Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Post-Truth
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 4/8/1962
WEBSITE: https://www.evandavis.co.uk/
CITY: London
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born April 8, 1962, in Malvern, Worcestershire, England; son of Quintin Visser and Hazel Noreen Davis; partner of Guillaume Baltz.
EDUCATION:Oxford University, graduated, 1984; Harvard University, M.P.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Television and radio personality, writer. Institute for Fiscal Studies, London, England, economist; London Business School, England, writer for Business Strategy Review; British Broadcasting Company (BBC), London, England, economics correspondent, 1993-97, economics editor for Newsnight, 1997-2001, senior economics editor, 2001-08; presenter of Today, BBC Radio 4, 2008-14; presenter of Newsnight, BBC2, 2014—; presenter of Dragons’ Den, BBC2; host of The Bottom Line, BBC Radio 4.
AVOCATIONS:Riding motorcycles.
AWARDS:Broadcast Journalist of the Year, Work Foundation, 1998, 2001, 2003; Harold Wincott Business Broadcaster of the Year, Wincott Foundation, 2002. Other awards from organizations, including the Television and Radio Industries Club and the Political Studies Association.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Evan Davis is a British writer and television and radio personality. He holds degrees from Oxford University and Harvard University. Davis worked for the Institute for Fiscal Studies and London Business School before joining the BBC as an economics correspondent in 1993. He eventually served as senior economics editor and became a present on the television programs, Newsnight and Dragons’ Den. He has also hosted the Today and Bottom Line radio shows.
Made in Britain
In an interview with Miranda Sawyer, writer on the London Guardian Online, Davis described his 2011 book, Made in Britain: How the Nation Earns Its Living. He stated: “That one is about whether Britain has got enough industry. Can we survive without manufacturing? Can we build an economy on services? It’s all bound up with issues of national identity. The Germans are clear about what they do – cars and machine tools; the Japanese are clear about what they do – electronics; the Chinese are clear about what they do—they’re the workshop of the world. We’re less clear and that’s because we’ve moved towards the intangible sectors more than other developed economies. We are a huge net exporter of business and commercial services.” Davis discussed the optimistic tone of the book in an interview with Duncan Robinson, contributor to the New Statesman. He stated: “I don’t want to sound like ‘chirpy Evan’ who’s just bouncing around with his unrealistic views and doesn’t understand what’s going on. The bleakness is, I think, on a five-year horizon—and it has to do with us having to make a number of very painful adjustments.” Highlighting the timeliness of the book, Davis told Robinson: “We’re at a critical juncture, post-financial crisis. The dust is settling, so this is a good time for the nation to ask what we did right, what we did wrong.”
George Eaton, reviewer in the New Statesman, commented: “Davis … has a gift for explaining abstract ideas in clear language. At a time when economic literacy remains woefully low (I have heard several MPs confuse the national debt with the deficit), Made in Britain deserves a wide readership. But even though the book has analytical appeal, it is of little prescriptive value.” Writing on the Financial Times Online, Brian Groom suggested: “This book’s strength is that it works hard to explain the economics lucidly for the general reader—Davis is a skilled communicator—while not falling for sloppy thinking that overstates the problem.” Groom continued: “His account … is a thoughtful analysis of where the economy stands. The most useful skills, he says, are the basic ones of literacy and numeracy, which allow people to transfer from one activity to another as the economy adapts—not original but, nonetheless, true.” Referring to Davis, Sean O’Grady, contributor to the London Independent Online, asserted: “He has a chatty, broadcaster’s style of writing.” O’Grady described Made in Britain as a “lively, upbeat account.”
Post-Truth
In 2018, Davis released Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It. In this volume, he discusses the recent rise in falsehoods and exaggerations in the news and makes predictions on the return of factual integrity.
