Via The Thin Man, a lesson in hippie economics. Brace yourselves.

“We can be rich and cotton and mining metals. And silkworms.” 

Writing in the Guardian, the controller of BBC drama commissioning, Ben Stephenson, is very excited about his job:

Making drama is the best job in the world – the privilege of working with writers with a unique vision, the spine-tingling spirit of camaraderie between a production team, the privilege of broadcasting into the nation’s front-rooms. What could be better than that? But what I love about it the most is how passionate the people who work in drama are. Working in TV drama isn’t a nine-to-five job; it is a wonderful, all-consuming lifestyle. It gobbles up everything. It is glorious.

Glorious.

And with passion comes debate, discussion, tension, disagreement. If we didn’t all think differently, have different ideas of what works and what doesn’t, wouldn’t our lives, and more importantly our TV screens, be less interesting?

Indeed. Without “debate, tension and disagreement,” drama would scarcely be drama at all. However, the above is immediately followed by this:

We need to foster peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking.

Not left-field thinking, note, but something more specific:

We need to foster… left-of-centre thinking.

A slip of the keys, perhaps? Something missed on proof reading? Or an inadvertent admission of something we already know? Perhaps Mr Stephenson imagines the two things – left-of-centre and left-field – are interchangeable. But what’s “peculiar” or “idiosyncratic” about being “left-of-centre” in a drama department very often regarded as a broadcasting arm of the Guardian?

Ben Stephenson has been described, by the Guardian, as “the most important man in TV drama.”

For newcomers, three more items from the archives.

Freeloading and Snobbery. 

Arts establishment claims to be “suppressed,” sneers at the little people, demands free money.

I’m not convinced that the reduction of taxpayer subsidy for loss-making plays qualifies as “suppression.” And reluctant taxpayers please take note: Despite all the years of providing handouts, you’re now on the side of the oppressor.

Womanier Stuff.

The comedic potential of Women’s Studies newsgroups.

As a result of all this “questioning” and “confronting” of logic perhaps we can look forward to the first feminist computer, which will presumably operate on more “wholistic” non-logical principles. If such a device could be built, I’m confident it would generate answers that are ideologically agreeable, if not actually correct.

Exposure.

Atom bombs and Moon landings. The photographic essays of Michael Light.

One incidental detail… illuminates the unique comic potential of practical nuclear physics. Ted Taylor was a miniaturisation expert involved in many of the early atmospheric experiments. On June 5th, 1952, during the test explosion of a 14 kiloton device in the Nevada Desert, Taylor used a parabolic mirror to focus the bomb’s glare and light his cigarette.

Poke about in the greatest hits.

TDK thinks you may be interested in this:

Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.

Compulsory population control? Compulsory abortion? I’d have guessed that “concluding” such things, even in the passive voice, might hinder a person’s climb to a position of political influence.

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.

Perhaps you think such totalitarian musings would cast a little doubt on a person’s credibility. Apparently not. 

Related: Infestation.

Brace yourselves for some pure essence of Guardian, courtesy of Libby Brooks.

Amid the economic rubble, a revolution is being knitted.

I bet you weren’t expecting that.

Tactile and egalitarian, nourishing and slow, arts and crafts are enjoying a deserved revival in our recession-hit society.

The “nourishing” bit is a nice touch, implying as it does a wholesomeness and moral regeneration to offset all that “economic rubble” business. Yes, it’s true, home-made woollens will set us free and make us warmer, better people. Well, warmer possibly.

This week, the think-tank Demos published a collection of essays exploring the idea of “expressive life.” In the volume, US arts writer Bill Ivey – who coined the phrase – and Sandy Nairne, director of the National Portrait Gallery, tease out the prospect of a rebirth of the arts and crafts movement as part of the search for quality of life in a post-consumerist, recession-hit society.

Post-consumerist? Really? Care to bet on that, Libby?

At a moment when laid-off bankers are testifying to the benefits of basket-weaving, a reversion to the reformist aesthetic of John Ruskin and William Morris can feel suitably corrective.

Oh, there’s more.

The reasons for this resurgence are not hard to fathom: we are producers frustrated with never seeing the end product of our efforts; consumers weary of being bullied into buying stuff we don’t need, that is badly made or doesn’t fit.

I’m all in favour of craft. For instance, a professional columnist concerned with her craft, or with basic competence, might hesitate before filing an article in which she baldly asserts that “we” are “frustrated” and “weary,” dressed in ill-fitting clothes, and worse, “bullied into buying stuff we don’t need.” Who is this presumed “we”? How does Libby know what you or I need, or want, or how “bullied” and “weary” we are, if at all? Alas, dear Libby doesn’t reveal the secret of her preternatural knowledge. She does, however, tell us,

You cannot Twitter a cushion cover.

Before delivering the obligatory moral punch line.

Crucially, craft is egalitarian. While some in the Labour party appear bent on resuscitating the canard of meritocracy, which divides the gifted few from the unexceptional mass, craft reminds us of the significance of equality of outcome, rather than of opportunity. Everyone shares the capacity to develop a skill, based on decent teaching, application and time – not raw talent.

Ah. There we go. Equality of outcome, rooted in a knitwear revolution. Any monkey can be taught to knit or whittle, apparently, and this is reassuringly egalitarian, and therefore good. All “we” need is teaching, no “raw talent” required. Raw talent – like its more evil relations, giftedness and genius – is by definition unequally distributed, conspicuous, and thus to be frowned upon. And if Libby should, God forbid, be knocked down by a bus, I’m sure she’d welcome treatment by a surgeon whose skills are, at best, unremarkable.