Tonight on Culture Clash

Hello and welcome to Culture Clash.

The only shock delivered by the Turner Prize this year was that it was won by a painter. Tooma Abts, a 34-year-old German artist of contemporary abstract paintings won against competition from sculptural installations consisting of displays of found objects, a ‘live’ exhibit of a TV production office complete with live workers, a computer designed billboard and a film installation of former participants in reality TV.
When the winner was announced last week, art critics commented that the competition had inspired only indifference, and had failed to get people talking. Well we’re going to fill that gap today and ask whether this annual artistic bunfest means anything to anybody outside the art world.

It was 1993 when Channel 4 launched its so-called Alternative Christmas message, and since then Sharon Osbourne, Jesse Jackson and Ali G are among those you’ve gone head to head with Her Majesty. Often its been played simply for laughs, but this year the channel has chosen Khadija Ravat, a Muslim woman in a niqab, that’s a full veil, to deliver her perspective on the events of the past year. Ravat, a part time primary school teacher in Leicester, was born in Zimbabwe, is a convert to Islam and says that her 6 minute broadcast would celebrate British values and the multi-cultural society. We’ll be asking whether this is a timely celebration of our vibrant diversity, or whether it’s a simply a stunt too far.

My guest today are Michael Attwell, producer and former chairman of BAFTA, Dawn Steeves of The New Criterion Magazine, James Delingpole, TV critic of the Spectator, and journalist Franck Guillory.

In the papers...

A Children's Christmas tale starring Pete (Doherty) and Kate (Moss), reveals Adam Sherwin in today's Times.

Pete plays guitar, eats special sweets and falls over a lot. Pete met a famous girl called Kate and the pair went ballistic on Class A drugs.
The cautionary tale of Pete Doherty has been turned into an
illustrated children’s book that is becoming a Christmas bestseller.
A Boy Called Pete details the rise to fame of the notorious rock singer who “sings
songs and wears hats”. But his predilection for “mind-bending drugs” means that
Pete and his friend Kate are “always getting into trouble”.
The book claims to be a moral story and warns children that “Class A drugs are not very good for you. They make you smelly and a bit untidy-looking.” Pete finds that he is no longer famous for singing songs and is made to stay in “a very big house
with high walls” because “London has lots of rules and lots of authority”

Is it just me or is there something really wrong in offering this adorable couple as role-models for children? If a society gets the role-models it deserves, it is even more worrying.

(from The Times)

Cartoon of the Year: The Independent's Dave Brown's Tale of Two Leaders

The Political Cartoon Society awarded him the honour for his
cartoon "Venus Substitute" at a ceremony hosted by The Economist in central London.
The Independent on Sunday's Peter Schrank was named runner-up in the same category at the awards.

(from The Independent)

Janet Street-Porter in The Independent: 'Ignore these killjoys - and happy Christmas '

Celebrating Christmas in a traditional manner seems increasingly unfashionable, as a wave of political correctness has resulted in an increasing number of offices all over the country banning decorations in case non-Christian staff members are offended.
I can cope with my festive feast of goose being under attack from turkey-lover Nigella Lawson, but it's time for ordinary citizens to demand the right to enjoy Christmas in the way we always have, with carols on the radio, paper chains in the living room, drunken office parties, twinkling fairy lights and a marathon of television watching. Gordon Brown is always banging on about "Britishness", whatever that might be, and there's no other time of year which so perfectly sums up what's unique about this country.

(from The Independent)

Readers from The Guardian's Art & Architecture blog have selected the 50 masterpieces they wouldn't miss for the world. It's here. What do you think of it?

Sunday Times... Good reads

Hallelujah, They are Standing for Jesus
by Minette Marrin

'Reports of the death of Christianity have been much exaggerated', says Minette. 'The example of Islam in this country, for better and for worse, has powerfully concentrated Christian minds. Confronted with Muslim convictions, Christians — and particularly Anglicans — find themselves and their own faith renewed. There is nothing like a strong consciousness of a different identity for clarifying one’s own. Years of milksop tolerance and ecumenical dither have given way, here and there, to a new conviction. The church strikes back!'
She sees a few signs of a revival, in the vitality of Christian Unions in our universities and in the reaction to John Sentamu's response to Prince Charles's wish for a multi-faith coronation. See Sentamu gets it
Let's hope that this is not just wishful thinking.

Click here

And an extract of Ian Buruma's riveting book, Murder in Amsterdam

Sentamu gets it...

Dr John Sentamu, the Ugandan-born Archbishop of York, has shown us once more that his understanding of the tyranny of orthodoxies which we live under is bang on the money. In an interview published today he strongly criticises the BBC for its bias against Christianity, argues that minorities could not expect society to be reconfigured around them, and laments the fact that celebration of British culture is discouraged.

‘Now this country disbelieves itself in an amazing way,’ he says. ‘It almost dislikes its own culture. It doesn’t realise that the arts, music, buildings have grown out of a strong Christian tradition. John Betjeman would be shocked that the nation is not interested in helping preserve these things.’

The urban liberal elites were firmly to blame. ‘They see themselves as holding the flag for Britain and that Britain is definitely secular and atheist. I want them to have their say, but not lord it over the rest of us.’

As for the BBC, he says: ‘We (the Church of England) get more knocks. They can do to us what they dare not do to the Muslims. We are fair game because they can get away with it. We don’t go down there and say, ‘We are going to bomb your place.’ It is not within our nature.’

