We've Never Had it So Good

thank you thank you for that thanks earlier to Hannah thanks all of you for being here veterans I mean the all into you thirst see me do these before we'll know that I'm often in the habit of saying it's the right time and the right place with the right people for this debate well I'm gonna use that line again tonight because it's certainly the right time on a day when handily you might say for the prime minister the unemployment rate fell to 7.1 percent and all the economic indicators appear to be going in the right direction so certainly those numbers would suggest we've never had it so good we're in the right place because we are gathering in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea which I think the numbers suggest is the most affluent borough in the entire country so you'll all have never had it so good and we're with the right people a stellar line-up laid before you here all of whom I'm sure would at least get through the first round in that debating championship against primary schoolchildren so we've got four very very good speakers who are going to attack this subject you've all voted on your way in I hope I will give you the results of that indicative ballot if you like later on once we've heard from our four speakers and then you will vote again once you've heard the four inspiring arguments that are going to be laid before you the rules are that they each have about ten minutes to speak I will ding or ping the glass at around nine that's a signal for them to wind up and I will start bashing the glass repeatedly if they go beyond ten so you'll hear that I'm sure and then they'll be a chance for you to make your own contributions I'm gonna ask for really sharp short questions if we can rather long speeches because you'll have heard those already so without further ado let's get to this live question for the country we've never had it so good is that right or is that wrong and first up to make the case that we have never it's so good his man who I'm sure would like to be known as the biographer of the great Edmund Burke who would like to be known perhaps as the finest brain on our back benches perhaps as the Member of Parliament for he referred but is perhaps fated to be known as the man who dared square up to a red-faced David Cameron in a Commons bar you will know that he was the man who clashed as the leader of a Tory rebellion against the Prime Minister on the subject of Lords reform with the Prime Minister apparently poking in his direction and telling him his behavior was not honorable I think it's an Eaton thing our first speaker for the motion that we've never had it so good Jesse Norman well thank you very much indeed mr. chairman especially if that tally unnecessary reference to my screwing and thank you ladies and gentlemen for coming along today it's a fantastic honor to be able to address the collective wisdom of an intelligent squared audience in such wonderful circumstances and I'm particularly honored to be able to tell you that I'm teamed up as you will know with the gorgeous the effervescent Rachel Johnson I am simply the warm-up act for her grand Aria ladies and gentlemen our tiny canopy to the full smorgasbord all-you-can-eat rhetorical feast of johnson jana for those of you familiar with Austin Powers I am a mere mini-me to her Vanessa Kensington and while we're on the topic of 1960s parodies later on we may also welcome rod little and will South two men whose combined lugubrious nests make MOOCs painting the scream look like a frolicsome yodel with the faun trap with the fur drop family in the hi outs undoubtedly Liz gentlemen our offense tonight will treat us all to numerous at tales of gloom and doom there will be lots of downward-pointing charts predictions of catastrophe even Armageddon all laced or laced with that gritty with it lacerating social comedy sorry commentary which you would expect from a columnist at the spectator and a past winner of the Bollinger everyman PG Woodhouse prize Lesley Elrond is my happy task tonight to propose a motion that we've never had it so good it's a clever twist on those famous words repeatedly uttered by Harold Macmillan in 1959 of course McMillan's actual words were most of our people have never had it so good and that was true for the great mass of people in work real pay had risen sharply in the 1950s but Macmillan had a deeper point also it in mind that even for the generations that had lived through the Agony's the slaughter of the Second World War in a country for which rationing was a very recent memory it was important to have some perspective and to recognize that society was renewing itself and that economic recovery was underway and that by implication the horrible sacrifices of war were being redeemed now here today we have an economy that is recovering slowly as our Chairman has reminded us from a great catastrophe but I want to enter an early caveat with you if I may a disclaimer then the motion says we've never had it so good I want to ask who is this we it would be absurd to suggest that absolutely every single person in the world or even everyone in Britain at this particular moment was better off than they ever have been clearly at any given time there will be some people and some social groups for whom the most is not true the England cricket team for example let's gentleman recently hammered in the ashes by the Australians or Oh Francois Hollande who's had a tough couple of weeks although I must say you have to love a political system in which even an accountant can get lucky how he must have wished he could get away with it as his predecessors had done notably of course Jacques Chirac whose lovemaking skills earned him the epithet tuam a newt douche conky I went translated equally some people have done better they might ever have imagined while we're on the topic of sex how many of you know Peter Crouch is that a familiar name to an intelligent squared audience a gentleman six foot eight plays for Stoke City married to Abbey Clancy so one someone asked him recently what he would have been if he hadn't been a professional footballer to experience halls a virgin so Peters done a lot better I think it's fair to say than he was expecting to do some time ago but more seriously there is a large group one large group in our society who might very seriously question the motion before us this evening young people the the so-called jutted generation with record levels of youth unemployment high household debts at a shortage of housing you can see why many of them feel the baby boomers have raided the till at their expense but even this can be overstated in the last 50 years educational opportunity has exploded in 1960 just twenty two thousand people got an undergraduate degree two years ago it was over 350,000 in 1960 it would be highly unusual for a young person to go abroad today they are everywhere from torremolinos to Timbuktu in 1960 a telephone was affixed applied often kept in the hall for those families that had one today no young person would be seen dead without the latest iPhone or Samsung to text on so the real question is this overall all things considered has there been an era in human history or even British history when we could collectively rationally prefer to be living than now and the answer that question is no just look at the facts over the past 50 years the average per-capita income of the average person on the on the planet wherever they are in real terms adjusted for inflation has gone up by a factor of three three times lifespan is up by 30 percent child mortality is but down two-thirds across the planet per-capita food production is up by a third we are a wildly innovative species and that rate of innovation is increasing polio used to kill or harm millions of people every year today has barely ceased to exist huge strides have been made in combating malaria we've even bred new strains of infertile female mosquitoes which I must say a hell of a lot easier than having to fit all the male's with condoms that's the joy of the division of labor of Technology and of free markets that's why this audience can leave tonight in their foreign cars and eat hamburgers pasta or sashimi for dinner none of which was even imaginable five decades ago this being an intelligent squared audience of course to any of you who might be made minded to vote against the motion I say think of a world without sashimi and take the position of women today there are many countries in the world in which the position of women is still shamefully one of subservience and abuse but who can doubt that in this country indeed in many countries around the world the position of women is better now than it ever has been until the second half of the 19th century married women were essentially regarded as their husband's property in this country just fifty years ago before the great white goods revolution most women's lives were dominated by domestic chores you may feel not much has changed but it has the statistics tell us now those the situation is far from perfect today more than ever before women have a world of educational and life opportunity before them now that does not mean that everything is rosy far from it things are hardly perfect now look at the financial crisis we've just had to endure history is not always an unbroken progression of towards freedom and prosperity technology has massively enriched us but we live under a shadow and that shadow whether it be environmental change terrorism or nuclear holocaust will continue to hang over us democracy itself is struggling as politics becomes apparently ever further removed from people's everyday lives and of course we've had colossal failures inside and outside of government as we have had ever since government itself was invented we have to keep asking why and working to make sure that we never repeat those mistakes though we know in advance that we will moral principles and moral values do not change and it's our obligation as a present generation the