Academy of Ideas

On the 75th anniversary of the founding of the UK's National Health Service, listen to this debate from the Battle of Ideas festival, recorded on Sunday 16 October 2022.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION In the wake of the pandemic, many people have expressed frustration about waiting times and the lack of face-to-face appointments with GPs. At the same time, doctors have threatened strike action over new contracts stipulating longer opening times to catch up with the backlog. In some areas of the country, there is just one GP for every 2,500 patients, yet in other places, doctors have demanded legal limits on the number of patients they see.

The suspicion in some quarters is that GPs are being lazy, or have lost their sense of vocation. Anecdotes about patients waiting hours to be fobbed off with a hurried telephone call from a GP are commonplace. But the Royal College of General Practitioners has pushed back, claiming that this suggestion is false and is undermining GP morale, which was already low. Several surveys indicate the NHS faces an exodus of experienced GPs, with many taking early retirement or reducing their hours due to workload pressure. Even increases in trainee doctors will not relieve the strain.

It seems that GPs are working harder than ever and yet people still can’t get the appointments they need. Is this predominantly due to the increased pressures caused by the pandemic, or are government critics right to suggest that the NHS has been underfunded for decades? Do we need to do more to incentivise more doctors to become GPs or is the GP as the first port of call for healthcare now outmoded? And is the solution to this perhaps bigger than intermittent injections of cash? Has the pandemic caused a crisis in GP provision or led to patient anxieties being exacerbated – or both? What is causing this crisis in trust for our once-beloved family doctors?

SPEAKERS Professor Dame Clare Gerada London-based GP; president, Royal College of General Practitioners

Sheila Lewis retired management consultant; patient member, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust

Allison Pearson columnist and chief interviewer, Daily Telegraph; co-presenter, Planet Normal podcast

Jo Phillips journalist; co-author, Why Vote? and Why Join a Trade Union?; former political advisor; fellow, Radix

Charlotte Pickles director, Reform; former managing editor, UnHerd; member, Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC) and the NHS Assembly

CHAIR Tony Gilland teacher of maths and economics; Associate Fellow, Academy of Ideas

This is a recording from the Academy of Ideas' Arts and Society Forum, held on Wednesday 17 May 2023.

English singer-songwriter Jack Hues discusses his varied musical career, key influences, inspirations and motivations – and shares his insights on how music is faring in our fast changing world and the culture war.

Hues’ musical career and influences straddle popular and classical genres, from the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix to Stravinsky, Beethoven and beyond. Having studied music at Goldsmiths and the Royal Academy of Music, and then launching his career in the late 1970s, as frontman of New Wave band Wang Chung, Hues enjoyed chart success in Britain, Europe and especially the US. He has never stopped creating music.

After several years of touring Wang Chung during the 1980s, Hues moved onto creating solo pieces including a number of film scores in the 1990s. In the early 2000s, he co-founded the jazz-influenced The Quartet, which released two albums, both to critical acclaim.

Between 2020 – 2022, he released two solo albums, Primitif and Electro-Acoustic Works 20:20and most recently a double live album with members of The Quartet, rock band Syd Artrhur and free jazz exponents Led Bib entitled “Epigonal Quark”, all receiving warm critical acclaim. He has also taught songwriting at Christ Church University in Canterbury.

Music fan and democracy campaigner, Niall Crowley, explores a wide range of issues with Jack Hues, including how the music industry is evolving under changing political and social pressures; innovation, radicalism and conservatism in music; whether now is a good or bad time for music and budding musicians; and what is happening to music education.

In this episode of the Podcast of Ideas, Jacob Reynolds talks to one of the students who was at the centre of the controversy surrounding Claire Fox's cancellation at Royal Holloway University, Omar Loubak. Omar was an organiser at the Debating Society, and has a unique insight into how these kinds of cancellations proceed on campus. Listen for an episode of Podcast of Ideas where he and Jacob discuss the case.

Read More: https://clairefox.substack.com/p/cancel-culture-comes-for-claire-fox#details

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/22/chilling-truth-cancellation/

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/claire-fox-trans-joke-ricky-gervais-royal-holloway-university-2023-knj5xwzh6

On 13 March 2023, the Arts & Society Forum invited Miriam Elia and Manick Govinda to discuss how Miriam develops her ideas as an artist and how she has managed to make a success of her art, in a competitive and sometimes hostile world. They covered broader issues, including what it means to challenge contemporary orthodoxies and ‘groupthink’, and how artists can survive the culture wars.

Miriam is a conceptual artist, whose diverse work includes short films, animations, illustrated books, prints, drawings and surreal radio writing. She is best known for her art books – including We Go To The Gallery, in which the classic Peter and Jane Ladybird book characters grapple with conceptual art, and We Do Lockdown, where children are forcibly adapted to the ‘new normal’, where a joyless existence is heroically embraced to save humanity.

Manick Govinda is co-curator of Culture Tensions debates at Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Poland. In a long and successful career as an arts consultant, mentor and curator, he has been an outspoken defender of freedom of expression and critic in the culture war. Manick is curating Miriam’s solo exhibition at Ujazdowski Castle, launching on 24 March.