Toner Quinn, reviewer on the Irish Times Online, discussed Davis’s argument that people’s frustration with disrespect for facts will help to drive a return to truth in the media. Quinn stated: “This is all sensible and thoughtful, and one hopes these ideas will gain wider currency, but many of Davis’s conclusions on ‘the measures society and its institutions can take to improve public discourse’ are disappointing and weak. He seeks long-term thinking from professional communicators, but ignores the insecurity of the short-term contracts that so many work on plus the need for quick results. … His focus is so much on personal psychology that it’s almost as if the wider influence of cruising corporations on public discourse doesn’t exist, which is bizarre.” In a more favorable assessment of the book on the London School of Economics blog, Ignas Kalpokas remarked: “Post-Truth is one of the first, and by far the most successful, analyses of post-truth in its context, its historical antecedents, the cultural factors that enable the post-truth environment and an insightful discussion of its implications.” Kalpokas concluded: “Overall, Evan Davis’s Post-Truth manages to combine journalistic flare and accessibility with the substance you would expect from a scholarly volume. Admittedly, that substance does come at some cost: those expecting quick answers will be slightly disappointed as the author’s ambition is obviously to go beyond the trivial. However, those capable of dedicating the necessary amount of time (but not necessarily patience—Evan Davis is a great storyteller) will be rewarded with a multi-faceted understanding of how post-truth has emerged and functions in our societies.” “Post-Truth has plenty … sweet little encapsulations and byways to keep the reader entertained as well as informed,” asserted Chris Deerin in Management Today. A Kirkus Reviews critic noted that the book featured a “dense but accessible argument.” The critic added: “Throughout, Davis’ approach is unquestionably British, and it will help if readers have a sense of British politics.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2018, review of Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It.
London Guardian, June 2, 2012, Ian Pindar, review of Made in Britain: How the Nation Earns Its Living, p. 19.
Management Today, July 1, 2017, Chris Deerin, “Books: Wading through the Rubbish,” review of Post-Truth.
New Statesman, June 20, 2011, Duncan Robinson, author interview, p. 49; June 27, 2011, Eaton, George. , “The Perils of Optimism,” review of Made in Britain, p. 49.
ONLINE
Evan Davis website, https://www.evandavis.co.uk (May 28, 2018).
Financial Times Online, https://www.ft.com/ (May 20, 2011), Brian Groom, review of Made in Britain.
Irish Times Online, https://www.irishtimes.com/ (June 3, 2017), Toner Quinn, review of Post-Truth.
Little, Brown website, https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/ (May 28, 2018), author profile.
London Guardian Online, https://www.theguardian.com/ (May 8, 2011), Miranda Sawyer, author interview.
London Independent Online, https://www.independent.co.uk/ (May 21, 2011), Sean O’Grady, review of Made in Britain; (February 1, 2016), Maya Oppenheim, author interview.
London School of Economics blog, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ (April 27, 2017), Ignas Kalpokas, review of Post-Truth.
EVAN DAVIS
Evan Davis was born in 1962 in Surrey. He is the highly respected presenter of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, as well as presenting BBC Two business reality show Dragons' Den.
Evan Davis is the main presenter of BBC2’s Newsnight, a role he began in September 2014. From April 2008 up to then he was a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He is also well-known as the presenter of the BBC2 business reality show Dragons’ Den, and he hosts a weekly business discussion programme, The Bottom Line, on Radio 4. Prior to the Today programme he was the Economics Editor of the BBC, the most senior economics reporter in the corporation. He has won awards for his broadcast journalism from, among others, the Political Studies Association, the Wincott Foundation and the Television and Radio Industries Club. He studied at St John’s College Oxford and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Evan Davis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other people named Evan Davis, see Evan Davis (disambiguation).
Evan Davis
Evan Davis (journalist), 2007.jpg
Davis in 2007
Born Evan Harold Davis
8 April 1962 (age 56)
Malvern, Worcestershire, England
Residence Earl's Court
Alma mater
St John's College, Oxford
Harvard University
Occupation Journalist and TV presenter
Years active 1986–present
Employer BBC
Notable credit(s)
Dragons' Den (2005—)
Today (2008–14)
Newsnight (2014—)
Salary £250,000 - £299,999
Partner(s) Guillaume Baltz
Evan Davis' voice
MENU0:00
recorded August 2013
Evan Harold Davis (born 8 April 1962 in Malvern, Worcestershire[1]) is an English economist, journalist, and presenter for the BBC.
In October 2001, Davis took over from Peter Jay as the BBC's economics editor. He left this post in April 2008 to become a presenter on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. He stood down after the 26 September 2014 edition of Today to become a main presenter on Newsnight, replacing Jeremy Paxman.