obligation of all of us not just of those in positions of authority to ask in a deep and considered way how those principles can best be applied to help others to protect and sustain our society for the benefit of future generations ladies and gentlemen we have never had it so good and it's precisely because we've never had it so good because we've had that priceless privilege of being born when we were born that we owe this obligation now to others so I submit to you then the facts are absolutely clear in the facts name I ask you to ignore the gloom stirs the naysayers the professional miserable lists the Jeremiah's the pessimists and above all to support the motion thank you very much indeed [Applause] thank you thank you very much to Jesse Norman our next speaker I don't know whether he includes a gloom store or professional miserable list on his business card but he certainly could put their acclaimed novelist journalist and broadcaster a past Booker Prize nominee and the man who among whose many claims the famous to have made the phrase epi phenomenal imbroglio trend on Twitter and other social media in a TV discussion of hacking to argue against the motion the first speaker against the motion that we have never had it so good please welcome will self [Applause] [Applause] men and women it's not customary at debates of this sort to stoop to ad hominem remarks we argue things as intelligent conscientious people on the basis of the arguments themselves not on the basis of stereotyping the nature of our debating opponents but that being said Richard Strauss's for last songs are some of the most beautiful leader in my opinion that have ever been written and I came here this evening purely on the understanding that Jesse Norman would be singing I am bitterly disappointed to have instead heard the sort of second-rate piffle the comes out of any Tory MPs mouth when you prod them in the belly tears are running down the insides of my eyes but I'm too big a man to show it and I will turn my attention to the motion we've never had it so good is the motion contra what mr. Norman said cleverly trying to shift the goal posts but in my opinion not really managing to shift them that far most statements in language are by definition semantics statements they're statements about meaning on that basis I would like to dispute not just the motion but every single term in the motion my argument is not going to be about statistics or perceptions this would be an insult to you as an audience my argument will be about the meaning of this motion and on that basis I anticipate that you will agree with what I say and vote it down and the reason you will vote it down is because the motion treats you purely as a member of a spurious collectivity we've never had it so good doctors say that in medicine there are no such things as statistics only individuals and in the unfortunate event that you were diagnosed for the terminal illness I think you will feel the full force of those words why should we be a we at all recall one of the most chilling futuristic novels about totalitarian society was called simply we by yo Venu Sammy Yatim a pitcher of a ghastly society in which vast phalanxes of people were compelled to go about their business treated as an undifferentiated mass by subscribing to the we in we've never had it so good you're placing yourself in the same framework ours is a political culture that is based on a calculus of benefit we've never had it so good the principal ideologue of British society is Jeremy Bentham and his utilitarianism which puts forward the idea that the aim of society should be to achieve the greatest good stroke happiness of the greatest number but I put it to you that is precisely this Benthamite ideology that dara gates the individual and removes the individual from her immediate experience and alienates her from the social and political process we've never had it so good let's have a little look at never for a while let's go to never-never land how do you know how do you know can you look inside the thoughts and feelings and emotions of your spouse for many years who is sitting right next to you at this moment and has vast areas of their soul that are effectively walled off from you and yet and I wouldn't have it any other way what would be the point participating in a relationship with anybody who is entirely legible to you none whatsoever we've never had it so good we these people who know so little of each other this we've never is an extension of a tyrannous subjectivity over not only the person sitting next to you but the entire room and in the context and the feeling of the motion the entire society and yes by implication the entire globe I promise you no statistics no numbers and I won't give you any but take the utilitarian philosophy where it leads you and it tells you that human increase can only be a good thing after all there's so much more good to be have when there are more of us yeah so on the utilitarian calculus we'll be in really good shape when all day every day we're packed in just as tightly as we are in this hall then we'll really never have had it so good this is not a specious argument it is indeed the underlying prolegomena of the EULA Tillett Aryan position it's an endless yey saying two more of everything it's an endless yey saying to knowing the cost of everything because cost can be quantified and Bentham love to quantify but you can't cost the real value of life just as you cannot know what other people are thinking and feeling and philosophies that base themselves on such specious quantification throw up specious demagogues it's up to us to be individuals to discover our own nature of the good and to respect other people's idea of the good as well and not treat them as simply people on a production line or in a factory Jonathan Frieden began by referring to economic statistics aren't you bored with them don't you known every time you hear one pronounced ours has become a culture in which economic statistics have a fashion and have you noticed those of us who are my age or older Quinn cogent Aryans when we were younger it was something called the balance of payments deficit people were worried about you don't hear much about that anymore the difference between the value of what we export and what we import what you hear about now is consumer demand consumer demand you could have no more telling example of what our society has become how soulless our society has become then that it measures its moral and spiritual health on the basis of whether it's buying in I don't want to make a big deal about this you may have noticed one other thing besides my lugubrious voice in my lugubrious face which hides a happy soul a happy agnostic soul who's happy to live in a world in which there may well be a god and that is that I came here this evening with no notes and no prepared speech because I believe in what I say so I ask you to reject the motion and recover your soul [Applause] Thank you very thank you - thanks very much that those of you playing will self bingo I wonder how many of you had quincannon Aryan or Quinn Quinn Oh Jared it wasn't on my list but tremendous so we move now to our next speaker the who will be the second speaker for the motion the former editor of the lady magazine journalist who writes a weekly column for The Mail on Sunday and the big issue and the author of novels Notting Hill and Shire he'll I'm sure popular reading in this audience and has spent the last week in rather intriguing fashion which I hope she'll share with you please welcome to speak for the motion that we've never had it so good Rachel Johnson Jonathan thank you very much for your introduction it's always nice to come to the podium and not to be introduced as the sister of somebody and it reminds me that for several years the Evening Standard only referred to me as the penis obsessed sister of Boris despite my best efforts but I suppose we all have our stuff that we can't successfully get rid of as Charlie Brooks might think when as he tried to dispose of his carefully created collection of lesbian porn we have heard from Jesse we are going to hear from rod as the Bible says and there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse which means I think it is my turn I'm afraid to take the floor and to regale you with some statistics and I hope punctually convince you of the argument that despite what our Jeremiah says we have never had it so good I know that Jesse took some of his much reviled statistics from a book called the rational optimist by Matt Ridley which I'm going to credit as I don't think Jesse did Jesse is that fair and as we're on the subject of Matt Ridley let mean that's just posed to consider how in one man we have an embodiment of somebody who on the inner terms of personal developmental growth has really had it very good a man who brought down northern rock now has a column on the times of I can't see a seat in the Lord's whose estates in Northumberland roll over thousands of acres and who's about to make many more millions from fracking in one man we can see that it is possible in this country to have it pretty good but moving beyond Matt Ridley for a sec and on to his statistics 99% of Americans officially designated as poor have running water lose and a fridge 95% have TVs I know this is these are things that people like to have in their lives we'll even though they are evidence of consumption which is clearly a bad thing in your book we are becoming richer by these statistics that my colleague and panelists Jesse Norman stated and oh we have cleaner freer richer even cleverer apparently there's something called a leveling up caused by an equalization of nutrition stimulation and diversity of childhood experience way-hey exactly we're also becoming a less violent Society there's a book by Steven Pinker that I was encouraged to read by Hannah Kay who's our genius genius lucky tonight in which Steven Pinker claims we are even winning the war on war I would conclude my opening