very concerned, things about national identity or to do with war or to do with - people would kind of rally round the flag or there would be patriotism of all the things, we all know that those political issues have become much more difficult and divisive these days. I can't help feeling that the powers that be rather like having the rather softer way of uniting us around something which we can all agree on - the cricket - but which actually has very little substance to it. Is it good for cricket? Listen if England win and it gets a few more people who want to play cricket that's great. My attitude would be that we have to bring competitive sports back to schools, you have to make sure that the grounds are kept well if you're going to get good cricket. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY You are looking profoundly perplexed by what you've heard Sir Digby Jones.
JONES Do you know if the England cricket team was playing badly it would the butt of a load of jokes tonight and I'm very proud actually to have a country where the team is beating what has been recognised as the best in the world for a long time, it makes me proud to be English and British and do I think that's much better than getting jingoistic about war - of course I do. And if that's where Britain is I'm very proud of it frankly. Now - to put it into the social context that the questioner actually tried to do - I think if this summer suddenly cricket has appealed to a 15, 16 year old lad who thought that life ended every summer because there was no football and if that means that picking up a cricket bat is better than sniffing white powder you bet I think it's a good idea. If at the same time it's just told the 11 failures on Wednesday night in Belfast that you've got rugby players not paid that much and they win the World Cup for you, you've got cricketers not paid that much and they come very close and hopefully will win the Ashes and you've got people on £100,000 every week who all they can say is the F word to referees and fail your nation - I know what I'd rather be. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY What's the answer that you have to your own question Alan Henderson?
HENDERSON Well I guess I support the majority of the panel in seeing something to rally around as being a good thing. But as a Scotsman I guess you wouldn't be surprised to know that I think it's probably disproportionate.
JONES We don't intrude on private grief do we.
DIMBLEBY Do you have hopes that it might do wonders for the prospects for cricket in Devon, which is not overwhelmingly influential in the success that the English team has had over the last years?
HENDERSON I'm sure it will but it will do nothing for the Scottish cricket team.
FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL I think it'll be doing a great deal for cider consumption in Dorset and Devon.
DIMBLEBY At which we'll go to our next question.
BURNSIDE
Derek Burnside. Please would each member of the panel attempt to explain the position of silly mid off.
DIMBLEBY Do you ask that because you genuinely don't know?
BURNSIDE
I have absolutely no idea.
DIMBLEBY Right, I'm going to give you each 10 seconds, because that's the only available time you've got. John Kampfner you were there - silly mid off 10 from now.
KAMPFNER It's the fielder who stands about halfway along the wicket to the right of the batsman in a catching position with a silly name.
DIMBLEBY You did that in 10. How would you do it Claire Fox?
FOX You know me, no flannel, I'm not even going to try.
DIMBLEBY Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL It's the most dangerous catching position on the pitch. You're going to get one in the face if you're not careful, about sums it up.
DIMBLEBY Thank you. And Sir Digby.
JONES Off is to the right hand side of the batsman, mid means it's in the middle of the wicket and the silly position is because you're so close up ready to catch that you really are going to stop it in the kisser.
DIMBLEBY There, now everyone knows. Just in case you want to give your own elaboration of that, the Any Answers number is 08700 100 444 and I'll give you the e-mail address once again, as it's the first programme, any.answers@bbc.co.uk on this or any other issue that we are discussing. We'll go to our next question.
KEEN
Bill Keen. Should China's growing economic strength be viewed as a threat or an opportunity?
DIMBLEBY Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL Gosh, a bit tough coming to me on that one first isn't it?
DIMBLEBY Would you like to pause and come back to you?
FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL No, no I'll give it my best shot. I'll give it my best shot. Well we have a pile of bras and other garments backing up in Beijing because of very protectionist policies and I think protectionist trade policies on the whole are not a good thing. And I think - I don't know a great deal about the textile industry, I know a little bit about the food industry, but in terms of both local, national and international food trade protectionist policies are doing a great deal of damage. So ...
DIMBLEBY Aren't you organic farmers rather protectionist?
FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL Well we - we might be coming on to that a little bit later ...
DIMBLEBY We may not.
FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL We're certainly veering away from the subject of China's growing economic growth being a threat. We are - I think that the organic movement can sink or swim on its merits financially frankly and I think sooner or later it's going to have to. So if we could - I mean that's what I feel about that. I don't think there's a great deal to be frightened of about China, you can't - whenever you're putting trade barriers in place, even in internal markets, you're helping some people and hindering others. So the best thing is to let the people get on with what they're good at in their part of the world and what they can compete at best. And if we can't make cheap bras anymore we should do something else, like make wonderful organic food.
DIMBLEBY Sir Digby Jones.
JONES Between 2000 and 2004 the United Kingdom got richer by £16 billion by sending jobs to India and China. And the reason is because we don't have high unemployment and we have a skills shortage. So you've got somebody doing a job which doesn't involve much skill, send it off, have the courage then, as an employer, public or private sector, to skill your person and get them doing something that is value added, quality, innovative and branded - goods or services. And then that person will make more money. So they'll stimulate your economy, they'll spend it in the high street, they'll save it, they'll do things with it. The business makes more money and so it pays more corporation tax, so you get more schools and hospitals and if it's a listed company your share price goes up which means all our pensions get better. Oh and by the way one other thing - in China a family just got richer. And when that family gets richer, just like you and me, they want to show off a bit, so they want to go and buy a mobile phone - a British phone company - they want to bank with a bank that won't nick their money for which they'll pay a bit more money - a British bank. They actually, at the same time, probably want to send their kids to an English university. Globalisation, which can be either a threat or an opportunity, depends at home on having low unemployment so you have the facility to get people into more value added work, it depends on skilling your people everyday more and upskilling them, it also means you've got to stop the hypocrisy that you find in Southern Europe and in America that put up - as you said - put up these protectionist barriers because it's going to happen. There are 1.2 billion Chinese, everything you and I have heard about China and everything that goes on about are they a threat or an opportunity is involving roughly about 250 million of them, they've got another billion to go. And what we have to do, if you look at the textile issue, is that Italy, Greece, Spain and France were told nine years ago that you're going to be able in 2005 to buy a cheap Chinese T-shirt on the high street without a tariff protection, without some monetary penalty. So if you're Ireland, or Holland, if you're Britain or Germany you'll restructure your business, you don't do the commodity price only stuff. There's a company just down the road here in Tiverton and they have been around for 150 years and they nine years ago about 60% of what they made were trousers and bras and all the rest, they don't do any of it anymore, what they do is very, very clever textiles for industry that go into aircraft and cars for which they charge a premium and they sell them around the world. Now if you're Italy or France you just said well I'm not going to do anything, I'm going to rely on a good old quality old fashioned Brussels fudge and when the time comes I'm just going to say - oh I didn't do anything, can you please block it. And that's precisely what happened. And China has been amazingly politically generous to say no I do a deal now to help you. But come 2008 this is going to happen again and we've got to stop the hypocrisy of saying that we will treat with China on our terms. She is going to be and is already in many ways enormously economically powerful, the one country on earth that gets it is a free trading nation, is prepared to invest and talk to them on equal terms and not be patronising and at the same time don't protect our market is the United Kingdom. This is the - globalisation was made for Britain and this is the chance to make the most of an inevitable cause anyway.
DIMBLEBY I want [CLAPPING] I'm going to come back to you after the others for the implications of what you just said, but just in passing you seem to be implying that so far from boxing the EU out of a corner you think that Peter Mandelson, the trade commissioner, has boxed Europe into a corner - which is it?
JONES Well I think he's brought them time. He's definitely brought the Southern European countries time and for that well done Peter. But where there's a problem is are they going to use that time wisely to restructure their industries, in which case I think Peter Mandelson did a good job, if on the other hand they just sit there and just say well we've got some more time and we'll do it again next time, then he should have faced the inevitably now and not in two years time.
DIMBLEBY Claire Fox.
