A weekly reflection on a topical issue.
Monica Ali discusses the UK's use of immigration detention centres and, in particular, indefinite detention. She argues that, although detention or deportation are sometimes necessary, the policy of indefinite detention is "callous and dehumanising". She believes - as the only place in Europe that allows indefinite detention - the UK should adopt the recommendations of a recent parliamentary report and introduce a 28 day limit. Producer: Adele Armstrong
"If you're a writer of colour", writes Monica Ali, "you're only supposed to write about what people imagine to be your self". "That self might be labelled as Asian writer, or Bangladeshi writer or BAME writer, but it is never labelled simply 'writer' - that would be the true privilege". Producer: Adele Armstrong
Val McDermid argues that - at a time when public discourse is so polarised - it's vital to keep our public libraries open. "A library card is a powerful weapon to change lives", Val writes. "With it, we learn how to value what we have, to mourn what we have lost and to dream of what we might become". She says that whatever we may hear about the death of libraries, we must ensure their future because they are "one of the few remaining places where a genuine diversity of voices can still be encoun...
David Goodhart argues that recent events show that democracy - far from being in crisis - is actually thriving. And in the aftermath of Teresa May announcing her resignation, David writes, "I think there is a great political prize for a politician or a party, old or new, that can speak across the liberal/small-c conservative value divide". Producer: Adele Armstrong
Val McDermid argues that if homelessness was classified as an illness, we'd be demanding a cure. She takes a walk round her home city to try to imagine what it would look like through the eyes of a homeless person. Producer: Adele Armstrong
Rebecca Stott imagines a conversation with Darwin about our environmental concerns
"While I would love to find a poetic way into this", writes Sarah Dunant, "I think it best just to spit it out. I'm angry. And I have been angry for quite a while now". Sarah says she doesn't see herself as an angry person - but wonders why aggression and outrage seem to have become so much part of our emotional diet. She proposes some solutions - including an National Anger Day - a great moment of catharsis to help us all be a little less....angry! Producer: Adele Armstrong...
"For many Parisians, it's Notre Dame's constancy that's so reassuring" writes Joanna Robertson. "Pass by before dawn, she’s waiting there. Or late at night, amidst the deserted streets, her dark form is holding steady. Notre Dame was inviolable". Joanna Robertson reflects on how the fire is changing that taken-for-granted sight. Producer: Adele Armstrong
"If you have ever tried to scan a bio-metric passport, an e-ticket or just a packet of frozen peas", writes AL Kennedy, "you'll know that using technology can turn, within moments, into a bizarre ritual of presenting, rubbing, re-presenting, murmured prayers and computer generated instructions which lead either to complete defeat or the intervention of human assistance that could have been there all along". She argues that automation must be governed by human needs and strengths. Personal contac...
"There's one thing I can't bear", writes Rebecca Stott, "and that's being talked AT". Having grown up in a separatist fundamentalist Christian sect called the Exclusive Brethren, she says she's probably rather uniquely sensitised to this. She listened to her father and grandfather holding forth for hours - "3000 hours of male monologues before I was six" she reckons! Rebecca reflects on the art of good conversation. Producer: Adele Armstrong
John Gray reflects on where British politics goes from here. "Whether Brexit is a good or bad idea," he writes, "is no longer the central issue that Britain is facing." "Instead, the question is whether our political system can survive the damage a mishandled Brexit has inflicted on it." Producer: Adele Armstrong Correction: The 1975 referendum took place on the 5th June that year on the UK's continued membership of the European Economic Community which it had joined two years earlier....
Sarah Dunant looks at the queasy relationship between art, finance and corruption. Recent protests by the photographer Nan Goldin and others over "dirty money" have hit the headlines. But Sarah argues that without some of this rather dubious funding, the art world would look very different. "What do you want", she asks. "A clean church and white walls? Because there's no doubt that without all of this lamentable corruption we would not have many of the greatest works of art the world has ever se...