remarks by saying that if you vote for homage and your wife will get bigger even bigger breasts and it's much more likely that you will end up driving a BMW but those remarks would be unseemly and such a polite society as the RGS I hear you all thinking about will selfs remarks that all this consumption is bad or this growth all these widescreen TVs all this sky TV is a human rights as a human right even on benefit Street and I agree the better things are for man the worse they tend to be for the planet I accept that these are the two trump cards are pessimists the apakah holics always produce climate change Africa I predict actually I don't predict because I don't know about what words gonna say but we're not debating climate change in Africa and if we were I would have to point out to you that our air rivers lakes and seas are much cleaner than they were and in even in America carbon monoxide emissions are 75 percent down on 75 years ago and I would also have to point out that rod little him self as a climate change denier is that right rod yes it is yes it is you just mocked the prime minister for saying that our recent nasty weather was the result of global warming rather than for example that what you could any fool in you kept knows which is it's a result of obviously his decision to legalize gay marriage didn't you no yes you did you say that global warming is basically just the abnormal operating system for winter so let us take what I presume will be rods line about climate change forget about our good luck with that button and return to the motion so we're here to show that for man if not for the planet things are getting better all the time but we would be stupid to ignore some economic statistics and hard truths the public finances are as will self might put it shot to as even and we have Alister Dallas it Alistair Darling told us the other day it's going to get worse you can feel it Edie tripled it balls would like us to think there's no Jam tomorrow and soon in fact we're all going to be living in the gulag of Britannia but the economy is growing we've had unemployment seven point one percent and we are growing faster than any other major economy and as David Cameron said in his New Year message I want to look at will sells fairly face as I write to quote what new David Cameron's new year message our country is on the rise completely impassive oh well anyway David Cameron knows too much optimism is even toxic for the Tories because he wants us to vote for him for fear of finding something worse in the eds woodshed okay let's move on though this cut this generation has left the next generation in hock but we can't cry too much into our frothy Nespresso lattice here's why Jeremy Warner wrote in a Telugu Blagh stop whinging even the young have never had it so good quit I'm mark reaching in case of plagiarism repeated foreign holidays conspicuous consumption and all the creature comforts under the Sun and no longer the exclusive preserve of the privileged few many of the young enjoy lifestyles their parents could only dream of at a similar age he also pointed out that wealth is eventually recycled to younger generations either because it is squandered because it's inherited or taxed Jonathan mentioned that I've been somewhere what did you say intriguing so if I see him a bit below par it's because for the last seven days I've been living on one pound a day for the purposes of a BBC documentary within some of the two poorest boroughs in Britain and the exercise was designed to prove whether those in benefits really are living high on the hog which is quite a live topic at the moment and I found the opposite I would live to in two households both were in the grip of diarist food poverty these households out fix outgoings on energy on their debts on rent on everything on fixed costs left them with I promise you only three pounds a day each to spend per family on food I also found that these deep cuts to the welfare state that were across the board have led and I can't believe I'm saying this to some resurgence in what used to be called until this notion was dispensed with big society I found an outpouring of compassion a metal woman called Diane in clacton-on-sea now I know this sounds like Dave Cameron saying I once met a black man in Portsmouth but do bear with me she fed dozens of people every day dozens of the homeless and the hungry and she was badgering local supermarkets to do eat food rather than throw it away because that's what they like to do so she could start a food bank it was as if I had a walk on part in lame miserable only this time it was directed by Richard Curtis because honestly the love was all around her I'm getting emotional now because there were soup kitchens food banks Samaritans night shelters churches Muslim support centres free blankets you could get your clothes washed you could see an advisor about trying to find out whether your why your housing benefit or being cuttle you're being sanctioned you could go online to look for a job and this is all not run by the state by the voluntary sector now I know not all on benefits are deserving as we've seen from benefit Street but all the adults I met wanted to work but couldn't because they had criminal records they had disabilities they had children they couldn't afford the child care but still I found no one too sick or too bonkers or too foreign to be helped by someone or at least filmed by a channel 4 TV crew I'm not saying big society has replaced the state it hasn't and it shouldn't but we need and we have both in this country which is more than I can say for most other places finally I'd like to turn to the economy I know it's dull but as G K Chesterton said the problem with capitalism is not that there are too many capitalists but not enough capitalists we've seen the economic statistics today but there is better to come I've mentioned one brother my other brother Leo has written a book called turn around challenge and he has advised me to tell you this in his brilliant new book turn around challenge which is on my chair Jonathan can you hold it up please hold up Leo Johnson uber o u P 20 pounds what he tells me is this and I can't claim I thought this myself unlike well he says we will see a surgeon capitalists as micro production returns and new technologies come on stream bear with me quote Chinese labor costs are rising whereas the costs for micro manufacturing and technologies like the RepRap open-source 3d printer have the potential to grow exponentially pushes prices down pushing prices down further what this means is really important Chinese labor costs rising British labor costs are falling British late that means we are going to be competitive again Leo told me in a text pot noodle Otis Elevator caterpillar GE all reshoring bringing production back to Britain the future is local and a return to local manufacturing is imminent so I would say information our grounds for optimism are anchored in the past we are seeing think of me on benefit Street think of Leo's pot noodles we are seeing a return to two things in society that we know well homo Faber manners creator and man as a social animal big society coming in where the state the state's hand doesn't reach far enough to keep them are safe the distributed economy jaws are inst on our instinct not just to create but to look after each other whether from the top down or the bottom up in some I would say please do not buy rod littles forthcoming box set of doom I beg to propose the motion [Applause] I hope I hope the record shows and all of you have witnessed that I was very right on sound and garden ish and refused to define a woman by her brothers and that she they mentioned not one not two but three of them in oh did you mention two I thought I thought a joke or dimension but maybe that was implicit okay I've between the lines I thought there was a third there anyway we move on to our final speaker against the motion he began was a former editor of BBC Radio 4's Today program where he was professionally required to repress his opinions and be studiedly neutral and boy has he made up for it since he is now an author and journalist who writes a regular column for The Sunday Times The Spectator magazine and the son speaking against the motion please welcome rod Biddle [Applause] thanks a lot Johnny thanks thanks for that mate the problem I have is that intuitively I feel I ought to agree with the proposition because after all while it may be that the gulf between rich and poor is larger than at any time since the War of the Roses and that executive pay is an ever increasing multiple of the money earned by people on the shop floor and that those people on the shop floor AB debt squatting on their backs like a vast toad and all these other indicators of economic inequality which suggests that the rich are getting richer and the poor are being robbed blind at least today we have the right people running the country after decades of a futile experiment obsessed by that chimera of social mobility we have at last wisely succumbed in a once again led by the same sorts of people who led us at the time of Lord Salisbury when Britain was at its zenith not just the politicians although of course had pre-eminent amongst this group but everywhere there is money to be made or power to be had in the judiciary in the City of London in journalism the 7% of the country who attended public schools and the best public schools occupy up to 80% of the top jobs and indeed comprise all of my fellow panelists didn't he ohyou're anyway know you're on my side and the moderator and the organizer quite rightly as well quite rightly they're in charge and is largely these people these wonderful people who tell us repeatedly that we have never had it so good and they also tell us smiling out of their shiny faces that we've never had it so good and we're all in it together so I think it would simply be have me to agree and move on ever upwards a simple answer to whether we've ever had it so good we being the