Paul Goodman was able to lower the tone of the session sufficiently to point that out.Some weeks ago, the Chancellor told the media his favourite all-time footballing moment had been England’s Paul Gascoigne scoring the winning goal against Scotland.In the taxonomy of falsehoods that was a lie. There were a dozen Labour questions in the Order Paper but each was on one of three subjects: 1) state spending on science; 2) the climate change levy; 3) international poverty. These are the elements the Chancellor wants in his brand (“To add texture” as marketing people say, “to reposition him as a dynamic, digital, iPod-wearing colossus bestriding the international moral high ground.”).
So the toads oblige by flooding the question box with questions that allow him to implement his rebranding strategy.As the Chancellor is pitching himself as an Auld Incorruptible it’s worth remembering what a terrible liar he is. Now they’re stacking the order paper, in order to make Parliament fit in with the Government’s communications grid Just when you thought they couldn’t go lower. When interviewed by Simon Schama at the recent Hay Festival, his responses were so monosyllabic and unhelpful (“Where does the creative process start, can you tell me that?” “No”) that several members of the audience gave up and walked out.

More from Terence Blacker.

Alan Yentob wished to mark this event with a lengthy profile of the man and his work. The snag was that Hodgkin is famously reluctant to talk about his work or even to be photographed at his easel. On one channel, you can watch a group of men discussing the state of a sportsman’s foot. On another, the masochistically inclined can discoverwhat happens when a group of dull exhibitionists are locked away in a room together for several weeks. But it was a rare, serious-minded BBC arts documentary that provoked in me the most fundamental question to confront a TV viewer: why on earth am I watching this?

The great British artist Sir Howard Hodgkin has a retrospective being shown at Tate Britain. There are plenty of opportunities right now to wonder at the futility of contemporary life through the medium of a television screen.

Walls, prisons, barbed wire and visa controls, however strict and punitive, will never be enough.joan.bakewell virgin

More from Joan Bakewell. If such large-scale thinking can go forward on that topic, then the same consideration must surely be given to people on the move. The scenario that Earth will exhaust its resources has promoted ideas once science fiction into the realms of the possible. An amnesty would merely legitimise what is already happening And it is only a start. Then we can start really thinking long term about this ongoing march of the world’s peoples.Recently I heard that scientists are seriously applying themselves to the question of colonising Mars and other planets.