FOX Well I'm actually very excited by what's happening in China for a variety of reasons. I don't really see it in terms of a threat or opportunity - I'm not - I think that's rather too narrow and managerial. But I do think it's a great step forward for humanity that so many people now are in a position where their creative potential can be freed and they can be freed from economic drudgery and poverty and be forced onto the land. And we know the importance of the industrial revolution for this country, well imagine what kind of impact it could make there. I think it's quite interesting to contrast that in some ways to the attitude that we have to somewhere like Africa, by the way, because I think it's quite important that we recognise that here economic growth and a commitment to development is actually going to free people, rather than what I consider to be a much narrower view in relation to Africa where it's aid on the one hand and where actually there's a very negative atmosphere in relation to development and everybody sees it as a bad thing and everybody's trying to stop economic growth. And that really is kind of just the last point I'd make which is actually I'm glad to hear the optimism from this panel because any of the debates and discussions I go to these days, whenever China is raised as an issue it's always where people say oh what are we going to do about China, it's a disaster, it's a threat. And it's often kind of a broader cultural point because will say things like god what are we going to do if everybody in China wants to live like us and they want to have cars, think of all those fumes? And it's just such a mean spirited atmosphere - why shouldn't people live like us, why shouldn't people have as much as us, why should we be frightened all the time and trying to sort of suggest that if the Chinese grow and have economic development they're going to lead to the end of the world? So I'm excited about what's happening in China and I think we should be much more robust about seeing the step forward it is for humanity.
DIMBLEBY John Kampfner.
KAMPFNER As a rough gestimate I reckon probably about 20 years time China will either be the world's only superpower or be one of the world's two superpowers, it's a fact of life, it's a threat, it's an opportunity, it's both, it's neither, it is simply a fact. The United States is already hugely dependent on China, which holds enormous amounts of US dollar reserves, if China wanted to do anything with America's foreign currency balance it could do it overnight, it could send America into tailspin. So China is there, it's already there. I agree with Digby and predominant - with most of what he says about unleashing - allowing China to develop and there is nothing we can really do in terms of protectionism that isn't anything but short term in order to prevent that and we should embrace that. But I do throw in this one caveat and I am disappointed - I'll put it no stronger than that - when Tony Blair was in Beijing he said in his speech before the Chinese political top brass, he was talking not about the hope of developing democracy in China, he confined himself to talking about its development. The whole question now about looking at human rights, this whole question of an ethical foreign policy, we talk about spreading human rights, about free elections across the Middle East, when it comes to a powerful country, like China, we don't say it - that to me is double standards. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY Sir Digby, the question I wanted to come back to is this - do you think this process by which for instance a Tiverton company goes up the value added scale can go on indefinitely, what happens when the Chinese do what the Tiverton company is doing and so on across the whole board - is there not a point at which people would anxiously say if you think the jobs are always going to be there by being in a certain market where actually the jobs aren't there because they're all going to be done more cheaply by China or India and even later conceivably Africa?
JONES Yeah I mean it's not - it is not just cheap, in fact every time you move up that value added chain you tend to design labour out of the equation - you tend to do things with fewer people. So it's about the other things that China or India bring to the party. We have a society now where you don't play conkers in the playroom, you can't do backstroke in swimming pools in case you bang into somebody. We have sports days where there are no winners. We have exams you can't fail. We have kids who turn up and don't even know how to get their hands out of their pockets to come to work in morning. And it's about a positive attitude to a risk taking society. I think one thing John was absolutely spot on about is that we don't cut enough India enough slack because she is a democracy - most populous democracy on earth. It's difficult enough to reform a democracy with 60 million people, you try it with a billion. And we forget you know when we think of Bangalore and whatever there are 700 million Indians on the land. And in China of 1.2 billion you've got 200 million of them - just under the population of America - on under a dollar a day, and you've got 600 million of them - that's the population of America and Europe put together - who are on under two dollars a day. Now this is going to go on way past our lifetime because it's going to take - it's going to constantly move up the value added chain, we in turn will do the same and we will carry on going up the value added chain throughout Western Europe and then, as you rightly say Jonathan, there comes a point at which you have other reasons as to why you can compete and it won't just be price it'll be location, for instance, it'll be near your market, do things travel well. They won't be good at everything - believe me - and there'll be things that the French will be good at, the Germans will be good at, the Americans will be good at and we will be. Now that is how you then compete - you look to your unique selling proposition. But in terms of someone like - actually no it was Hugh's point, he was absolutely spot on here and Claire, in terms of the hypocrisy in the Elysee Palace in Paris or in the White House in America who say - I care for the world's poor, I care of engaging China - and then you smack up the protectionism to please your home domestic market. It means African will never get herself out of the trouble, it means China will never get very quickly into those poor people. And the reason is because Chirac and Bush will sit there and say I care, I care but won't take on the vested interest in their own homeland. And the one thing I tell you Britain is good at, England isn't just good at cricket, it's very, very good at engaging with these countries with the courage for free trade. Last year ...
