On Christmas Day at 1pm, LBC broadcast a 2 hour Call Clegg Christmas Special which had been recorded at Great Ormond Street Hospital. He spent time visiting patients and then took questions from staff and patients in the hospital’s education centre.
I had it on in the background while I was cooking, so my coverage was a little bit patchy. I love Twitter, but even I can’t manage to tweet while basting the turkey and getting the roast potatoes sorted.
It had absolutely the right tone for a Christmas Day episode. Nick was his usual, relaxed, normal self. There were lots of fun moments. My favourite was when he referred to Nick Ferrari as Old Nick, one of Satan’s alter egos. When asked about which languages he spoke, he told a story of how he and his siblings were in a lift slagging off one of their fellow passengers in Dutch – only to have him turn round and tell them, in Dutch, that he understood every word.
The bit that was trailed in the media was his passion for kickboxing and how he’d asked Miriam to get him boxing gloves for Christmas. He said that he sometimes imagined people while kickboxing, but that they would remain nameless.
He was asked some policy questions too and took a pretty consensual approach. He said that it was up to all parties to work out a solution to housing because we needed more houses to be built.
He was asked how he persuaded people round to his point of view. After a bit of self-deprecating “do I?” jokey stuff, he gave an answer that was very much in keeping with the spirit of Mark Valladares’ article from yesterday. He said that he tried to use humour to illustrate his point and to stick to the facts rather than attack the person. He did admit, though that he sometimes made an exception for Ed Balls.
I found the part where he was talking to the Intensive Care nurses particularly moving. I have had to spend time visiting in an ICU in my life and I was so impressed with the nurses. Their nursing skills had to be top notch to understand all the complexities of any given situation, but they were also so compassionate and understanding towards the visitors who were going through all manner of hell. He asked how they coped with their job and they said that they tended to get the emotions out on some everyday event at home, like losing hair straighteners.
Sadly, LBC don’t seem to have put this episode up on their website, so all I can offer you is my very brief collection of tweets. Feel free to pile in with some more snippets from the show if you listened to it.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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7 Comments
Weren’t his comments about Ed Balls a bit weird? I know the Tories loathe Balls, probably because he is exceptionally intelligent, as do some Blairites, for different reasons, but Clegg? Why should he hate Balls?
Surely there are worse human beings in parliament, George Galloway, the old homophobes and racists lurking on the Tory backbenches, and so on?
Unless this is Coalition policy, slag off Ed Balls as much as they can, in which case quite outrageously cynical of Clegg.
Goodness knows why Nick Clegg mentioned Ed Balls. It might be understandable since Balls is so unrelentingly tribalist, but all the more reason ton to mention him. Moreover, I cannot recall Clegg attacking Balls rather than what Balls says. Not hearing the programme myself, could it be that Nick Clegg was trying to make a (failed) light hearted, self-deprecatory quip?
g – is Balls so exceptionally intelligent? Exceptional in what sense? Compared to others on Labour’s front bench? Compared to others on front benches on both sides? Personally I cannot see that he is in any significant more (or even less) intelligent than Osborne.
Well, I would not call Balls exceptionally intelligent, but it was a rather mean-spirited joke from Clegg, which I would rather not have heard.
I am also disappointed to hear he used Dutch to talk about someone whilst they are there. I had to suffer that indignation all the time in Taiwan – and it is just not pleasant.
Martin,
g – is Balls so exceptionally intelligent? Exceptional in what sense? Compared to others on Labour’s front bench? Compared to others on front benches on both sides? Personally I cannot see that he is in any significant more (or even less) intelligent than Osborne.
First in PPE from Oxford, Kennedy Scholar at Harvard, Teaching Fellow at Harvard in Economics, lead economics leader writer at the FT, economic advisor to Gordon Brown, then the Treasury.,
I think that, at least in academic terms, ranks him above Cameron and Osborne for ability and expertise in Economics and indeed much of the Labour front bench. Curiously, Ed Miliband has a comparable, if slightly less outstanding, background.
You may regard the latter pre-parliament positions as black marks, but that might be a political view.
What cannot be ignored is that Balls (and to a lesser extent Miliband), have more of a grounding in economics than any member of the quad.
g – I had not realised that Balls also had a PPE first, putting him on a par with Cameron (neither were awarded congratulatory firsts). This obviously merits some respect. To state that Balls has more grounding in Economics than anyone in the quad is pushing it though. Cable’s academic, industrial and public service experience arguably outstrips Balls, whose experience outside government is limited. It is interesting to note that Alexander, Cable and Cameron have backgrounds in Oxbridge Economics, though Cable is the closest to a pure economist. The only problem with PPE is that you c
g – I had not realised that Balls also had a PPE first, putting him on a par with Cameron (neither were awarded congratulatory firsts). This obviously merits some respect. To state that Balls has more grounding in Economics than anyone in the quad is pushing it though. Cable’s academic, industrial and public service experience arguably outstrips Balls, whose experience outside government is limited. It is interesting to note that Alexander, Cable and Cameron have backgrounds in Oxbridge Economics, though Cable is the closest to a pure economist. The only problem with PPE is that you cannot be sure of the weighing to the three areas of study (some do not agree that politics is a proper academic subject!).
I have just found on a BBC profile that Danny Alexander also got a first ; clearly something he chooses not to highlight.
Sorry about the double post (computer doing odd things).