Ian Hislop took his hat off to the bankers. Well, at least those nice Victorian ones with a social conscience
'We're doing God's work," said Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, a couple of years ago. Ian Hislop takes a rather different view of the banks' contribution to the present financial crisis and in When Bankers Were Good (BBC2) he took us back to the 19th century when doing God's work as a banker involved a little philanthropy, rather than being extremely relaxed about getting filthy rich.
Meet the Gurneys, a banking family of Quakers steeped in the virtues of diligence, prudence and sobriety, who used their wealth to support Elizabeth Fry's prison reforms. Meet George Peabody ? the embodiment of Victorian self-help ? who managed to upset both slum landlords and hardline social reformers, by providing affordable housing for the industrious poor. Last but not least, meet the doyenne of banking largesse, Angela Burdett-Coutts, who gave stacks of money to everything from schools and hospitals to goats.
Even when 19th-century bankers turned bad, Hislop reckoned they still had some good in them. John Sadleir, the banker on whom Dickens based Mr Merdle in Little Dorrit, had enough sense of shame to kill himself for losing all his investors' cash. Hislop stopped short of suggesting that 21st-century bankers would have more friends if some of their number were to do likewise. But only just.
As a modern-day morality tale that wealth without responsibility is what John Ruskin called "illth", the programme made its point in Hislop's usual informed and entertaining style: never afraid to take a stand but staying the right side of sanctimonious. And yet, I couldn't help feeling that Hislop's desire to show up the present-day crop of bankers as venal and self-interested led him to underplay some inconvenient truths.
There were more than 350 banks in 1800 and for every Gurney, Fry and Burdett-Coutts there were dozens more who had rather fewer scruples. Not for nothing did many Victorian novelists consistently portray bankers as grasping. Nor did Hislop place Victorian banking philanthropy in a global context; one reason why many bankers did so well in the 19th century was the wealth generated through the empire. Charity may have begun at home for some bankers, but it was paid for by the exploitation of cheap labour overseas.
Not that I would imagine Hislop had any great hopes this programme would change bankers' behaviour that much: but even he must have been taken aback by how quickly events could change between filming and broadcast. "The love of money is the root of all evil," said Giles Fraser, then still canon of St Paul's Cathedral. We all know where that attitude got him. And even a satirist as good as Hislop couldn't have dreamed up Richard Branson taking over Northern Rock. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Just as bankers find ways to repackage bad debt, so broadcasters are not shy about trying to turn old ideas into new ones. They know viewers seldom tire of watching anything about either the outdoors ? Coast must have gone round the British Isles at least twice by now ? or doing something vaguely adventurous. So why not combine the two? The Adventurer's Guide to Britain (ITV1) is why not; principally because it failed to be either that adventurous or that much of a guide.
The deal is this. Each week Charlotte Uhlenbroek and Gethin Jones ? wholesome adverts for the great outdoors ? will go to a well-known landmark and explore it in an adventurous sort of way. Hmm. Last night they were in the Peak District and Gethin hopped into the back seat of someone's microlite plane to examine Mam Tor from above. "You can see things from the air that you can't from the land," he said. No way! Meanwhile, Charlotte went off caving with an expert ? an experience that rather died on the cutting-room floor, as watching someone scrabble around in the dark doesn't make for great viewing.
For their ensemble finale, Gethin and Charlotte chose to go mountain biking. Except their idea of an adventurous good time seemed to be going up a steep road and then down an old decommissioned one. Imagine. You're out in the Peak District and you have the whole countryside at your disposal and you choose to ride on tarmac. My son ? a keen mountain-biker ? couldn't believe what he was seeing. "That's hilarious," said Gethin, at one point. Even Charlotte struggled with that. Sometimes even being there isn't enough.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/nov/22/when-bankers-were-good-adventurers
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