BBC Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker sparked an enormous row last week after a tweet comparing the government’s language around illegal immigration to 1930s Germany. After he was taken off air, many of his colleagues downed tools in support.

While Lineker may have made up with BBC management for now, the affair has thrown up lots of questions. Should we take Lineker’s comparison seriously? What does the affair say about the current state of free speech in the UK? Are his defenders being opportunistic in defending his right to express his opinions? Is calling for someone you disagree to be ‘cancelled’ ever a legitimate tactic? Is impartiality something worth striving for – and is it even possible? And what have we learned about the way political debate is conducted today?

Alastair Donald, Claire Fox, Ella Whelan and Rob Lyons kick some ideas around.

With Sue Gray and Simon Case in the news amid long-running complaints about the effectiveness and impartiality of the government machine, this Battle of Ideas festival 2022 debate seems very topical.

SPEAKERS

Nick Busvine OBE consultant; founding partner, Herminius Holdings Ltd; advisory board member, Briefings for Britain; Town Councillor, Sevenoaks; former diplomat, Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Caroline Ffiske co-founder and spokesperson, Conservatives for Women

Eric Kaufmann professor of politics, Birkbeck College, University of London; Advisory Council member, Free Speech Union; author, The Political Culture of Young Britain and The Politics of the Culture Wars in Contemporary Britain

Max Wind-Cowie co-author, A Place for Pride; former head, Progressive Conservatism Project, Demos; commentator

Recording of the Academy of Ideas Education Forum discussion at Accent Study Centre, London on 28 February 2023

INTRODUCTION Following the recent announcement of industrial action by teachers, a Spectator column asked ‘Should teachers really go on strike?’. It argued that teachers are not nearly as enthusiastic about strike action as union leaders claim. While 53% of NEU members in England voted in the ballot, less than 50% of NASUWT members did, meaning the NASUWT ballot failed to meet the legal threshold to strike.

So how widespread is support for the strikes among educators and public, and does public support matter? Some who have traditionally supported the right to strike argue that now is not the time, and that closing schools so soon after the Covid lockdowns, which disrupted education for months and continue to have knock-on effects, is irresponsible.

How do we balance the idea of vocation and public service with the right of teachers to a decent wage and conditions? Would striking during GCSE and A-Level exams, for example, be unacceptable disruption or is causing disruption necessary if workers want to stand up for their rights?

Is a 12% pay claim “fantastical” as government claim or, in a context of more than a decade of longer hours, high inflation and real terms pay cuts, utterly deserved and necessary? With the government’s anti-strike bill moving closer to law, are restrictions on the right of teachers to withdraw their labour justified by the circumstances or do they represent an opportunistic attack on civil liberties?

Join us for this roundtable discussion as we bring together teachers for and against the strike and those undecided, as we explore what it means to be a teacher today.

SPEAKERS Conor McCrory secondary school science teacher, union rep and examiner

Gareth Sturdy former teacher and union organiser, including a stint as branch president, now writing on the intersection of schools and politics

Gregor Claude art teacher and former lecturer in cultural theory

CHAIR Kevin Rooney teacher and convenor of Academy of Ideas Education Forum

Alastair Donald and Rob Lyons from the Academy of Ideas are joined by barrister Steven Barrett, Baroness Hoey and Lord Moylan to unpick the Windsor Framework.

Recording of the Academy of Ideas Economy Forum discussion on Tuesday 21 February 2023. Please note that this event was recorded via Zoom and there are occasional, short-lived issues with the audio.

INTRODUCTION The Covid pandemic created huge disruption to the UK labour market. Millions of people were forced to stop working, with most receiving furlough payments. Millions more had to work from home. With lockdowns and pandemic-related business closures in the past, what has been the lasting impact of this disruption?

Statistics for employment and earnings published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for September to November 2022 show that unemployment remains low (3.7 per cent) while the proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in employment continues to hover around 75 per cent. But the number of people defined as ‘economically inactive’ – not working or seeking work – in this age group grew markedly over the course of the Covid pandemic and in its aftermath. Meanwhile, job vacancies for October to December 2022 remained well over one million, although the vacancy rate has started to decline.

As the Spectator noted in November 2022, ‘more than 20 per cent of working-age Brits are economically inactive, meaning they are neither in work nor looking for it. More than five million are claiming out-of-work benefits.’ Yet this exists alongside widespread staff shortages.

Meanwhile, unprecedented numbers of doctors, nurses and teachers are threatening to leave their jobs due to burnout. Although the unions lay the blame for this on low pay and poor working conditions, it co-exists with an oft-remarked decline in the quality of public service.

Is this a temporary phenomenon that will subside as the impact of the pandemic fades or an acceleration of existing trends? Have many people used the lockdowns as a moment to reflect about their attitude to work – and decided that if they can afford not to work, they won’t? What impact will rising living costs have on these trends? What is the impact on the UK economy of having so many working-age people not working?

SPEAKER Linda Murdoch is a researcher on well-being and the work ethic. She is also former director of careers at the University of Glasgow.

One year on from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Professor Frank Furedi talks to Rob Lyons about where things stand today, the causes of the conflict and the potential for peace.