This is the video of a
Battle of Ideas debate from last year featuring Rob Lyons (Spiked), Sarah Jarvis (GP), Christine Thompson (SAB Miller), some bloke from a sock puppet charity, and my good self. Eagle-eyed viewers may also spot Carl V. Phillips and Mark Littlewood in the audience.
I remember Jarvis's smugness at the time, an object lesson in clever avoidance of PH flaws leading to re-iteration of the same nagging. Count the inaccuracies and misrepresentations as she went through them in her initial speech. Right there is the problem.
ReplyDeleteThe sock puppet was Michael Nelson, who Tom Paine described as "the all-round worst person at the Battle of Ideas".
I wrote something about him and his ethos too last year.
I enjoyed the way they abruptly backedaled on the financial burden issue, as it suddently stopped being the issue as if they hadn't just used the argument ad nauseam the minute before.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this debat is depressing. It seems everybody's busy making life a bit longer, whatever the cost. How did we became such pussies? Civilzation wasn't built on healthy or "balanced" lifestyles.
What a boring era.