It’s gratifying that its Dr Sentamu is saying these things, for one simple reason: as a black man, he will be listened to with at least some degree of attentiveness by that liberal elite he so succinctly condemns. If he were white, he would be dismissed out of hand as a dangerous reactionary who should be silenced.

This week on Culture Clash

Culture Clash, 18 Doughty Street's weekly review of the arts and culture scene, has moved to Tuesday nights. This week Peter Whittle's guests - James Delingpole, TV critic of the Spectator, writer Nick Seddon of Civitas, Susan Shaw of the South Bank Show and David Taylor of the New Culture Forum, discuss Borat, the state of The Archers and whether or not TV talent shows are one of the few bastions of good and healthy competition.

For more NCF links on talent shows

Sir Michael and the Dragon

With his latest film, The Prestige, about to be released, Oscar-winning actor and all-round icon Michael Caine has said some interesting things about being English in Saturday's Times magazine. Here's an extract from the interview, published under the title 'England expects':

“I am very, very patriotic. Don’t get me started,” he warns. He frets that his beloved England is being overlooked as the other home nations enjoy devolution. His friend Sir Sean Connery has become a cheerleader for Scottish nationalism and Sir Michael is beginning to think he’s right. “I’m a very English man. And that doesn’t mean to say I don’t like foreigners and I hate all immigrants. I’m married to an immigrant. But I am not happy at the moment. Everybody seems to be represented but the English.

“There’s a possibility that a Scotsman is going to rule over me. A Scotsman who comes from a constituency where my member of parliament, who I elected, has no say whatsoever. And there is an answer, given to me by my friend Sean: give Scotland its independence. Gordon Brown can be the prime minister of Scotland.”

“And I’m worried about the fact that they (the Scots, of course) cheer for the other side in the football and I think to myself, ‘Have they really got my interests at heart?’”

How truly refreshing it is to hear such a big name championing a cause which is obviously genuinely close to his heart, and which hasn't been carefully picked from the basket of right-on issues which celebrities usually go to when they need to perk up their cred.

Full interview in The Times

FG

Time to Read

A very sobering, if not depressing, new publication is George Walden’s Time To Emigrate? Written as a series of letters between a father and a son who is considering leaving Britain for good, it has a truth on every page – the kind of truth which, although often purely based on the anecdotal, still has one nodding one’s head in recognition and agreement.

Walden looks at the future of a country in which mass immigration has permanently altered the landscape, crime is a way of life, civil order is disintegrating and where the population largely has its head in the sand over the magnitude of the threat to its very security. The book however is not shrill or tub-thumping, but is written with humanity and mostly with an air of resignation and sadness.

The cover of the book asks the question Why is nobody talking about what is happening in our country? This must have been written in the full knowledge that millions are, yet have effectively been silenced or disenfranchised. Certainly fear of a creeping anarchy is just beneath the surface – and increasingly not just in the Mail-reading suburbs, but also around the self-styled cosmopolitan dinner tables of North London.

I have however direct experience of what is brought to bear on anybody who is perceived as questioning the official line, one which, certainly in London, is relentlessly pushed to stifle dissent. At one point in his book Walden mentions approvingly an article I wrote in the Sunday Times last year, about the negative changes wrought by immigration and the doctrine of multiculturalism that I’d witnessed in the part of South East London where I grew up. I happened to be standing in the local council elections a few months later, and Labour devoted much time and energy to a vicious personal attack, based on what I’d written, which amounted to libel. Sure enough, they were forced to retract and apologise within a week. But so sure were they that their inference of poisonous racism would close down the debate, they were genuinely taken aback when we didn’t simply slink off to lick our wounds.

The fact that Walden’s book is not considered ‘explosive’ is, however, a sign that the debate has changed and the terms of reference have moved on, in a remarkably short space of time. Even ten years ago, Time to Emigrate? would have been put beyond the pale. But it is still a book which should be read by the increasing numbers who sense that the politically correct platitudes are masking an increasingly disturbing situation.

by Peter Whittle

http://www.gibsonsquare.com
Order Time to Emigrate on Amazon

Seasons of mist, mellow fruitfulness and melancholy…

This week sees the first English Music Festival, which is being held over four days in Oxfordshire. The creation of enthusiast Em Marshall, it promises to be a wonderful and much-needed event. But, as Rod Liddle writes in today’s Spectator, the problems encountered by Ms Marshall in getting funding from companies seem to have been horrendous; overall, it would appear that with their nailed-on PC sensibilities, corporations have been nervous of the festival appearing too elitist and/or reactionary.

Of course if it shows signs of becoming popular, there’s no doubt that these companies will eventually jump on the bandwagon. In the meantime, Ms Marshall should be congratulated for working so hard to achieve something obviously born of a labour of love.

In his article Liddle is however mistaken about one thing when he talks of English classical music’s reputation as being fogeyish, musty and distinctly Daily Telegraph. In fact it has enjoyed an enormous revival in recent years, and names such as Elgar and Vaughn Williams regularly feature on Classic FM’s lists of most popular composers. Classic FM is listened to by some six million people, many of whom are ordinary working people who wouldn’t necessarily know a pot of gentleman’s relish from a tin of shoe polish, but who are instinctively drawn by a kind of tribal memory to the qualities in this music.

by Peter Whittle

http://Englishmusicfestival.org.uk

http://www.spectator.co.uk