Speechification

The current Matthew d’Ancona Sunday Supplement reminds me of another one, the best bit of thoughtful commentary on modern political bullshit I’ve recently heard, and I’m glad to see it’s still online. Not My Words, Mr Speaker by Matthew Parris was broadcast a couple of months ago.

Matthew Parris takes a canter through the arid badlands of political language and asks why politicians drape their speeches in the tired glad-rags of stale phrases.

Matthew Parris was an MP before he was a political commentator, and understands this world as well as anyone. He seems to delight in highlighting the clichés which litter political life in Britain. At one point Parris suggests a “ticking time-bomb” as an example of a well-worn phrase to Norman Tebbit. Tebbit, you’ll remember, was injured in the 1984 bomb attack of the Tory party conference in Brighton. Much as I love Matthew Parris, it’s also rather fun to hear him blush at that point.

Part one (MP3, Real) covers

1. Grabbing attention by dramatising with sensational language (holed beneath the waterline)
2. Padding (year on year on year)
3. Make a question sound like an answer (we need a debate…)

Some brilliant examples, including “Rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic”, “Hearts and minds” and “I’ll take no lectures”. In part two (Real) we hear more modern examples of post New Labour bullshit bingo, including “rolling out”, “we must be seen to walk the talk” and the latest favourite, “across the piece”.

Matthew d’Ancona (he’s the editor of the Spectator, but you might know him for doing a great Al Pacino impression at Interesting 2007) asks “whether the World Wide Web has the potential to reshape society” in Power and the Web. Here’s the first part (MP3, Real).

You can also hear it as the ‘Sunday Supplement’ of the Westminster Hour, broadcast on Sunday evening.

A little gem of a documentary this, the kind of thing that quality speech radio does so well. A complex tale of Australia’s mishandled post-war future drawn from the politically-charged world of R&D into alternative energy sources.

For a few decades after WWII, Australia was the world leader in solar energy research. You might imagine that a sun-kissed nation - if not a little sun-battered - might well find itself in this position. But as with many aspects of the 1950s and ’60s, WWII was the catalyst for this techno-centric R&D effort.

As a result, by the 1970s, 30% of houses in Perth had solar water heaters on their roofs. And yet now the figure is more like 1 in 20 and Australia’s solar energy industry is effectively insignificant. What happened? As the wonderfully named Annabelle Quince relates in this story sewn together with archive clips and quotes from those involved then and now, Australia appears to have lost its way due a murky combination of pressure from the fossil fuels industry and governments, particularly those of John Howard, all too keen to pull investment out of relevant research.

So, the principal players in solar energy end up being Japan, Germany, China and California, often using tech developed by Australian scientists, who had to follow the research money overseas. (It’s one area, ironically, in which Howard has decided not to follow US leadership, where the Department of Energy has massively supported renewable energy research.)

Rather topically, Australia heads to the polls this week, with much opinion suggesting that Howard’s time might be up. The bleak view, however, is that both main parties are simply proposing ‘band aid’ solutions when it comes to renewables, without thinking ahead. Yet there is huge opportunity there.

As contributors point out, Australia is not only asset rich in terms of coal and uranium but also sun, wind, bio-mass and tides. One speculates that the North West of Australia could become an energy exporter to the world; indeed that Australia could be one of the cleanest and greenest countries in the world, quite different to its current position. And learning from the lessons implicitly suggested by this little docco would probably help get Australia there.

ABC Radio National: Rear Vision: Solar Energy in Australia (MP3)

As we’ve been seeing on Speechification recently, Radio 4 is not the only place to go for intelligent speech. The World Service should be an obvious choice, and I’ve recently been addicted to Mike Williams’ three part series “Inside the Climate Change talks” which I discovered thanks to the documentary archive podcast.

It soon gets out of being an introduction to climate change, and becomes a fascinating guided tour of the behind the scenes action at G8 in May, and the preparations for the December UN Summit in Bali.

• Part one (mp3)
• Part two (mp3)
• Part three (mp3)

At its best, it’s like Today in Parliament on an international stage. I would have liked to hear more of the international negotiations on the floor of the G8 from the horses mouths though; Mike Williams is so keen to explain what we’re hearing in these meetings that we sometimes don’t get much of a chance to hear it for ourselves. Other than that, it’s an enjoyable and fascinating series.

Photo credit: intimaj on Flickr.