country as a whole is to ask how happy people are and the simple answer to that question are we happy now to look inside those souls which rule was talking about it's of course that we're not we know this because various studies including one commissioned by the BBC have asked if people are happy and far fewer admit to this state of mind than did so in the 1950s when we were played to his rickets smallpox and Sir Anthony Eden I have some misgivings about these studies of happiness the whole idea came of a gross national happiness index was dreamed up by Bouton's dragon king legally Cindy wine-shop in 1972 largely I think as a means of assuring his citizens that whilst they were impecunious peasants clinging to the side of a mountain and subsisting on a diet of yaks milk while being presided over by an obese autocrat who thought he was a dragon they were nonetheless overflowing with great bonhomie and merriment more recently the un's done the same sort of study and into happiness and invariably the Danes always come out top they have many admirable qualities the Danes but they're also singularly gullible and deluded people indeed it may well be the case of the Danes are in a constant state of euphoria simply because they are not Swedish anyway Britain does very badly in this index of happiness thing we come at the bottom a more reliable means of testing whether we are happy or not is to see how many of us are depressed one in two of us according to the latest report one in two of us that never used to be the case I don't know how reliable the figures are but it certainly seems to be a theme of our time that increasing numbers of others are afflicted by one or another kind of existential despair or misery we have seen the growth of mysterious illnesses difficult to define such as Emmy yup he flew as it was once called and fibromyalgia that peculiar fliction which apparently results in debilitating aches and pains a million of us have any or fibromyalgia apparently the symptoms of these two illnesses along with depression are lethargy lassitude melancholy irritability and inability to sleep an inability to rise a perpetual sense of torpor and dissatisfaction there are expressions you might argue of an alienation or an enemy or an atomization our doctors clinics and our A&E walls are full of another new phenomenon the worried well people who are simply anxious and deeply unhappy and then before all that distress stress now accounts for the largest single number of days people take off work there are lots of different figures around the latest I've seen from the Health and Safety Executive puts a number at 105 million days lost per year 75 percent of us say we suffer from stress and this stuff this sort of despair this sort of misery is as defining about times as an Xbox or a politician with his hand in your wallet we simply didn't have this before and we will note that in all cases it's a frustration and an annoyance or in extreme cases a pure loathing of society or the stuff of society even with stress where the ailment is most popularly assigned to an imposition placed upon the individual by an external agency usually the employer one commentator I forget who suggested rather callously when presented with a list of the symptoms of Emmie that these people were suffering from nothing more than quotes life well indeed and if that is the case and demi is not the consequence of a retrovirus which by now even be pretty clear it isn't then over here in this country we have life wrong where's it all come from this stuff my own suspicion is that it's been imposed upon us by a system which certainly ensures that a small number of people the people I'd mentioned earlier have never had it so good for example it's not merely that wage rates are criminally low and have been dropping comparatively for years and that for millions of us working for a living does not provide nearly enough to get by it is also the uncertainty of that work it's the short term contracts the temporary work the zero hour contracts the complete absence for many millions of working people of security of employment of a predictable future still less of that old discredited thing a job for life which is now used in a derive sense and the trouble is that as human beings we like predictability and we like security but the new working patency unlimited free movement of labour and capital imposes on us a fraught and frenetic transience a short-term contract ends when we chase down the next one which may be a hundred miles away we get on our bikes just as his Locke told us to do 25 years ago and then that contract ends and we're off again and we do so with increasing haste because we're assured by the people who have never had it so good that if we do not put our skates on and chase that job down don't you worry mate there'll be 250,000 people entering the country within the year every year who will do it quicker than you and a hell of a lot cheaper than you and they tell us this under the guise of enlightened liberal internationalism just in case we might complain and so we chase at the behest of those who have never had it so good paid less and less comparative comparatively every time never sure when or even if the next job is going to come up or how long it will last unless a knock on the amount of time we spend in any one place is contracted and contracted over the last 25 years to the point where only one in five of us now know who our neighbors are anymore and we don't put down roots in a community our neighbor now is simply someone we shove out the way to get on the bus of a morning it's a sort of rival and remember our houses our very houses are not homes anymore they're no longer solid things in which we raise a family and become part of a community they are instead or they have become a liquid a form of collateral to be flogged so that we can move on and pursue an illusion of affluence because that's what it is an illusion of course we are empowered by the people who have never had it so good in everything these days as we'll rightly pointed out we are consumers customers and we are empowered by choice endless endless choice about everything where to send the kids to school for example 12 local schools all competing against each other for your brats and who knows maybe you'll get them into that half-decent Church of England school if you rent a temporary flat by the school gates and maybe for late the vicar when you're suffering from cancer you are empowered by choice you're empowered to troll through and find the best available treatment even though you may not know what the hell you are looking for should you get your foreign-owned water company to provide your electricity or should you stick with the foreign-owned gas company to provide your electricity it doesn't matter a bugger they're all part of the same cartel which has just put up your Terrace by for time of the inflation rate but you've searched you search because you're empowered to do so this superfluous choice is endless remorseless choice which we are enjoying to believe is a good thing but it's not it's a con job all of it is a con job it is an illusion of empowerment and it is an illusion of affluence as anyone who when they look at their mortgage statements will be able to tell you and that's why we have to reject this motion it's no surprise that in the current system operating under the current way we are forced to live at the moment that we are ill and unhappy depressed stressed-out ill with it all we've swapped the communitarian for the remorselessly individualistic at the behest of an economic system which is alienating and dehumanizing and it's hardly a surprise as a corollary that we have also disengaged in increasing numbers from the political process since 1992 these days increasing numbers of us either don't vote at all or we vote way way beyond the mainstream and we feel as a consequence disenchanted and powerless and it's this system which does indeed nonetheless benefit a small tranche of our population that trance which will from time to time shot out that old sweet lie we're all in it together and we've never had it so good thank you [Applause] thank you thank you well as promised you've heard for sparkling speeches there from this end of the room and before we do throw it open and before I give you the results of the you're voting as you came into the room let me just see if I can press our full speakers just for the question to each of them just to clarify some points now I'm going to begin with our first week at Jesse Norman and I just you know you've sketched a picture there of how we've never had it so good answer this now the statistics are that there are 500,000 people in the country in the country using food banks and the majority of those in poverty is said to be working the figures when the coalition took office were less than 1/10 of that numbered around 40,000 people were relying on food banks and now it's half a million given that leap how can you say we've never had it so good well as you know Jonathan I wasn't and creating specific facts about where we are now and there's nothing that anyone should take any pleasure out of or anything other than you know a feeling of gloom and sadness about the situation with food banks the truth of the matter is that it has been rising literally exponentially for about 15 years now and it is not a new phenomenon but the numbers are new and no one really knows what the drivers of it are although it has obviously money to pay you for food no no no no of course of course that's true but there are also there was also question of whether or not those people were as it were finding informal ways of getting food before and and I go to food banks so the question is what's the actual you know is the sizable from appropriately where does it probably show us what it is and of course we don't know and that's why I think more more reflection on it and and frankly anyone can deny that the economic crisis were really is a is a part of it and therefore