Assault on the ears

Does anyone ever listen to Radio 4’s Moral Maze on Saturday nights? It is only the repeat edition (the live discussion happens on Wednesday nights), but even so why broadcast such a deliberately discomfiting programme at almost bedtime on the most mellow night of the week? It’s such an odd mismatch. There you are, winding down, daring to relax as you clear the last bits of washing-up before going to bed, only to find yourself blasted into thoughts you’d rather not have by the testy, tetchy tones of Melanie and Michael debating (with their presumably willing victims) the whys and wherefores of private schools, Nimbys, or gastric-band surgery on the NHS.

This week the team (under Michael Buerk’s baton) were looking at ‘the morality of poverty’. The debate was halfway through when I switched on and caught them talking about City bonuses and the ‘cruel’ damage that’s been done to people by the welfare system created in the 1940s by Williams Temple and Beveridge.