Davis is also the presenter for the BBC Two venture-capitalist programme Dragons' Den, as well as The Bottom Line, a business conversation show, also on BBC Radio 4. He earns £250,000 - £299,999 as a BBC presenter.[2]
Contents
1 Early life
2 Early career
3 BBC
3.1 Economics editor
3.2 Today programme
3.3 Newsnight
4 Writing
5 Personal life
6 Honours and awards
7 Bibliography
8 References
9 External links
Early life
Davis was born in Malvern, Worcestershire to Quintin Visser Davis and Hazel Noreen Davis.[3] He grew up in Ashtead, Surrey.[4] He attended Dorking County Grammar School, which in 1976 became The Ashcombe School, Dorking. Davis then gained a First in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St John's College, Oxford, which he attended from 1981 to 1984, before obtaining an MPA at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.[5] While at Oxford University, he edited Cherwell, the student newspaper.
Early career
Davis began work as an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and while there he was briefly seconded to help officials work on early development of the Community Charge system of local government taxation (better known as the Poll Tax).[6] In 1988 he moved to the London Business School, writing articles for their publication Business Strategy Review. He returned to the Institute for Fiscal Studies in 1992, writing a paper on "Britain, Europe and the Square Mile" for the European Policy Forum which argued that British financial prosperity depended on being seen as a bridgehead to the European Union.[7]
In 1993, Davis joined the BBC as an economics correspondent. He worked as economics editor on BBC Two's Newsnight programme from 1997 to 2001. In the mid-1990s he was a member of the Social Market Foundation's Advisory Council;[8] he is a member of the British-American Project for a Successor Generation.[9]
BBC
Economics editor
As the BBC's economics editor, Davis was responsible for reporting and analysing economic developments on a range of programmes on BBC radio and television, particularly the Ten O'Clock News. He also had a role in shaping the extensive BBC coverage of economics across all the corporation's outputs, including online.
Davis also wrote a blog for the BBC website entitled Evanomics in which he "attempts to understand the real world, using the tool kit of economics". Subjects he discussed included road pricing, care for the elderly, Gordon Brown's Budget and how to choose wine.
Davis has won several awards including the Work Foundation's Broadcast Journalist of the Year award in 1998, 2001 and 2003, and the Harold Wincott Business Broadcaster of the Year award in 2002. In 2008, Davis was ranked first in the Independent on Sunday's "pink list" of the hundred most influential gay and lesbian figures in British society.[10]
On 23 May 2005, Davis crossed picket lines during a day of industrial action by BBC staff over announced job cuts. Other notable broadcasters who turned up for work during the strike included Terry Wogan, Shelagh Fogarty and Declan Curry.[11][12] Davis was also noted for breaking a strike at the BBC, called by the National Union of Journalists, on 6 November 2010, when he arrived to present the Today Programme at 3:30am, along with fellow presenter Sarah Montague, not technically crossing a picket line as they arrived before it was formed.[13]
Today programme
In mid-2007, Davis was a guest presenter on the Today programme for two weeks. In April 2008, he stood down as BBC Economics Editor to join the Today programme as a full-time presenter replacing Carolyn Quinn.[14][15] In 2009, Davis said that one of the best things about presenting on the radio is that "you can look things up on Wikipedia while on air".[16]
On top of his duties at Today, Davis also presents The Bottom Line, a weekly discussion programme on Radio 4 as well as Dragons' Den on BBC Two.[5]
In 2012, Davis presented Built in Britain which looked at the role of major infrastructure projects in the UK, including examining the impact of the M25 on the town of Ashtead in Surrey where he grew up.
In 2014, Davis presented a BBC Two series Mind the Gap: London vs the Rest in which he explored the economic forces in Britain and why the capital city is so dominant.[17]
Newsnight
On 21 July 2014, it was announced that Davis would replace Jeremy Paxman as presenter of Newsnight starting in Autumn 2014.[18] His last appearance as a presenter on Today was 26 September 2014.[19]
Davies was found to have breached BBC rules on due impartiality in coverage of the 2017 French presidential election on Newsnight, giving the impression that he favoured Emmanuel Macron over Marine Le Pen. The BBC Executive Complaints Unit ruled that Davis’ approaches in back-to-back interviews with representatives of the Macron and le Pen campaigns was so marked as to constitute bias.[20][21]
Writing
Davis' 1998 book Public Spending was published by Penguin. In it he argued for the privatisation of public services as a means of increasing efficiency. Davis' second book, Made in Britain: How the Nation Earns Its Living, was published by Little, Brown and Company in May 2011. His third book, "Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It" is published by Little, Brown and Company in May 2017.