hopefully a recovery will pull these people out of that situation thank you something to you will self and you made the point that this is something unknowable we can't know how the how the lives of others are lived can't gaze into their souls but just an obviously that's true about people's inner lives and emotionally but materially would you concede some of the points have been on this side of the table that in just in terms of material well-being that we've never had it so good I think he died of a dick doctor from India once said to me only in the West is the term psychosomatic an insult mind and the body are one I refused to answer the question it's a meaningless to me in the context of my argument I argue for the whole woman and the whole man I argue for us as spiritual beings are our spiritual lives not made possible though if people have a roof over their head their houses are warm and they are able to move around these are really but these are all clearly destoroyah but I draw your attention to my honorable seconder here who I think did a very good job on that front of showing that we the correlation between absolute material situation and mental and spiritual health is not proven at all and then let's just talk about this tricky concept of relative poverty yeah because that's what we seem to be skirting around here the some notion of borer abroad and afoot in our society that you know as long as you can watch TV and buy a can of extra-strength lager that you've got nothing to complain about in some way and you're saying that that's a bogus notion because even if materially you have more here than you would if you were living in other parts of the world where they don't have those basics that doesn't go to house well it's a mystery it's a mystery to me why these extremely wealthy people in the city really need their vast bonuses if they don't believe in relative poverty all right because stop they quite neat clearly don't need to be relatively wealthier yeah duh thank you I just think you'd be the professor of contemporary thought the e/m let's put it to you Rachel Rachel Jones let's put to you this thing what you send it from your own experience of the last week the people of the Euro among were living on their three pounds left over to feed their families given the oral direct experience of that number how can you stand up and say they've never had it so good well in 1957 when how woman and said we've never had it so good a man who was in employment with three children it was in real terms worse off than somebody who is unemployed today on benefit with three children with the child tax credits and the child benefits which accrued to him and his family so it's again it's completely relative yeah exactly sure and finally to you before we have now trod a little and you talked about those people who were very squeezed and pressed at the bottom people living on zero hours being secure and the stressed out for everyone else and you know will self introduce the notion that you've been to my utilitarian calculation for everybody else would you concede any ground there and say those people and you're right it's not Universal but for those people who they have never had it so good and it's the people in the bottom who are being left out or is your picture across the whole country it's across her well it's certainly it's outside London largely which is something which often seems to be forgotten once you do go outside London you see that the principal form of employment are Pound shops door-to-door selling these are things which generate almost no income for the people who do them they're usually on less than minimum wages because they're on shorter hours and the firm's could get away with paying them less less than the minimum wages of consequence it is a vast vast number of people I think the middle class sometimes Deleuze itself that it's well off I don't know that it is quite as well off as it thinks it is and we will see that when when when the next property slump comes around thank you and let's give you the results of the of your voters you came in and this is just before you'd managed to be swayed by any of the arguments those of you who were for the motion that we've never had it so good were 47% so nearly half the room was with this side of the table those against the motion disagree that we've never had it so good 24 percent with this side of the table and then those who would don't knows 29% so nearly a third of the room was on the fence and it is those 29% that I say to you both sides it's up to you to try and persuade them win them over to your side let's now open it all up and here's questions thoughts contributions the Pythia and sharper the better and let's see some hands go up so if we've got a hand over there and what I'll do is I'll make sure there's my crane to play things to you and is there a third mic food anyone over here wants to say anything because we have a microphone in there for you yes maybe there so if we can get those three Micron's in position and I've noticed that people up there let's start with it first here yeah do I need to give my name nope my heroes that's all you're gonna say is be my hero rod little has argued that it's only a privileged few who have never had it so good I would argue from a long lifetime of experience that oddly enough there is a disadvantaged view or even perhaps disadvantage many who have never had it so good I mean the people in our society who have mental illnesses mental impairments and disabilities when I was growing up and I've got long years of personal experience of this people with these disabilities were sneered at excluded put to one side ignored and disrespected all my life and that you know rather elder but I'd like to be now this isn't improving people have been offered more respect this is not to do with money although there has been much more money offered to help people generally speaking Rooker it's a big cultural change for the better so this disadvantaged group of people has never had it so good thank you so different angle on debate weren't very much appreciated let's go to the speaker up here questioner Rp in defense of Jeremy Bentham we are bodies and cells but by the same token if you help the body you do help the soul and I'm struck that the idea of a cancer diagnosis has haunted this discussion and a very close relative of mine has recently been diagnosed with cancer and I ask you all to believe that it's extremely devastating for me but I think that the same person was diagnosed 20 years ago with high blood pressure which in the 19th century will probably have killed her was diagnosed 15 years ago with thyroid problems which perhaps 50 years ago would have killed her and so even though I'm in the throes of grief I have to confess you I do think that in the broader sense it would be selfish of me not to realize that we have never had it so that in some respects thank you thanks for speaking so personally about your experience okay thank you so both of those contributors saying that if sort of medical reasons that there have been advances that mean we've never had it so good somebody's waiting here with a contribution I yeah well first of all support democracy in Ukraine please secondly I've never had it so good because 20 years ago I was starving as a student in Ukraine and today after a long work day at the bank I came here to this debate so don't really have a question just wanted to say to read little who mentioned immigration and passing that I'm already here and I'm after his job his house and his chewing gum the lady said she's only been here a year but is already after his job his house and he's chewing gum I don't want conclusions you can draw but virtually two people on this side of the table have been chewing their way through nicotine gum and that may say something about this side of the Ogron you may say nothing dude questioner here yeah right yes I must say I'm grateful for the rod little and will sell I've never ever heard such depressing words from anybody in my whole life and I think if the whole world felt and spoke the way you do we'd all be in trouble I mean it it really is horrible to listen to that's not the same as really but that's not the same as same Iran will sing Sahara has had a privileged education which he well knows went as one of the finest universities in the world and I think just sort of sit there and be gloomy about everything does that really help anybody is that really a relation of how you exception to what you're saying I'm not in the least bit gloomy I'm a very very happy person I think I think the stars are God's daisy chain and daffodils the souls of dead bunny rabbits and I get up in the morning and I skip about the place I'm a very active fulfilled man nothing I said would imply that I was gloomy or depressed what makes me gloomy and depressed is the cheese pairing bean counters who inhabit the other side of this nation though I think I made that perfectly clear thank you why don't you finish I conclude the point sharply and then will come at any step are you the person who started the big oh she was on a panel that I was with some time ago and he said when when asked the question about salaries and he made the point which is true he said we really need these people who earn a lot of money they produce employment for people they pay half their money back at least in taxation and most important of all they spend the money most of them and the spending it creates employment you cannot alleviate poverty without prosperity ok that's why we need the people good I'm going to just take a couple more because a lot of these have been sort of comments rather than questions and then but I want to get a couple of questions we can bring back here so gentleman up there then person there and then we bring you here yeah the speakers of forth emotion discussed the improvements of science of Technology in the past century that reminds me of a quote by Isaac Asimov who said the saddest thing in life right