A Point Of View

A weekly reflection on a topical issue.

Peter Aspden thinks the powerful influence of Greece, both ancient and modern, on European sensibilities makes the current economic crisis full of emotionally charged symbolism. "I often think that the hostility between Greece and its harshest current antagonist Germany, for example, is best seen as a furious tiff between former lovers." Producer: Sheila Cook.

Although he loves to read collections of private letters by public figures, Adam Gopnik feels disturbed and offended by the lip-smacking ease with which people thumb through Hillary Clinton's or Amy Pascal's once private e-mails and asks what are the proper limits of privacy in the Internet age. Are we putting at risk part of the future historical record? "The practice of showing what life is really like later depends on keeping some parts of life clandestine while they're happening". Producer: Sheila Cook.

Adam Gopnik wonders why religious people are feeling "persecuted" following the US Supreme Court ruling making same sex marriage legal in all fifty states. Can a religious person free to practice their religion actually feel persecuted? Are they just offended by the practices of a pluralistic society, or do they have a point? "Their complaint is, in its way, one that seems fixed in the political choices of the late Roman Empire: the only alternatives they can recognise as real are either power or persecution. Either you are the magistrate making rules, or else you are the martyr being sacrificed to them." Producer: Sheila Cook.

Adam Gopnik's ten-year family reunion brings into focus the passage of time. "The inescapable material of any family reunion, British or American, Jewish or Celtic, is always the same: each offering a hair-raising or hair-losing seminar on the effects of time on the human body and soul, and especially on the difference between aging and growing." Producer: Sheila Cook.

Adam Gopnik's experience of writing a libretto casts light on the mysterious relationship between words and music. "Sung words belong more fully to the world of ritual and routine, of incantation and mother's murmurings, than to the fully lucid and well-lit world of argument." Producer:Sheila Cook.

Adam Gopnik found himself supplanted as his family's waffle maker while he was away on a trip and concludes there are no indispensable people in any organization (or family) anywhere, though we all like to imagine that there are. There are only instructions on the side of the box, which anyone can follow. Producer: Sheila Cook.

"A school's core strength is that it's a school" writes AL Kennedy. She argues that the "monetisation" of learning - where its value is assessed in purely monetary terms - risks destroying the very essence of learning. She says we need to rethink this "quiet mess" before it's too late.

"I'm getting old. Not older, just old" begins AL Kennedy. Through childhood memories of drinking Creamola Foam, her grandfather's voice ...and being kicked by a boy in the shin during playtimes, she reflects on how age changes our perception of the past and the future. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

AL Kennedy takes the recent death of a friend - the screenwriter Gill Dennis - as her starting point in an exploration of courtesy. "When courtesy walks into a room," she writes, "it seems to turn a light on". She contrasts this with a striking example of discourtesy she encountered on a train journey. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

AL Kennedy says the election results in Scotland reflect a surge in political engagement in which people continue to feel they have the power to make a difference. "A significant percentage of Scotland's voters on both sides of the independence question currently seem intent on reverse-engineering a democracy by beginning with hope." Producer: Sheila Cook.

David Cannadine says when Barack Obama's critics accuse him of acting like a king they're forgetting the origins of the office of President. "From the outset, the American presidency was vested with what might be termed monarchical authority, which meant that it really was a form of elective kingship." Producer: Sheila Cook.

The American writer PJ O'Rourke gives his view of the UK election. "In the once solidly red-rosette glens and braes and lochs and heather the Scottish National Party snatched the sporran, ripped the kilt off and walked away in the ghillie brogues of Labour"Producer: Sheila Cook.

David Cannadine reflects on the merits of youth and age in our political leaders and finds the current set taking their parties into next week's election strikingly young. "It's a curious and unexplained paradox that in earlier times, when life expectancy was much lower than it is today, politicians were generally much older; whereas nowadays, when life expectancy is much greater, it's widely believed, at least in some quarters, that politicians ought to be younger". Producer: Sheila Cook.

David Cannadine compares the enthusiasm for national commemorations in Britain with the more understated syle in the United States. "It's easier for Britain, which is a relatively small and unified nation, with a strong central government, to stage nationally inclusive displays of commemoration than it is for the United States, which is a country with a relatively weak federal government, that many people dislike and distrust, and which oversees a vast transcontinental empire extending from one ocean to another and beyond." Producer: Sheila Cook.

Howard Jacobson explains why he prefers art to ideology, especially at election time, and always has. "I consider myself fortunate enough to have been brought up in a state of dogma-free grace." "...the point of art is to refute whatever it is we've made up our minds about." Producer: Sheila Cook.

Howard Jacobson explains why he dislikes the narcissism of the selfie."It's always possible that there's some Rembrandt of the selfie out there, using his 'phone to investigate the ravages of age, the incursions of melancholy, and even the psychology of self-obsession itself, but commonly the selfie performs a less self-critical function, putting the self at the centre of everything we see, marking the landscape with our faces, as though the only possible interest of the outside world is that we're in it."Producer: Sheila Cook.

Howard Jacobson thinks the current focus of male fashion on the ankle region or "mankle", revealed by the trousers of skimpily cut suits, shows men are suffering from a self-image crisis. "It would be a brave person who argued that what we wear counts for more than what we say, but in an image-driven culture our attention is always liable to drift away from words, however well chosen, to tailoring."Producer: Sheila Cook.

Tom Shakespeare says that disabled people's right to independent living is under threat as a result of the imminent winding up of the Independent Living Fund. "I hope that whichever parties are in government after May will have a rethink about social care. The ILF may...have been an anomaly, but one of the glories of living in Britain is that we have a high tolerance of historical anomalies." Producer: Sheila Cook.

Tom Shakespeare thinks our reformed Select Committees have revitalised Parliament but he warns against the temptation to play to the gallery and to cross examine unfairly. "Their main business is the worthy task of holding the government and the civil service to account, even if it's more fun holding unpopular public figures' feet to the fire." Producer: Sheila Cook.