Personal life
Davis lives in London with his partner Guillaume Baltz, a French landscape architect.[22][23][24] He is the owner of a whippet named Mr. Whippy.[25] Davis is a keen motorcyclist, and was seen riding a Yamaha R6 motorcycle in BBC Two's The City Uncovered.[26]
Honours and awards
Davis holds honorary degrees from the Open University,[27] City University, Cardiff University,[28] Coventry University[29] and Aston University.[30]
Bibliography
Davis, E. (1998), Public Spending, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books ISBN 0-14-026446-9
Davis, E. (2011), Made in Britain, London: Little Brown ISBN 9781408703304
Davis, E. (2017), Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It, London: Little Brown ISBN 9781408703311
Edit
Evan Davis
Biography
Showing all 6 items
Jump to: Overview (2) | Mini Bio (1) | Personal Quotes (3)
Overview (2)
Born April 8, 1962 in Ashtead, Surrey, England, UK
Birth Name Evan Harold Davis
Mini Bio (1)
Evan Davis was born on April 8, 1962 in Ashtead, Surrey, England as Evan Harold Davis. He is known for his work on Mind the Gap: London vs the Rest (2014), Dragons' Den (2005) and Have I Got News for You (1990).
Personal Quotes (3)
[to Nigel Farage] It seems that you are yearning for a country that has moved on.
[on the death of Princess Diana] Those of us who are old enough will never forget that week. We knew it was an extraordinary moment at the time. It felt like a turning point in national character, we became more outwardly emotional and vocal about it, demanding, almost, expressions of feelings.
If I ran the system, honours would go to people whose material compensation vastly under-rewards them for their achievements.
Known For
Mind the Gap: London vs the Rest
Mind the Gap: London vs the Rest
Writer
(2014)
Dragons' Den
Dragons' Den
Himself - Presenter / Himself
(2005-2017)
Have I Got News for You
Have I Got News for You
Himself
(2002-2016)
Panorama
Panorama
Himself
(2011)
Show Show all | | Edit
Filmography
Jump to: Writer | Miscellaneous Crew | Self | Archive footage
Hide HideWriter (1 credit)
2014 Mind the Gap: London vs the Rest (TV Series documentary)
Hide HideMiscellaneous Crew (1 credit)
2010 The Day the Immigrants Left (TV Movie) (presenter)
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2014-2018 Newsnight (TV Series)
Himself - Presenter / Himself - Party Conference Presenter
- Episode dated 17 April 2018 (2018) ... Himself - Presenter
- Episode dated 13 November 2017 (2017) ... Himself - Presenter
- The Problem with Men (2017) ... Himself - Presenter
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- Episode dated 23 March 2017 (2017) ... Himself - Presenter
- Attack on Westminster (2017) ... Himself - Presenter
- Newsnight's Exam 2017 (2017) ... Himself - Presenter
- Episode dated 27 October 2016 (2016) ... Himself - Presenter
- Newsnight Special: Brexit Britain - One Month In (2016) ... Himself - Presenter
- Episode dated 10 June 2016 (2016) ... Himself - Presenter
- Episode dated 13 April 2016 (2016) ... Himself - Presenter
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2005-2017 Dragons' Den (TV Series)
Himself - Presenter / Himself
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- Episode #11.1 (2013) ... Himself - Presenter
- Episode #10.5 (2012) ... Himself - Presenter
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- Episode #9.10 (2011) ... Himself - Presenter
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- Episode #8.1 (2010) ... Himself - Presenter
- On Tour: Part 5 (2009) ... Himself - Presenter (voice)
- On Tour: Part 4 (2009) ... Himself - Presenter (voice)
- On Tour: Part 3 (2009) ... Himself - Presenter (voice)
- On Tour: Part 2 (2009) ... Himself - Presenter (voice)
- On Tour: Part 1 (2009) ... Himself - Presenter (voice)
- Episode #7.8 (2009) ... Himself - Presenter
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- Episode #7.3 (2009) ... Himself - Presenter
- Episode #7.2 (2009) ... Himself - Presenter
- Episode #7.1 (2009) ... Himself - Presenter
- Around the World (2008) ... Himself
- The Dragons' Stories: Duncan Bannatyne (2008) ... Himself - Presenter
- The Dragons' Stories: Peter Jones (2008) ... Himself - Presenter
- The Dragons' Stories: Deborah Meaden (2008) ... Himself - Presenter
- The Dragons' Stories: James Caan (2008) ... Himself - Presenter