now is that no science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom I would like to ask the panel for their opinion to please okay thank you don't wanna I've got all of these and then we're gonna just take one here that I've got questions about yeah we must surely acknowledge fantastic progress in the last 50 years reduction in prejudice the gains and medical science all of that stuff must be acknowledged but surely rod and will make the key point that the agenda is terribly restricted while our politicians continued to define progress only by the amount that we consume the amount that we have the amount of growth that there is I've been in the food industry for 40 years it's a good example 30 40 years ago 30 percent of household income was spent on food for most of the last decade we spent 10 percent of our income on food and yet half of us are fat and 30% of us are obese and half the world is starving you know there has to be an agenda that's beyond simply consuming more and more good things thank you let's pause there pause there I will no this time we will take another round of questions but let's put these straight away to you then so Jesse Norman it's come you know will self talked about cheese pairing bean counters gentlemen they're saying that we have to define a kind of notion of the good life and have happiness that is just beyond what we can see well I couldn't agree more I mean I've just written a book of the path the purpose of which in part is to argue for precisely this conception of human flourishing I mean the the fact that matter is that this is my BA graffia and one of the things that Bert the point the Burke's make is actually in advance of Bentham is that a human life based on a rational economic calculus as a in a purely individualistic sense is a life devoid of purpose or meaning and that it's in our ability to join with others and to find our identity in a collective projects and in therefore in society in social order and that's the linking thought behind my call in my speech for a proper understanding of the benefits the privileges of being in society and the obligations that go with that so I'm absolutely not in the cheese pairing place that I've been placed by the opposition and in fact the opposite is true if you look at the evidence what people need is a sense of moral purpose and some lenses is provided through religion but not necessarily and moral community and when they have that that is a crucial element in their own personal well-being and personal and therefore we're more than ever understanding the limitations of a purely economic calculus so I would absolutely associate myself with that view and I wish we had a politics that recognized these sources of wisdom and recognized words that we that respect that wisdom words like loyalty and respect and honor the teams have dropped out of the political lexicon altogether Ron little let's put to you the he came up in several different places several different ways several different ways that there have been advances in science in medicine and particularly in attitudes that prejudices attitudes to those with mental health problems all of these things count as real advances and in those senses we've never had it so good well it knows narrow senses yes and dad there's not that narrow is it science medicine football's got a lot better as well people play a fluid attacking game now it's terrific but look things you know what would be mad to say that nothing has got better that would be an insane proposition and I can't believe that that that intelligence squared would come up with it my my point is that there are a number of things we have lost as a consequence of the economic system we're failing the the the the the consequence of the economic system that we're following one of them is social mobility any pretense of social mobility which was at least present it at least gave my parents and and my parents friends in there in the fifties and sixties the the the suspicion that they might be able to make their way in the world and compete on an equal basis with with with the F alone that's gone I mean that that has just disappeared and the other thing which is gone is that we've we've sort of given up on the on the communitarian aspect of the the thing which really holds society together which is you know that we look out for each other that seems to have gone as well though I think it's very very very nice and undoubtedly a step forward that rachel has met a working-class person the III hope she was as thrilled you did open yourself up to that and you want to discreetly come back on that Rachel Johnson I think the rod sort of is defeating his own argument by saying that mental health is a redirect result of affluenza and then critiquing our side of the room of the panel for saying yes we are all better off we do have more material possessions we do have better health service we do have a welfare state as if none of this makes any difference to the comfort and our of our lives and the prospects for our children I think it's just utterly self-defeating well it's argument will self just come back on that one point you wanted to pick up I mean the risk on mental health and tolerance I mean yes and and yeah no I mean we live in a very interested culture in terms of mental health I did a program for the BBC last year on on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac and other antidepressants 20 million prescriptions are written in this country every year I went into researching that documentary feeling that probably these drugs would rather over prescribed you know that probably they were being handing out to people you know like rod picked up on to the worried well or two people who had general stress and anxiety what I discovered and I say this in the full knowledge that statistically there will be a large number of people in this room taking these drugs was that these drugs do not work that the people who devised and sell them can give no explanation for their effects upon the individuals who take them that the so-called chemical theory of depression is absolutely baseless and that in all likelihood the reason why people feel some amelioration from depression and taking them is because of bad side effects that the drugs are giving them now to live in a society to relation no no wait a minute to this is a very important point about science and our faith in science to live in a society because I don't doubt that the people who take SSRIs do feel better that's the paradox but they feel better because of their belief and what are they believing in they're believing in a kind of scientism and a kind of reduction of themselves to chemical units that is the very opposite of a soulful and embodied existence so no wonder more and more prescriptions get written okay thank you I'm okay I'm aware of the question I'm aware of the question about immigration I'm going to return to that subject let's take another round of contributions here the lady up there I know you're gonna be next and if we have another microphone here yeah um do you think that the motion that we've never had it so good creates and perpetuates complacency and stagnation within society shouldn't we always be striving for a better tomorrow today rather than downplaying the achievements of those before us thank you thank you and just to explain there was a woman there and she moved away and he asked the question in space so that contribution here yeah it's a question for especially what little actually and many people including myself increasingly feel that inequality is probably the most divisive thing and the most harmful thing going on in our society what can we the downtrodden and powerless do about it so you said those last few words again I just miss the weight loss what can we the downtrodden and powerless do about it about inequality thank you question-there hi I think throughout the talk we've been referring to we as in sort of the UK and talking about just this country and today Bill and Melinda Gates wrote a very interesting essay which was in The Wall Street Journal and I just wanted to refer to that because they were talking about the world as a whole by almost any measure the world has never been better off as the world is better off now than it has ever been before extreme poverty has been cut in half over the past 25 years and then they went on to disprove three myths one that incomes and other measures of human welfare everywhere including the trump card of Africa have gotten better foreign aid has saved lives and laid the groundwork for seeing long-term economic progress despite all the corruption that is involved with foreign aid and lastly that despite people's fears that medicine and lowering the risk of childbirth will lead to overpopulation it has only led to people having smaller families because families of in Thailand its 1.6 children to every family okay so your evidence from the Gates Foundation that the global picture it shows improvement yet questionnaire here my questions mainly on will cells points he says that we shouldn't be arguing about consumerism and we should be talking about the soul but arguably on that point of view we've never had it so good he could he could stand up and introduce himself as an agnostic I came here I saw Daniel Dennett's he's a famous atheist a hundred years ago you can do that people who wanted those views or who had those views were being burned at the stake going back only a few hundred years nowadays people go to yoga and meditation learn far more about spirituality so arguably on a spiritual basis we've never had it so good thank you I've nature's most of these questions are one more another ending up being addressing this side of the table if anybody got a question to put or a challenge to put to these two yeah we've got a few hands there if we can get keep your hand up if you all want to challenge these two here and we'll hear from you and then we're gonna bring that yeah again then we'll try to give it to