DIMBLEBY Would you include Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland...
JONES Oh yes and Northern Ireland and I'd certainly include Northern Ireland after ...
DIMBLEBY Just because we do have listeners there who otherwise wish to comment.
JONES I'd also include Northern Ireland actually on the basis they're better than us at football. And they - but I'll just give you one example of the Japanese. Do you remember 1983 Nissan were coming in, Honda were coming in, Toyota were coming in. Oh no, we said, this is going to take all our jobs and the Japanese are going to run our motor - oh no. I remember all that, I come from Birmingham, I can tell you it was a big issue. We, last year, made more cars in the United Kingdom in one year than we've ever made and we have more different car companies doing it in Britain now than in any other country on earth and this is a country that 20 - just 20 - 20 years ago were told we were never going to make things anymore because the Japanese are coming to do it. Globalisation works for a country that has the courage to open its markets. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY Thank you. Very briefly Claire Fox, then John Kampfner.
FOX I just wanted to warn John against encouraging Tony Blair to start negotiating human rights and democracy with the Chinese. I actually think that we should let the Chinese fight for their own freedoms because once Western intervention does it we'll end up with another Iraq. So let the Chinese get on with it themselves.
KAMPFNER I think you know Claire my views on Iraq and I'm certainly not encouraging Tony Blair - five wars in six years is quite enough thank you very much - and that's not including China. [CLAPPING] My point was a slightly different one. Just to follow on from what Digby said about this idea that we've always regarded other - and you Claire - regarding with fear other countries that enrich themselves and how we're usually proven wrong. It was the same in the European Union, we were worried when the Greeks and the Spaniards and the Portuguese were freeing themselves from dictatorship and look how they are now - wealthy or increasingly wealthy countries - they're no threat to us and it's a no lose for everybody. The same applies to Eastern Europe now. A lot of hogwash talked about Easter Europe joining the EU, I don't subscribe to that at all, again we have benefited just as they have benefited from it.
DIMBLEBY Thank you. And we'll go to our next question.
PALMA
Ann Palma. When high profile current affairs radio presenters express their personal views or opinions in public does it impact upon their ability to carry out their professional duties?
DIMBLEBY I imagine you refer to the presenter of the Today programme John Humphrys ...
PALMA He was in my mind.
DIMBLEBY I beg your pardon.
PALMA He was in my mind.
DIMBLEBY He was in your mind - who made a speech to a private audience and then the contents of that speech were passed to The Times and it became a brouhaha. Claire Fox.
FOX I'm slightly ambiguous about this, of course I have nothing but contempt for the guys in the PR company that set this up, which is kind of just sneaky and irritatingly New Labour, young Turk, making his point. And I find it very - but I - and I understand, and it's very important, that there's such a thing as journalistic freedom and I listen to the Today programme like everybody else every morning and I want the political elite to be held to account and to be given a hard time and I don't want anyone to be intimidated. But there's something that like makes me nervous, which is that there's something in way that - not just the way John Humphrys in this instance was talking on a cruise ship but which we're all aware of, which I think there is a cynical attitude to politicians that's expressed increasingly by people in the media. It's almost as though people in senior positions in broadcasting really do go along with that kind of popular prejudice of all politicians are liars, in fact they help fuel that popular prejudice. And I just don't think that leads to a very healthy public or political life. I don't think that cynicism and scepticism are the same thing, I want to be sceptical but I just think that sneary cynicism from after all unelected journalistic hacks, I mean they should maybe be a little bit more modest. And so what I would like to see is a much more intelligent analytical scrutinising of the political elite and asking some very difficult questions and not just going along with some of the same old same olds, rather than the kind of nod and a wink to the public which we all know what they're like don't we, and getting a few laughs.
DIMBLEBY Okay.
FOX I just don't think that's very healthy. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY John Kampfner .