- The Dragons' Stories: Theo Paphitis (2008) ... Himself - Presenter
- Episode #6.8 (2008) ... Himself - Presenter
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- Christmas Special (2007) ... Himself - Presenter
- Episode #5.1 (2007) ... Himself - Presenter
- Where Are They Now?: Part 4 (2007) ... Himself - Presenter
- Where Are They Now?: Part 3 (2007) ... Himself - Presenter
- Where Are They Now?: Part 2 (2007) ... Himself - Presenter
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- Where Are They Now?: Part 2 (2006) ... Himself - Presenter
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- Where Are They Now?: Part 2 (2005) ... Himself - Presenter
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2017 BBC Newsnight (TV Series)
Himself, Newsnight
2017 50 Years Legal (Documentary)
Himself
2016 The Muslim Pound (TV Movie documentary)
Himself - Presenter, Dragon's Den (uncredited)
2015 Catherine Tate's Nan (TV Series)
Himself
- Knees Up Wilmott-Brown (2015) ... Himself
2015 W1A (TV Series)
Himself
- Episode #2.3 (2015) ... Himself
2015 The Leader Interviews (TV Series)
Himself - Presenter
- Nicola Sturgeon (2015) ... Himself - Presenter
- Nigel Farage (2015) ... Himself - Presenter
- Ed Miliband (2015) ... Himself - Presenter
- Leanne Wood (2015) ... Himself - Presenter
- David Cameron (2015) ... Himself - Presenter
- Nick Clegg (2015) ... Himself - Presenter
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2014 Hacker Time (TV Series)
Himself
- Deborah Meaden (2014) ... Himself
2013 Ye Olde Dragon's Den (TV Movie)
Himself
2013 Top Gear (TV Series)
Himself
- Episode #19.1 (2013) ... Himself (voice, uncredited)
2012 Built in Britain (TV Mini-Series documentary)
Himself - Presenter
- Episode #1.2 (2012) ... Himself - Presenter
- Episode #1.1 (2012) ... Himself - Presenter
2011 Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy (TV Movie documentary)
Narrator (voice)
2005-2011 Breakfast (TV Series)
Himself / Himself - Braodcaster / Himself - Reporter
- Episode dated 17 June 2011 (2011) ... Himself - Braodcaster
- Episode dated 24 February 2010 (2010) ... Himself - Reporter
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2011 Panorama (TV Series documentary)
Himself
- Breaking Into Britain (2011) ... Himself
2011 The One Show (TV Series)
Himself - Guest
- Episode #6.90 (2011) ... Himself - Guest
2011 Business Nightmares with Evan Davis (TV Series)
Himself - Presenter
2010 The Day the Immigrants Left (TV Movie)
Himself - Presenter
2009 The World's Greatest Money Maker: Evan Davis meets Warren Buffett (TV Movie documentary)
Himself - Presenter
2009 The City Uncovered with Evan Davis (TV Series documentary)
Himself - Presenter
2006-2008 BBC One O'Clock News (TV Series)
Himself - Economics Editor / Himself
- Episode dated 12 February 2008 (2008) ... Himself - Economics Editor
- Episode dated 16 August 2006 (2006) ... Himself
2007 Children in Need (TV Series)
Himself
- Episode #1.28 (2007) ... Himself
2007 The Culture Show (TV Series documentary)
Himself
- The Simpsons (2007) ... Himself
2007 BBC Ten O'Clock News (TV Series)
Himself - Economics Editor
- Episode dated 19 April 2007 (2007) ... Himself - Economics Editor
2007 BBC Six O'Clock News (TV Series)
Himself - Economics Editor
- Episode dated 13 April 2007 (2007) ... Himself - Economics Editor
2005-2007 Working Lunch (TV Series)
Himself - Budget Reporter / Himself
- Episode dated 20 March 2007 (2007) ... Himself - Budget Reporter
- Episode dated 21 October 2005 (2005) ... Himself
2005 The Daily Politics (TV Series)
Himself
- Episode dated 5 December 2005 (2005) ... Himself
2002-2005 Have I Got News for You (TV Series)
Himself
- Episode #29.8 (2005) ... Himself
- Episode #23.1 (2002) ... Himself
1999 Big Ideas (TV Series)
Himself - Presenter
1997 BBC News (TV Series)
Economics Editor
1995-1996 The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (TV Series)
Himself
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- Episode #3.393 (1995) ... Himself
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2016 Have I Got News for You (TV Series)
Himself
- Episode #51.2 (2016) ... Himself
2013 Top Gear (TV Series)
Himself
- Best of Top Gear 1 (2013) ... Himself (uncredited)
2005 Have I Got News for You: The Best of the Guest Presenters - Volume 2 (Video)
Himself
BIOGRAPHY
This is a 367 word biography. Feel free to download, reproduce and edit this material.
