News stories from around the world that we need to talk about this week – the Spanish politician claiming fake news, the US Cub scout sticking it to a pro-gun senator, and the UK government’s air quality cover-up.
What are we talking about?
Claims of fake news in Spanish politics and Alfonso Dastis’ brilliant audacity.
Wait … what?
Spanish foreign minister Alfonso Dastis told Andrew Marr, in a live BBC television interview, that the news footage showing Spanish police pulling women out of polling stations by their hair during the “pop-up” referendum earlier this month in Catalonia was fake.
So ... why are we talking about it?
Because it demonstrates that President Trump, as much as it pains us to admit it, might be a key political thinker of our time. While the rest of us waste time looking for old-fashioned facts to support our conclusions, Trump has pioneered the post-truth tactic.
And, as Dastis demonstrates, it’s becoming a popular gambit. The old Enlightenment-style debate was a sort of rhetorical tai chi, calmly collapsing your opponent’s argument with polite reason. The new, Trump-inspired hotness is more like intellectual sumo – bowling your adversary over with sheer avoirdupois.
When politicians say stuff like “there were millions of people at my inauguration”, and “we’ll give £350m a week to the NHS”, or – as in this case – “those riot police whacking people over the head with their batons are in fact doing quite the opposite”, it feels impossible to argue with them. There’s no rebutting a shameless lie. It’s brilliantly horrible.
What are we talking about?
Cub scout Ames Mayfield getting kicked out for speaking truth to power.
Wait … what?
Ames Mayfield, an 11-year-old Cub scout, attended an event in Broomfield, Colorado that featured Republican state senator Vicki Marble as a guest speaker. The Cub scouts in Mayfield’s den were invited to prepare a topic that mattered to them, which they could discuss with the senator.
Ames raised some fairly cogent points about Marble’s position on gun control, such as: “I was shocked that you co-sponsored a bill to allow a domestic violence offender to continue to own a gun ... why on earth would you want somebody who beats their wife to have access to a gun?”
He followed up by addressing the somewhat questionable remarks Marble had made about African-Americans’ health and eating fried chicken. Ames’ mother, Lori Mayfield, said that a local scout leader later told her the topic of gun control was too political and that the boy’s questions were disrespectful. Ames was then asked to leave his local Cub scout group.
So ... why are we talking about it?
Well, mainly because the little guy is a hero. The senator’s point of view is that Mayfield’s mum coached him into raising difficult points, but in a country where there have been 1,516,863 gun-related civilian deaths since 1968 (contrasting with approximately 1,400,000 deaths in all of the US’s armed conflicts since 1776), it almost doesn’t matter who’s asking the question.
And for an 11-year-old to stand up in a public forum and ask difficult questions of a state senator demonstrates an admirable determination to “help other people at all times”, as laid out in the Cub scout law.
The late Whitney Houston sang that children are the future. If Mayfield is any barometer of how today’s kids are thinking, we’re with Whitney.
What are we talking about?
Another inconvenient truth: what the UK government doesn’t want us to know about air quality.
Wait … what?
Just when you thought you’d heard enough about the environment being comprehensively knackered, it turns out that the air we breathe is in a pretty terrible way. Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution, produced mainly by diesel vehicles, has been illegally high in most urban areas of Britain since 2010.
But the government (not wanting us to worry) have kindly covered it up. And, because those guys don’t do anything on the cheap, they’ve spent £370,000 of taxpayers’ money trying to keep the story muffled .
So ... why are we talking about it?
Because a group of environmental lawyers who go by the name Client Earth have been hammering away at government environment supremo Michael Gove for months and they’ve finally managed to get him to release the figures.
And they’re pretty scary. NO2 air pollution causes an estimated 23,500 early deaths every year in the UK, which rises to 40,000 when other pollutants are considered. That is a lot of taxpayers who are no longer around to subsidise the government’s fight against revealing the truth.
The pollution is worse in cities and worst of all in London. So spare a thought for Gove as he travels into the capital each week for parliament.
Listen to Jolyon Rubinstein, Josie Long, Russell Kane and Kate Forrester on this week’s We Need To Talk About ... podcast