you as oh yeah hello from the side of the table for the notion I've heard a lot about materialism consumerism how we've had it well we're having it really good at the moment in those sons but is that sustainable in the future and isn't gonna get better we'll stay good or is it gonna get worse sustainable you mean environmental yes and also in a moral sense okay thank you and if you pass the microphone along I just bring it down here thank you very much that's great I think we'll then bring it back office yes hello and I'd first like to say to Rachel Johnson well done and congratulations for trying to put living on three pounds a would you say a day for food for hope one pound one pound a day for a whole family in a good light must have been very difficult however although you experienced a week of this it's alright for you to go home at the end of the week because you don't have to live through that so there's been a big focus on mental health I have to say as I've experienced mental health and mental health services have to say they are absolutely forgive my language it is disgusting I I was learning about the suffragettes today and I had to remind my teacher to her horror that people still do get to fete like the suffragettes who went on hunger strikes dead people do still get put in straightjackets people do still get sedated if they are being too out of order so I can't believe yeah maybe it's been better but it's just not good enough it's absolutely not good enough so we've never had it so good that's absolute okay we'll take a very large social one from here and then we're gonna I was actually gonna ask something entirely different but just to the in response to that last question we may not have had it he may have been mentally great now but surely it was considerably worse in the past sure we still have straitjackets and some people still too fed but previously you were burnt at the stake and I suffer I suffer mental knows in the past I would have been burned at the stake too I think it's just about as good if you've ever had it and does the panel agree okay thank you we've now got a range of questions to bring to everyone here so let's put that to you first of all Rachel Johnson the idea that it was all right for you your experience with living on a pound a day and seeing families feeding themselves on three pounds a week rather three times a week in a pound a day in your case but you could walk away at the end of that experience they can't yeah well I never claimed I wasn't I'm not unbelievably unspeakably privileged and of course I knew that after a week I was going to go home and that's what made it possible and the whole point of the exercise was to bring to public attention something that people do not know which is that there exists genuine food poverty in the in this country as a result of and we're talking about food banks earlier think you don't well Rossiter how many food banks do you think there are you don't know she's also do you question how many food banks oh I don't know okay five hundred thousand people are using food banks and the number has gone up by eleven for a fall near mean an affluent plant a tent okay let's say you've only you've made that part of and I'm also being challenged on mental health and I think it's just to you personally was it well I don't think it was just to you it was just services it improve I think it's a it's a testament to the fact that we are much more open about mental health in this country that you could stand up in front of 800 people and talk about your own experience and I that wouldn't have happened even 20 years ago so congratulations I hope you get the help you need and I'm sorry about the experiences you had every single family in Britain has some sort of mental health issue going on in it we're all aware of that it's not no longer a dark secret you've you've addressed it don't worry we've got other people I want to include the will self put to you this point out religious tolerance because you do you were trying to speak on a non-material non-economists ik plane and there's a question is saying that you could be open about agnosticism and people can be there's a much greater variety and pluralism and tolerance of difference spiritually religiously etc and surely that represents an advance well I mean as long as you subscribe to the religion of neoliberalism you're absolutely fine as long as you believe as this gentleman does that the rich getting endlessly richer is the only way to guarantee that the poor will get rich or as well if you're a if you're a heretic from that state inculcated religion you're in quite a lot of trouble but we don't know how people felt in the Geneva of Calvin or in the Germany of Luther when they experienced the liberty of consciousness conscience that came with Protestantism we don't know how people felt sitting under the Bodhi tree when they heard the guitar MERS message you're not a part of the job is to a man i empathize isn't it twopence pickle self in those people shows that happen say Jonathan you know do you get out the bed and put on a prosaic suit I have a sense of the line you've used before let me ask you Robert it is not and I assure you I just coined it in my capacity as a novelist but very let me say this and I and I say it with a spirit of passion I ask you to reject this motion not because I don't think there are great things about the society not because I'm a happy person not a happy person because I am quite a happy person not because I don't think there's fabulous things all around us but because lots of that way of viewing the world I believe is impoverishing it's impoverishing for you and it's impoverishing for us as a society it's just the wrong way of looking at things that's all OK ROCK rod I just wanted slowing us down a bit but rod little--just I want you to address the the questionnaire at the back there the woman who mentioned the evidence on the Gates Foundation on through at least three different measures you know the global picture is improved and that poverty extreme poverty global is down by half according to those figures the evidence she was suggesting says the global picture at least has got better as the global picture according to hunger and and malnutrition has certainly got better yes we are now in in danger of of more people dying as a consequence of a beef of obesity and obesity related diseases than are now dying of malnutrition which I suppose is a sort of step forward they call it a nutrition now is yes us word in global health statistics about you know again I I wouldn't I wouldn't descend from that my point is we're talking about you have we have never had it so good we I talked to me in us and I think he look inside us I tried to do what we'll probably rightly I said we couldn't do which is to look inside the soles of us and we don't seem to be terribly happy by every means that I have available to look at this country we do not seem to be happy one more point on from the it from the other chap who asked what can we do about inequality well join the Labour Party as you know probably the best I can offer but also job didn't work out that well for inequality did it I'm not terribly well no no absolutely nightmare and fair point but if EE a doubling of the minimum wage wouldn't come amiss that's why all those firms are coming back come up a lot is charity yeah you know Thomas Hobbes the philosopher said charity exists to lighten the burden of compassion in the wealthy man we now live in a society that is dominated Rachel went on about the big society doubtless Jessie did as well I ask you do you really want to live in a society that is you know determined by the charitable impulse in this way all you hear about is charity charity charity Red Nose Day red butter Day red genitals day give your money and this in a society with greater inequality greater wealth inequality than they've been for decades okay is there not a correlation there thank you great little starved herself the charity thank you let's see we're gonna start because of where where we are with the clock we're going to start the voting now I'm hoping people I'm gonna try and get more questions in if I can but at times against us we are you're see our friends are walking around now with ballot boxes you've got the cards you using the perforation break the card either a yes goes in or no goes in or if you are on the fence in your abstaining putting the whole card this is Shh this is a secret ballot and as I've mentioned before a silent ballot there is no need for you to speak while you're voting because that we're now going to hear closing arguments from our speakers there's not much they can do to shift your view because you will be voting but let's say in reverse order here closing arguments and that means a minute or two to you Jesse Norman so sorry and rod riffle is going to go first love little you already did address this point about what people can do about it but perhaps a more on that if you can in the in your closing remarks and address anything else that's on this issue of what people can do about the inner quality you've described your variety anything leave just Riya policy so here we are you've got a couple of minutes to closing arguments on the whole thing rod a little okay so stain your chest energy oh I like it here Phil in charge this reject this motion at least partly because that phrase you've never had it so good together with its bastard kids sister we're all in it together is used by that lot to perpetuate the inequalities which are making this country less than it could be and it's less than it could be which is the problem it's less than it could be as will says spiritually but also as I would put it we are less happy about who we are about what we are and we're less happy for bloody good reasons that these inequalities exist that we're consumer-led and consumer-driven that we've lost something about our lives which is the way we relate to other people because of an atomized or existence or an enemy