Evan Davis is the main presenter of the BBC2 current affairs show, Newsnight. Before taking up that role in September 2014, he was a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 . He is also well-known as the presenter of the BBC2 business reality show Dragons Den. And on Radio 4, he hosts a weekly business discussion programme the Bottom Line.
Prior to the Today programme he was the Economics Editor of the BBC, the most senior economics reporter in the corporation.
He has made several BBC documentaries, including the influential two-part 2014 BBC2 series Mind the Gap which explored the economic disparities between London and the regions. In 2011 he presented Made in Britain, a three-part BBC2 series with an accompanying book on how the country pays its way in the world. In 2011, Evan was also one of a number of journalists involved in a BBC1 Panorama special called Breaking into Britain, a moving account of the journeys migrants take to get into Europe and the UK.
Before joining the BBC in 1993, he was an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and at the London Business School. He has written numerous papers, articles and newspaper and magazine columns as well as the book, Public Spending, (published by Penguin in 1998). He is also a co-author of the Penguin Dictionary of Economics and the New Penguin Dictionary of Business.
His latest book is called Post Truth: Why we have reached Peak Bullshit and what we can do about it which sets out to explain why there is so much mendacity and nonsense in public discourse and why it became more of a concern in 2016.
He studied at St John’s College Oxford (1981 to 1984) and at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (1986 to 1988).
Evan has won numerous awards. In 2017, he was the Television and Radio Industries club (TRIC) News presenter of the Year. In 2015, he was Attitude magazine’s Man of the Year.
FAQS
#1 Are you available to speak at public events?
Yes, there’s nothing I like more than to get out of the office and give talks if I can get the time. In September 2014 I started a new job at Newsnight and sadly the change in working pattern has meant I’ve had to concentrate more on the day (or evening?) job whilst I get settled in, and that has impacted the number of events I’ve been able to do around this time.
I like to think I can give a serious talk on economics with a light-touch but I don’t think of myself as a comedian so I prefer to avoid giving after-dinner speeches to large audiences of people who’ve each consumed a bottle of wine. I’m often asked to chair events, and am generally happy to do that if the event is one I think can handle.
I am sometimes paid for external events, but there is no point in quoting some generic price for my services as I ruthlessly price discriminate. It may cost you nothing, it may cost you thousands.
I need to stress that I am an employee of the BBC and the corporation rightly limits the kinds of external activities I can engage in. So there are a lot of terms and conditions that apply to the work I’ll take on.
I cannot endorse any product and I decline invitations to take part in events that are explicitly aimed at drumming up business. I can’t take a side in a debate on a subject of significant controversy and I try to avoid most events that are politically imbalanced.
I generally won’t do paid work for any clients that I might expect to be scrutinising on Newsnight (although on occasion I have done such events for charity). And I don’t take part in events where I am expected to read someone else’s script or say things I don’t believe. I can’t allow the BBC’s name to be used in any promotional material.
Also (and this is just a small obsession of mine) I don’t sign contracts for events. I just work on the basis of a verbal agreement.
#2 Who is your agent?
I do not have an agent. I do not think I need one to negotiate on my behalf with the BBC, as the BBC pays me quite well enough without one. And I do not have one to arrange speaking events for me either. I don’t do nearly enough paid speaking to merit having one.
In addition, it is obvious to anyone who looks at the whole market for speaker agents, that it is quite dysfunctional. If you go online, you will find many agents who purport to act on behalf of vast catalogues of celebrity speakers. In reality, these agents have usually never spoken to these celebrities; they simply hope to take calls on their behalf and then offer the work to them and take a commission.
It has annoyed me on many occasions to receive calls offering a paid speaking event from agents who I have never met, never intend to meet and who have advertised my services without my permission. They have obtained a request from a client who wrongly perceives the agent to be the only way to get hold of me.
This is not unusual though, it is normal practice in this sector. The economy would be better served if the practice was made illegal and the sector shrank by about 50 per cent.
#3 Can I get a work experience placement with you?
I’m afraid not, for three reasons. First, my working life is not regular enough to make it very easy. Large swathes of it are spent at home looking at the computer. Secondly, I get too many requests to accommodate them all. And thirdly the BBC rightly wants the work experience system to be organised and fair, not based on who knows who.
