Tom Bentley
Policy Adviser, Government of Victoria
Tom Bentley will be Executive Director for policy and cabinet for the Premier of Victoria, Australia from September 2006. He was Director of Demos from 1999-2006.
at 12:03pm on Thursday, 3rd November 2005
Last week I took part in the Moral Maze on Radio 4, discussing whether our approach to 'public risk' is creating a culture of fear among that public. The panel included Melanie Philips of the Daily Mail and Clare Fox of the Institute of Ideas, as well as Stephen Rose, who is contributing to a forthcoming Demos collection on Better Humans. Being a witness on the moral maze is a bit like running a gauntlet, with panellists doing their best to outwit you from any direction, but the point that seemed to create most resonance was the fact that our competition to be heard, which they were all individually displaying, creates an 'attention seeking' culture in which the temptation to overplay (or underplay) risks like MMR, avian flu, violent crime, and so on is unintentionally amplified by the interaction between all those participants in the public debate. It reminded me of Mike Power's Demos pamphlet The risk management of everything, in which he points out that the cumulative effects of every single institution covering its own potential liabilities is not necessarily a safer or saner world.
Last week I took part in the Moral Maze on Radio 4, discussing whether our approach to 'public risk' is creating a culture of fear among that public. The panel included Melanie Philips of the Daily Mail and Clare Fox of the Institute of Ideas, as well as Stephen Rose, who is contributing to a forthcoming Demos collection on Better Humans. Being a witness on the moral maze is a bit like running a gauntlet, with panellists doing their best to outwit you from any direction, but the point that seemed to create most resonance was the fact that our competition to be heard, which they were all individually displaying, creates an 'attention seeking' culture in which the temptation to overplay (or underplay) risks like MMR, avian flu, violent crime, and so on is unintentionally amplified by the interaction between all those participants in the public debate. It reminded me of Mike Power's Demos pamphlet The risk management of everything, in which he points out that the cumulative effects of every single institution covering its own potential liabilities is not necessarily a safer or saner world.
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