as Durkheim would have put it that is invaded us and is a direct consequence and is necessary to the economic policies which Jesse Norman's party follows and which indeed to its eternal shame Tony Blair's party followed as well so reject the motion on political grounds as well as on spiritual grounds thank you let's get a closing remark from you Rachel Johnson and you alright if everyone's gonna do that you might as well why don't you address if you can this notion that is it sustainable you said all these the numbers are all going up but is it sustainable both economically environmentally but also morally well I don't want to I don't want to answer that Jonathan I would I don't care how you vote I think you should you should vote for the motion it's unbelievably gloomy reductive and pessimistic if you don't we've had it good and it's it's our duty not to regard the world as getting worse all the time but to pass it on better to make sure it's better rather than just assume it's getting worse the charity sector don't knock the charity sector will it is desperately needed I'm not going to go on about my starvation or benefits treat against I'm getting such a lot of stick for it don't you you just wait will you just wait the reason we're unhappy is not because we've got too little it's because we've got too much choice material goods people unhappiness and depression is much more a first-world problem than you this side is letting on in and is acknowledging just on a lighter note just think of this in terms of coffee and my lifetime Coffee has gone from a watery fluid that looked and taste like Bovril to roasty-toasty bespoke beverage that you can get from the push of a button in your own kitchen don't knock this this is this is a material advantage it has made all our lives better every one of us in this room anyway to fight to sum up as Macaulay said on what principle is it we are not we see nothing but improvement behind us but we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us I beg you to reject the box set of doom that we've heard from will and rod amusing though they are please do not believe in the audacity of nope or of dope which is what we'll was talking about in terms of Prozac I beg you to support the motion thank you some closing remarks from you will self I love to walk often across the city I once flew to Los Angeles and walked for eight days around LA without ever stepping in a wheeled vehicle people say you can't walk in LA it's a beautiful city to walk in unlike an English suburbia the Los Angelenos tend to do all their difference of urban houses in different wacky architectural styles and there are nice broad sidewalks it's sunny the whole time but I also like walking across London free to walk just breathe walk think meditate I really really urge you to get out and have a decent walk preferably to a random destination one that is not economically compelled that's really all I have to say to you be happy live long prosper one other thing you may notice that the supporters of this motion both promoted books either by them or by their siblings and I should have promoted one by him and I failed to mention that he is his latest book is called umbrella and I also failed to mention this between pay perfectly well to do this I don't require to come along with a little stool around my name you don't but I'm not plugging you stuff on top of it unlike the materialists on there you've already done it you've already done it we're not gonna let you do it again now price point at $17.99 which no consumer thinks is anywhere near 18 pounds Jesse Norman you're it falls to you to give us to give us the last word your fellow debater refused to answer the question that we hadn't been put by me but have been put by one of our members of our audience who said it's is it sustainable morally and ecologically and there was also a dissenting note from someone in the audience who said you know even if it is better now shouldn't we always strive to make life even better and therefore not be complacent enough to say we've never had it so good so if you would deal with those two questions that have come from our audience members all the better Jesse Norman Jove that's a wonderful attempt to tie me to your agenda but if it's okay with you I'll give a closing speech that actually addresses the defects of our opposition's comments um you would have noticed a gentleman how triumphantly they fulfilled every caricature that one could possibly have wanted for most holistic pessimistic gloom stirring lugubrious issues um but lurking underneath this farrago of misdirection was a couple of points that might just be worth picking up first of all I was amused I'm sure you enchanted to see um rod defending the Labour government's position on inequality since it had roughly speaking the largest amount of money that's ever been had by any British government that could have been used to assuage it and yet real wages for the bottom third of this country did not rise after 2003 let's put that thought in your mind um and former Prime Minister Blair rod I'm sure looking forward to your explanation we weren't here it's sadly because the moment is past of how Mr Blair can run off around the world enriching himself on the back of his international call [Music] well what's the expand realize will was most magnificent but tragically magnificent and is incoherent some it would've been a wonderful to address the issue it's not a point of contention between our two sides I absolutely agree that this country in many ways has become more individualistic and more economic and our politics has become more individualistic and more economistic than we have any right to want or expect that's completely consistent with the position that we are taking the question ultimately is this Immanuel Kant that great figure says we live under the regulative Hope of that our lives can be lived free freely and with a you know in a moral community that gives them their points and their purpose and at the end of the day you either feel positively about the situation about the fact that we've laid out before you which are pretty dispositive but about how we're supposed to think about them how am I supposed to interpret them you either think the glass is half-full and we can go on and make better these moral and spiritual defects that are so obvious in our society the mode or you think there's nothing to be done and we can just cross our hands put our hands heads down and forget about it and I put it to you that that simply isn't an adequate position we have to get up there we have to do something about it it's our obligation to do that and I put it to you ladies and gentlemen that we must reject that we reject that false gloom and with it reject this hopeless opposition and accept the motion thank you very much indeed [Applause] I don't know about we've never had it so good but we don't yet have it the result of your vote but it's coming in seconds and so while we wait for that you you just were shaking your head will self at the notion of you as an embodiment of lugubrious City and other things thrown at you you want to just come back at just normal call dear all and tralala i smite him with my pig's bladder also sounded like he was campaigning for votes when he was up there no he mischaracterized what rod and i have been saying we never suggested that people shouldn't you know strive to make things better did we we never suggested anyway the motion doesn't propose that you're a glass-half-full or a glass half half empty type of person it proposes that everybody in the country feels they have some sort of psychic bumper full of vintage Bollinger that they're lifting to their lips and that clearly isn't the case so you know I must protest most vigorously not only that Jesse Norman is not a large black woman who sings beautifully but a book but a thin white man who dresses rather boringly but but that he willfully mischaracterizes what rod and I have been saying and Ward dear rod you know I used to work for rod at the Today program and I would never be happier than I and I saw his rubicund and at that time youthful face looking at me across the desks full of tedious BBC hacks here was a man out on a limb here was a man dancing on the high wire here was a happy man a happy man excellent thank you thank you that slightly felt like a round of just a minute and brilliantly you've talked us up to the imaginary whistle and I can tell you now the final result when you came in those of you who would don't knows and on the fence stood at twenty nine percent that number has cratered to just three percent so these four speakers have done a great job of shifting you now the figures stand as follows those of you who are for the motion that we've never had it so good whereas you came in forty seven percent now stand at thirty seven percent those of you who are against the motion and believe that no we have not never had it so good or rather just you disagree with we've never had it so good stand that 60 percent the motion is defeated the motion is defeated then the motion is defeated are you've already done it but let's thank finally in our remaining moments our four brilliant speakers Jesse Norman Rachel Johnson will soften riddle thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 87,176

Rating: 4.522059 out of 5

Keywords: Intelligence Squared, Debate, great oratory, Intelligence Squared debate, speech, top debates, best debates, most interesting debates, educational debates, intelligence2, intelligencesquared, is debate, iq2, iq2 debate, iq squared, Happiness, Depression, Medication, Philosophy, Debt, Community, Democracy, Employment, Unemployment, weather, history, travel, food, literature, entertaintment, doogosdahreven

Id: F1Xx3XGCZsY

Length: 96min 11sec (5771 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 24 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/SoaringRocket]

Economically yes, spiritually no.

YouTube high speed playback comes into its own on this one.