If you would like work experience at the BBC, there is an organised scheme. You can find details here.
#4 What are your politics?
I have many views on many topics but generally find it is better not to pronounce on them publicly. Even if we don’t meet the high standards of impartiality expected of us all the time, it is a matter of good practice at the BBC that we should not bang on about our own opinions but should strive to ask questions about those of other people.
In terms of party politics, I was a member of the SDP in the 1980s. I’m not committed to any party now and could not tell you with any certainty who I might vote for at the next election.
#5 Are you blind?
No. But I do have slightly squiffy eyes. One eye is looking in a different direction to the other. Both eyes work, they just don’t work as a team. The main consequence is that my brain uses one image at a time rather than two making it hard for me to see well in three dimensions. You can emulate the effect by closing one eye. Or, you can read more about the condition here.
#6 On Dragons Den, why does your commentary always tell us what we already know?
Fair question. Believe me though, it was much worse in the early series than it is now. It really was the case back then that Duncan would say “I’m out” and then I would say “Duncan Bannatyne is out”.
As it happens, I do not write the commentary for Dragons Den, but back in the early days there was some uncertainty as to whether people would follow what was going on. It was felt that a commentary would ensure all viewers were up to speed, even if the advanced viewers had to tolerate excessive explanation.
Since then, it is clear that viewers do follow and a great effort has been made made to reduce the repetition.
Go back and watch Series 1 if you wish to see how far it has improved.
#7 Who is your favourite dragon?
Deborah Meaden.
#8 Why do we have to listen to Thought for the Day each morning on the Today programme?
Fortunately, decisions on things like this are well above my pay-grade. And now I’m no longer presenting Today, I expect to be asked about this much less!
In defence of TFTD though, I would say that there are a number of ancient institutions on Radio 4 (like the national anthem on the Queen’s birthday, the shipping forecast, the Archers, the chimes of Big Ben) all of which subtly contribute to the brand of Radio 4, establishing it as a station of heritage. (I thought the same of the old UK theme music in the early mornings). All these things add character to Radio 4 and you don’t want to abandon them with impunity.
In my own view, it is worth the BBC looking at whether secular views could be accommodated on Thought for the Day. They have done this once and chose to reject the idea.
#9 Is this a good time to buy a house?
My own view is that it is best not to buy a house at the peak of an obvious bubble.
Aside from that, it is a good time to buy a house if you need a house to live in, you can afford the payments on it and expect to keep it for quite a few years.
Personally, I don’t think you should buy a house simply to make speculative gains on upward movements of price. The prices go down as well as up.
Indeed, it is worth reminding people that even if you buy a house, you may well be better off if house prices fall.
This is explained in the most read blog I have ever written (back in June 2004) called “Why I’d like a house price crash”, which you can find here.
QUOTED: "That one is about whether Britain has got enough industry. Can we survive without manufacturing? Can we build an economy on services? It's all bound up with issues of national identity. The Germans are clear about what they do – cars and machine tools; the Japanese are clear about what they do – electronics; the Chinese are clear about what they do – they're the workshop of the world.
We're less clear and that's because we've moved towards the intangible sectors more than other developed economies. We are a huge net exporter of business and commercial services."
Evan Davis: 'I'm a presenter who is gay rather than a gay presenter'
By Miranda Sawyer
The Today anchor on Britain's lack of identity, being seen as a lightweight – and being papped at the shops
Miranda Sawyer @msmirandasawyer
Sat 7 May 2011 19.05 EDT First published on Sat 7 May 2011 19.05 EDT
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Evan Davis
Evan Davis: 'Mistakes are nothing to be ashamed of.' Photograph: Richard Saker /Rex
You have two new TV programmes coming out. One of them, Business Nightmares, has some amazing cases, doesn't it? Persil Power, so strong it shredded knickers…
One of the programme's revelations is that all washing powders shred knickers to some degree! In many ways, the most poignant case is Gerald Ratner. His story [in a speech in 1991, he described his company's products as "total crap"] has been told so many times, and it's funny, but actually it was a big tragedy for him.He lost the business and he tells the tale of having to buy petrol for the car and not knowing what you do. He took years to recover from the shock.
I think you can enjoy the horrible stories of the disasters that befall people while nevertheless respecting them for doing stuff. Mistakes are nothing to be ashamed of. If you're not making some mistakes, it probably means you're not trying hard enough.