Zia Haider Rahman on why Brexit has made him feel closer to Britain. He says the referendum has revealed deeper schisms in British society than the lines between native and immigrant. "The sociological explanation", he argues, "might be that by confronting everyone with the variety and complexity of native British identities, Brexit has created space for other British identities". Producer: Adele Armstrong
AL Kennedy on why - even with apparent chaos all around us - we can’t afford to despair. "Despairing of justice, positive change, even kindness", she writes, "begins to rob our minds of the capacity to produce those things”. Producer: Adele Armstrong
Tom Shakespeare on why we’re in urgent need of a bit of plain speaking. "I don't mean here to exalt the obnoxious, the downright rude", he writes, "but while civility is a virtue, I think we could do with a little more directness". Producer: Adele Armstrong
AL Kennedy questions her love of cookery shows. "That's when I start to feel uneasy, sitting at home staring at entremets and buttercream, three-foot-high cakes made with pints of fresh eggs, because I have this theory...that television tends to memorialise things, just as they fade away. Producer: Adele Armstrong
AL Kennedy reflects on how the British sense of humour is standing up to our present political woes. "Don't get me wrong," she says, "it's nice to make people smile...but possibly Britain is now too funny". She wonders if the rest of the world is still laughing with us. Producer: Adele Armstrong
Will Self asks why our relationship with our bodies - our corporeal self - has become such a distant one. "One thing that becomes screamingly obvious the second we fall ill - and which remains with us day after day, if we're chronically so - is that we are our bodies", he writes. He warns of the dangers of exalting our minds above all else. Producer: Adele Armstrong
"For a long time we forgot about the sea", writes Stella Tillyard. "But it did not forget us. It was always there, like a jilted lover waiting to make a move. And now it is back". She says the seemingly empty and tranquil space of the Mediterranean has been abruptly reanimated, not by nature, but by man. Producer: Adele Armstrong
Val McDermid argues that referendums have had a devastating effect on our political system. "I am by nature an optimist", she writes. "But I'm really struggling here. We've broken our democracy. I don't know how to fix it and I'm afraid nobody else does either". She says the bottom line is that our political system isn't designed for the polarization that referendums inevitably bring. Producer: Adele Armstrong
Linda Colley reflects on an historic week in British politics. She turns to Lawrence Stone's famous book, "The Causes of the English Revolution", to cast light on the present turmoil. And she asks if the bitter fractures over Brexit could eventually turn out to be the modernizing force the UK needs. Producer: Adele Armstrong
As many Christmas presents start making the surreptitious trip to the charity shop, Stella Tillyard argues that many of us appear to be freeing ourselves from the unfulfilling grip of "things". She asks if - as the earth is dying under the weight or our excesses - we're "reaching a wider, bigger moment: a weariness with acquisition itself". Producer: Adele Armstrong
"There is little more infuriating", writes Tom Shakespeare, "than some quotidian website which demands you devise a new 11 letter password, including a capital letter, a lowercase letter, a number and a non-alphanumeric character, just to buy a tee shirt." Tom muses on the near impossible task of remembering an ever-growing number of online passwords. Producer: Adele Armstrong
Howard Jacobson on the joys of city parks. "I am, and always have been, a lover of city parks", he writes. "A park finishes, that's its beauty. It is circumscribed. If you want more you can walk it twice. If you want less you can slip back out into the city". Producer: Adele Armstrong
"Is our taste for righteous self-blown indignation so indurated and inwrought" writes Howard Jacobson, "that we will never again be able to shrug our shoulders, forget who we are and what we believe and embrace people who believe differently?" Howard explores the destructive nature of the Cult of Self. Producer: Adele Armstrong
"I listen to Money Box on Radio 4 as others might to a recording of Indonesian gamelan music", writes Will Self, "thrilling to the intricacies, even as I find them altogether alien". Will ponders why personal finance is such an alien concept for him. But his thoughts move to “those hundreds of thousands out there for whom the words ‘personal finance’ are, quite simply, terrifying”. Producer: Adele Armstrong
"Two things seem incontrovertible about the mounting environmental catastrophe", writes Will Self.. "It's genuinely unprecedented - and we really are in it together". Will wonders what we should say to our children about global warming and our role in it. He says we have to hope that some sort of collective wisdom can emerge "because the alternative is frankly terrifying: a degraded, dystopic and nakedly Darwinian future". Producer: Adele Armstrong
Roger Scruton argues that political correctness, far from being the cure to our conflicts, is actually the ultimate source of them. The "isms" and "phobias", he says, have been used in order to "put some complex matters beyond discussion, so that only one perspective can be publicly confessed to". "In the world of political correctness", he writes, "there is no presumption of innocence, but only a hunger for targets". Producer: Adele Armstrong
"For most of my adult life", writes Stella Tillyard, "I have had a template which I have used not only to understand myself but also to interpret the world around me. History has been my guide". But today, she says, history appears inadequate "to describe the chaos that now seems to surround us". Producer: Adele Armstrong
Stella Tillyard on how we bury and remember our dead. The idea of immortality, she believes, is taking hold in a new form. "Surely it will not be long before a new form of cemetery is created...a virtual space where all the digital remains of a person will be gathered, curated and tended". Producer: Adele Armstrong