KAMPFNER
No ambiguity as far as I'm concerned, good on you John Humphrys, shame on you spineless BBC. At the risk of being rude to my hosts I think John Humphrys is not - okay he might have not said the exact right thing on that boat to PR people - what's he doing on a boat just off Southampton except for getting lots of money talking to PR people, there is something about after dinner speaking. But he isn't a cynic, he asks the tough questions, if we don't ask - our politicians are not given too hard a ride, they are given too easy a ride often by journalists. You only need to look at the run up to war when all this bunkum was thrown in front of journalists who lapped it up, the very same journalists who published this stuff in The Times lapped up the - how can we put it - not entirely truthful versions of events in the road to Iraq. John Humphrys is a national treasure, we need him, we need Jeremy Paxman, we need people to ask our ministers. And to be honest I've talked to several government ministers, people I know and like and respect, and they don't agree with the craven way the BBC caved in on this, they are equally just as dismissive of the New Labour spin, which we thought had actually gone three or four years ago but just once in a while it rears its ugly head. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL
I think I'm kind of with John on this. Both Johns actually - this John and John Humphrys. I do think it was - it did smack of the BBC using him as a pawn in their ongoing ping pong match with the Labour Party. The question was quite specific - does that sort of behaviour affect his ability to do his job? Well I listen to the programme most days, he does his job pretty well, it doesn't seem to be affecting it, long may he continue to do it and as John has said we need people like that to give our politicians a hard time, he keeps them accountable and we need that. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY
And Sir Digby.
JONES
Well as somebody who gets interrogated by Mr Humphrys often when he's making my life uncomfortable I take great comfort from the fact I know he's making everybody's life uncomfortable and he doesn't choose me to be either good or bad with, anymore than anybody else and I trust the guy to give them all a hard time and I'm glad he's around to give everybody a hard time. I have no doubt of the fact that if another party were in power he would be as openly critical about them as he is with this lot. And I really was very sad to see the reaction of the BBC. Interestingly you know they've got to be consistent and when James Naughtie said one day, didn't he, during the election campaign, we ...
DIMBLEBY
I imagine a slip of the tongue.
JONES
As a slip of the tongue when he meant the Labour government and he said we - I didn't read anywhere that Michael Grade carpeted him. And all I would say is as long as I see consistency in critique I trust quality professionals - John Naughtie, John Humphrys, Jeremy Paxman - I trust them. And I get round the world a lot, I've been to 59 different countries in this job, and we do have some of the most honest politicians and civil servants in the world - by the way there are bad ones and good ones like there are bad and good everybody. But one of the reasons why they are quite honest is because you have people like Humphrys constantly bringing them to book. And if you see in other countries the benign pussycats that call themselves interviewers I have to tell you I'm just glad I live in a country where you've got people like John Humphrys around. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY
Let's go to our audience on this, listeners to Radio 4 and doubtless familiar with John Humphrys, do you believe that what he said in this - on this boat impacted on his ability to carry out his professional duties in the way that you would approve of? Who thinks it's damaged his ability to do that, would you put your hands up? Not one hand has risen. Who thinks that the BBC high brass, big people, were right to publicly rap his knuckles or whatever it was, who thinks the BBC was right to do that? Not one hand has gone up. If the Chairman of the BBC, the Director General or John Humphrys would like to address Any Answers the number is 08700 100 444. [CLAPPING] We'll go to our next question please.
MCTIERNON
Susan McTiernon. How does the panel feel about Tom Archer's sausages losing their organic status?
DIMBLEBY There may be one or two people in the world who don't know that Tom Archer's sausages have lost their organic status but they did because as I understand it he went and put his pigs onto non-organic land because he thought he could make more money - that may be wrong, in which case the Archer's producer can come on to Any Questions as well to put me right. But there's only one person to go to on this, at least certainly first, is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL Well I think it's a shame for Tom that he lost his organic status but I think he may have raised a bigger point about what is the value of organic status in food. Incidentally I think it's right that he lost his organic status because he broke the rules, he moved his pigs on to a bit of non-organic land, so they were no longer organic, so his sausages were no longer entitled to be labelled as such. I think the word label is quite important here actually because at the moment in a food market where people don't know where to turn to and don't know who to trust the organic label is one of the very few labels with any meaning at all. Now people describe organic food sometimes as a con or a rip off, some people think it's too expensive but the point is about organic farming is it's actually very straightforward, it just means that fruit and vegetables and livestock are raised without the use of chemicals, the animals are raised through a very high welfare standard, they have freedoms and comforts that intensively farmed animals do not enjoy and that is the product that you are being offered. It's as simple as that. So there's no smoke and mirrors about organic food, there's nothing cunning going on, that's what it is. So the question is how important a part of our food culture ought this kind of food to be? And I think that anything that starts from the position of being pure and natural and unmessed about with and honest about what it is can play a very important part in our food culture. That's not to say that it has to be the only food that we should all eat but I think it's unbelievably important that is there as a baseline of meaningful quality against which other types of produce can be measured. So I am an organic farmer, what a surprise that I've taken that line. But I'm passionate about it, I'm passionate about it and last weekend I was in Bristol at the Organic Food Festival and I was delighted - I had a lovely time in Bristol - I was delighted to see one thing in particular - a lot of new people coming in to sample organic food for the first time. And the other thing we're often accused of is sort of preaching to the converted or having our own little shi shi middle class market while the rest of the world gets on an eats ordinary food. Well I think that's changing, in fact I know from Bristol last weekend that it's changing and I'm delighted that it's changing. And if only other certification systems or food labels were as clear and transparent then the job of shopping for food would be a much happier one. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY Claire Fox.
