It wasn't just Alison out and about recently - we all went to this event but Alison wrote it up:
George Monbiot was in town for one night only. I wasn't sure what to expect. We frequently read his blog and almost got him to agree to meet us for lunch at our last Away Day, but aside from knowing he is an excellent scribe with very well-formed personal views on a progressive society, we didn't know much else.
The format worked well - George opened the event with a 10 minute speech presenting an opinion on the changes to the NHS. And then he opened up the discussion to the floor. It was well attended with young and old there in equal numbers. He has done these events a lot in the past few years and took care to allow equal comments from men and women. Whilst I expect he was preaching to the converted in many cases, it was also a great opportunity to challenge our own opinions by listening to comments from a wide range of people in the audience. There were chatterboxes, quietly considered opinions, rambling comments, rants, left wingers, right wingers and bang in the middle wingers and swearers. We talked about the economy, society, the power of individuals, climate change, fossil fuels, supply and demand models and prostitution.
But the one thing I took away from it is the huge variety of opinions that are out there and the correspondingly huge privilege we have in terms of being allowed to express our opinions in public in this country. I agreed with some and I completely disagreed with others. But that didn't reduce the respect I had for anyone in the room. They are all entitled to their opinions. It would be great if we could find a way to get more and more people from all walks of life interested in sharing their views in this way.
So George....please keep doing that!
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