Sorry, this programme is not available to listen again. (why?) Last broadcast today, 20:00 on BBC Radio 4 (see all broadcasts). Tomorrow, 13:10 on BBC Radio 4 Shaun Ley chairs the topical debate from Burnley. The panellists are UKIP chairman Paul Nuttall, former editor of The Sun Kelvin MacKenzie, professor emeritus at the Royal College of Arts Christopher Frayling and professor of politics and women's studies at the University of York Haleh Afshar. BARONESS AFSHAR is Professor of Politics and Women’s Studies at York University. Haleh Afshar was appointed to the House of Lords as a crossbench people’s peer in 2007. She is an adviser to the Government on public policy relating to Muslim women and Islamic law, and founded the Muslim Women's Network. In September she was appointed to the Women’s National Commission. In 2005, she was awarded an OBE for services to equal opportunities. She is Visiting Professor of Islamic Law at the International Faculty of Comparative Law, University of Strasbourg. She was born and raised in Iran but also schooled in England. She gained her PhD from Cambridge University and returned to Iran where she worked as a journalist and civil servant. She was Honorary President of the United Nation Association's International Services and chaired the British Association of Middle Eastern Studies. For seven years she served as deputy chair of the British Council's Gender and Development Task Force. She has contributed to and edited a range of publications, including co-editing Development, Women, and War (Oxfam 2004). PROFRESSOR SIR CHRISTOPHER FRAYLING is a writer, broadcaster and Professor Emeritus of Cultural History at the Royal College of Art. He was Chairman of Arts Council England from 2004 to 2009. Recently he has said “the arts cost tuppence ha'penny, and it's 'good' spending, because you get so much value from it… a recession is the last moment you want to tamper with the arts, not the first.” His career began as a history lecturer at the University of Exeter. From there he joined the Imperial War Museum as a film archivist. He claims to have invented the film description “spaghetti western” having written a book with that title in 1967. He has published numerous books and articles on the arts, education and popular culture, including a vast biography of the Italian film-maker Sergio Leone and most recently Horace Walpole’s Cat (2009). He is a Trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum and has been Chairman of the Design Council, a Trustee of the Design Museum, Chairman of the Crafts Study Centre and a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Board. He was knighted for services to art and design education in January 2001. KELVIN MACKENZIE is a media entrepreneur and former editor of The Sun. He has returned to the newspaper as a regular columnist following a series of media ventures. As editor he was known for memorable front page headlines, such as “Gotcha” following the sinking of the Belgrano and “Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster. On the day of the European elections he invited his readers to make their anger known at the ballot box and “give the lying, deceitful, cowardly, cunning, criminal weasels who run our nation a bloody nose they will never forget”. In 1994 MacKenzie left the tabloid to briefly work for BSkyB as Managing Director before joining Live TV. He went on to become chairman and chief executive of The Wireless Group which took over Talk Radio, successfully relaunching it as talkSPORT. He has chaired lads’ mag publishers, Highbury House and Media Square and he remains chairman of a media business including MyVideoRights. PAUL NUTTALL is the Chairman of the UK Independence Party. A former History lecturer, he has been a member of UKIP since 2004 and formed the party’s South Sefton branch in 2005. Since then he has stood in one general election and three local elections, taking 38% of the vote in Bootle last time. After two years in Brussels working with UKIP’s MEPs and their team of researchers, he was appointed the party's youngest ever Chairman in 2008 when he was 31. He says “I believe the European Union to be profoundly undemocratic. Between 75% – 80% of all UK law now comes from Brussels, yet it is a Union driven by an unelected and unaccountable Commission.” Last year, he also said that it had been UKIP, not the Green party, that denied BNP seats in the European Parliament: “The best vote to keep the BNP out is the one where you vote UKIP,” he said.12/02/2010
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THIS WEEK'S PANEL
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Fri 12 Feb 2010
20:00
Sat 13 Feb 2010
13:10
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