FOX Well maybe if Tom Archer listened to the Food Standards Authority, he made the point - and has constantly issued statements that there's no evidence to support the claim that organic is either safer or more nutritious than any other food. And I think - I have little sympathy for Tom Archer because he's a fictional figure but in the sense that I do feel that organic food is a bit of a rip off inasmuch as a lot of people will pay extra money - a lot of people will pay extra money for organic food. But actually Hugh you're absolutely right that more and more people are doing it, I don't just think it's a middle class preoccupation, I think lots of people are doing it ...
FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL Good.
FOX ... but the point is, yes, people say that's a really good thing - Hugh's just put his thumb up to me - but why are they doing it? It's because it's become a lifestyle statement and [indistinct words] of I am better than you in some kind of moral way.
FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL Oh come on.
FOX You made the point - no, no, no [AUDIENCE NOISE] I would like to point out that I'm obviously in organic food territory - I - there are people round the nation [CLAPPING] ...
DIMBLEBY Claire - Claire ...
FOX ... there are people round the nation who are cheering as you boo. But anyway listen let me just point out ...
DIMBLEBY Claire - Claire - Claire - because I need to bring in two others - would you mind being very brief, I don't want to cut off your thought of course.
FOX No Hugh just made the point that organic food is pure and natural and not messed about with and that is an ideological statement rather than a culinary one. The point is, is that for me ...
FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL It's a fact of how organic food is producer.
FOX For me - for me messing about with nature is the one great thing that humans have done, otherwise we'd be in the caves. I want to mess about with nature to have a better standard of living.
DIMBLEBY Okay. Sir Digby Jones. Sir Digby Jones.
JONES Well in Birmingham they talk of nothing else of course. I'm a huge believer in choice, I'm an enormous believer in choice and to me anybody from regulators to governments - I always thought we elect governments to hold the ring to protect minorities because majorities tend to sort of look after themselves and minorities are - as long as they're not hurting other people - as far as I'm concerned that's why I elect governments to hold that ring. And if people want to grow produce in a certain way that is - gives them a good quality marketing opportunity and other people, regardless of their class, their creed, their colour or anything else, want to buy it well good on them. And if on the other hand the market says well actually I don't really want this and I'm not prepared to pay for it then you'll find it won't happen and fine by me. So the biggest and most important thing to me is choice and as long as people have that choice, if he wants to get on with it, fine by me.
DIMBLEBY John Kampfner.
KAMPFNER I'm probably about to commit a national crime by saying just as Claire can get away with saying that she doesn't know much about cricket, well I'm afraid I don't listen to the Archers. [AUDIENCE NOISE] I knew I'd get that response. But the issue, assuming the description is correct, is an absolutely vital one - the way we deal with our food industry, this sounds to me like a parable about avarice and much of our food industry is based on avarice. And it's not just the avarice of the producers, the supermarkets, the enormous hideous profits that they make but it is also our own avarice by trying to get our food as cheaply as possible with the honourable exception of people like Hugh without caring of the consequences of how it's made. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY Thank you. That's all I'm afraid for this week. Next week we'll be in Suffolk with amongst others Colonel Tim Collins, renowned from his role in Iraq; the political columnist Anthony Howard and Chris Woodhead, the former chief inspector of schools. Join us then. But from here in the Barnfield Theatre in Exeter goodbye. [CLAPPING]
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