Tough on Hogwash. Tough on the causes of Hogwash. An appearance on BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze to Discuss Crime and Punishment

Some readers may be interested in this edition of BBC Radio 4���s Moral Maze, in which I appear as a ���witness��� at 18 minutes.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0009cfc

 

In this appearance, I am tough on hogwash, and tough on the causes of hogwash. I only realised afterwards that one of the panellists ( I think it was Andrew Doyle, who is amusingly connected with ���Spiked Online��� the descendant of the Revolutionary Communist Party) had chosen to remark that I had once been a ���Trotskyite���.  (As if Trotskyists were penal liberals, for goodness���s sake. Hasn���t he heard of Kronstadt? Perhaps not.)

 

Also, after I had left the studio I had to endure Matthew Taylor���s moronic dismissal (at 40 mins) of my position as ���going back to the world  of Dixon of Dock Green and Porridge��� . What a pity there was nobody on the panel who was ready to defend me in my absence against this sort of anti-thinking twaddle. I felt the panel lacked a proper conservative, a lack I feel particularly because many years ago I was vetoed as a ���Moral Maze��� panelist by high BBC authority. I got the impression that Michael Buerk, by a long chalk the best presenter now working for Radio 4, had been the only one in the studio who had actually listened with any care to what I had said.