The Sky's The Limit, or Curiouser and Curiouser

I now have my own personal copy of the full Sky News drug debate, mentioned here yesterday (kindly supplied by Sky themselves). It contains the first section of the discussion, which is missing from the one on the Sky website. But I cannot, alas,link to it here for insuperable technical and other reasons.  I find that Professor Val Curran spoke without major interruption from Adam Boulton and with *no* interruption from me for approximately 90 seconds.  Mr Boulton did briefly interrupt her twice, but not in a hostile, chiding or hurrying fashion. Nor did he describe her statements as ‘assertions’ , nor did he directly challenge them, nor did he invite me to contradict or question them.

 

I have no objection to being questioned or doubted or asked to substantiate my points, or to being told that my version of events is different from that put out by the government (or other establishment body), or to having my opponent encouraged to question my statements (though it is nice, if so, to be given the chance to do so in full). That is all normal and desirable.

 

But I am concerned when this happens to me and my opponent is not subjected to the same treatment. You may judge if this took place. I couldn't possibly comment.

 

Mr Boulton interrupted me (not helpfully) within 12 seconds of my starting to speak (though this first interruption took place before the website version begins).  Val Curran interrupted me when I had been speaking for about 45 seconds.  Less than 30 seconds after that, Mr Boulton started saying ‘OK’ incessantly to try to shut me up. Having finally succeeded in stopping me, he said that I had made ‘a lot of assertions’ (also true of Val Curran, though he never said so, the question in both cases being whether we could justify our assertions, or whether they stood up to indpendent analysis).

 

The website clip doesn’t actually begin at the beginning of my remarks, as it appears to do, but some time after I had actually begun.

 

The truncated version leaves out my opening words, in which (amongst other things) I give the title of my book and so point out (what the presenter has not mentioned)  that I have written a book on the subject and so have some standing in the matter (it’s not just miserable hack scribbler versus lofty professor). I  began by saying (rough transcript only, no time to revise fully)  ‘You start from the wrong place. In my book, which is called the War we Never Fought,   I point out that for the past 40 years there has been no war against drugs ‘. I was then interrupted, after which I restarted my argument by saying ‘Here’s the point…’ which is where the website version ( see earlier posting) begins.