Saturday 22nd September 2012
| Archive on 4: the Debate of Our Times |
Giles Dilnot looks back over five decades of Radio 4's Any Questions and searches the archives of other discussion programmes to find out if political debate has changed in this country. Has it become more simplistic - 'dumbing down' - or has coalition politics made it more complicated? Or has what we think of as debate changed? He interviews long standing political presenters including Jonathan Dimbleby, and politicians like Tony Benn and asks them what are the key influences over the past 50 years that have influenced the way we debate politics, from dropping the 14 day rule to the introduction of rolling news which changed politics' relationship with the media forever.
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Sunday 23rd September 2012
| China's New Ricebowl |
Rana Mitter travels to Beijing to find out how China's Government is aiming to improve welfare for its 1.3 billion citizens - with a surprising purpose.
Over the last few decades, as market reform has driven China's dizzying economic rise, it has primarily been known as a nation of producers. Meanwhile, in the early years of the reform era, the Maoist 'iron rice bowl' - the cradle-to-grave welfare state, was allowed to rust and fall away. But now the Chinese Government is aiming to improve healthcare and housing, education and pensions, with the aim of fostering a nation of consumers. This, they argue, will help build a stable economy that buys its own goods, rather than relying on selling them to a recession-bound West. But that will only happen, the Government reasons, if people feel secure enough to spend rather than save.
So Rana goes to visit a young Chinese PR executive and keen online shopper in her smart central Beijing flat - and discovers that she has only clambered onto the housing ladder with the aid of years of parental saving. He meets other young professionals who can't get onto the ladder as house prices have risen so high, but who nonetheless expect little support from the state. Will the huge affordable housing programme change how much they feel able to spend?
And if hundreds of millions of Chinese are now members of a new middle class, however pressured, hundreds of millions more are urban migrants. Migrants' rights to welfare are restricted by the 'hukou' system of residency registration. This means that, having left the countryside to help build the new China, they are no longer entitled to full welfare provision. Rana talks to one such migrant in her family's tiny room to find out what this means for her son's education and her own healthcare. Will the hukou system be relaxed, as the Government has hinted? If not, her son will not be allowed to stay on into high school. And he visits another man who was driven to extreme measures to ensure his hukou-less wife's medical treatment. But in a community centre for old people in the heart of the capital, he meets grateful pensioners who have been helped through tough times by the newly-revitalised system for caring for the retired.
So - if young people's elderly relatives are looked after, if urban migrants are integrated into the welfare system, if healthcare and housing provision improve, perhaps such reforms will help grow the new nation of consumers the Government want to see. Or perhaps, as some of those Rana meets contend, it would it be better simply to raise ordinary people's wages. As China's political system gears up for change at the top, this question will be the most crucial one to affect China's social and economic model in the decade to come.
| Let's Have a Party! The Piano Genius of Mrs Mills |
Rick Wakeman, Rowland Rivron and Pete Murray are among those telling the extraordinary story of the secretary-turned-pianist who shared a manager with the Rolling Stones and studio space with the Beatles at Abbey Road.
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Monday 24th September 2012
| The Barlow-Morganstern Method |
Comedian and songwriter Tony Hawks discovers an unusual reference work, Harold Barlow and Sam Morgenstern's Dictionary of Musical Themes, which takes him on an unexpected journey into the complex world of musical plagiarism.
Along the way he talks to the country's top musicologist, a West End musical director, composer Debbie Wiseman MBE and Neil Innes, who not only won a plagiarism case, but also wrote the Beatles parody The Rutles.
| Dispatches: Undercover Retirement Home |
Dispatches goes undercover to investigate the multi-million pound retirement property industry.
| Health Before the NHS (1/2) |
Tuesday 25th September 2012
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Wednesday 26th September 2012
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Thursday 27th September 2012
| In Self Defence: Tonight |
The issue of self-defence and the rights of homeowners to protect themselves always provoke public anger and sympathy. Tonight speaks exclusively to one couple who were locked in a nightmare after intruders broke into their home - with dreadful consequences. Presented by Julie Etchingham.
| Paprika |
(2006) Satoshi Kon's Japanese animation about the chaos unleashed when a machine that can invade people's dreams is stolen. Scenes of sexual violence. In Japanese/subs.
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Friday 28th September 2012
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