What about Made in Britain?
That one is about whether Britain has got enough industry. Can we survive without manufacturing? Can we build an economy on services? It's all bound up with issues of national identity. The Germans are clear about what they do – cars and machine tools; the Japanese are clear about what they do – electronics; the Chinese are clear about what they do – they're the workshop of the world.
We're less clear and that's because we've moved towards the intangible sectors more than other developed economies. We are a huge net exporter of business and commercial services: insurance and finance, surveying, architecture, legal services, advertising, university education.
Is that a good thing?
The service sector raises a number of problems. Here's the nub of it: old industries – manufacturing industries – had lots of good reasons to disperse geographically. You had shipbuilding in Sunderland, steel in South Wales and coal scattered around the country. The new industries are brainy industries and so-called knowledge workers tend to like to be near other people who are the same. Think of the City or Hollywood. People cluster. This means you have winning regions, such as London and Cambridge, and losing regions. The people who want to be top lawyers in Sunderland are hoovered up by London.
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Is the answer more manufacturing?
We have got too little manufacturing, and I'm not saying that out of some romantic idea that mining is good for you or it's better to make things. There is a strong link between the following three things: exporting, manufacturing and the degree of saving by the population. It's complicated, but if the population doesn't save, the economy will not tend to export as much, and if it doesn't export as much, it won't manufacture enough.
Hang on, what's saving got to do with it?
When a population saves – and the exporting powerhouses, the Germans, Japanese and Chinese do save – what happens is this. First, the companies that operate in those countries where the population are not big spenders are forced to look outside the country to find sales. They become export-oriented.
Second, the financial system has more funds, because the population has put its savings there, so it has to be less choosy about who it gives the money to – it can justify capital spending. Britain has been a low-saving nation and has less equipment per worker; we're less capital intensive.
And then, third, is the exchange rate. When a population saves a lot, the funds are invested outside the country as well as inside. If the Japanese invest in the United States, it pushes their exchange rate down and makes their manufacturing more competitive.
That is really interesting…
What I like about it as a theory is that it puts it back to us. Instead of saying there's some conspiracy by Margaret Thatcher, it's been a collective decision. We've become a consuming nation; we suck in imports rather than exports; we build shopping centres rather than factories. The consequence is that our manufacturing industry has been too small.
As well as making business TV programmes, you're also a presenter on the Today programme. Were you annoyed that you weren't in when Osama bin Laden was killed?
A little bit. I'm not a jealous person though actually, with Osama, I did think, God, that's an interesting day to be on. But, in fairness, it was Jim and Justin and I'm modest enough to think, oh well, that's the best team, as they are American experts. But why did I have to do some godforsaken bank holiday when nothing happens!
When you started on Today, some people deemed you lightweight. Do you think you've improved?
I'm keen not to lose the things that made people say I was lightweight, but I'm also keen not to be seen as lightweight. There would be no point if I became a clone of the others, but equally it would be no good if I was seen as the one who did funny features about walking dogs in the park. Finding that balance isn't easy. In five years I might have cracked it.
Does it annoy you when you're called a gay presenter?
It doesn't annoy me but I think of myself as a presenter who is gay, rather than a gay presenter. It's a subtle distinction, but that's how I view it. I don't think I'm hugely camp on air. Private Eye did do a funny spoof of me interviewing Peter Mandelson in which it was all, 'Ooh get her…' [laughs]. I'm quite proud to be gay; I'm not hiding it.
What about when you were photographed in jeans with a biker chain…
I was papped! Apparently, I was breaking some hidden Daily Mail sartorial rule that meant I had to dress in a suit to go across the road to get milk. I think the headline was "Please Mr Davis, Won't You Dress Your Age?". That phrase – "Please Mr Davis" – is used in our household quite a lot by my partner. "Pleeeease Mr Davis, won't you do the washing up…"
Newsnight host and Dragons’ Den presenter Evan Davis says hiding his sexuality at work was a 'terrible mistake'
'Hiding gaping great bits of your life at work is just tiring - I’ve been there - and it’s just not worth it'
Maya Oppenheim @mayaoppenheim Monday 1 February 2016 19:53 GMT
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The Independent Online
The long-running BBC presenter talks openly about his personal experiences of coming out in the public domain Rex Features
The Dragons’ Den presenter and Newsnight host Evan Davis has said it was a “terrible mistake” keeping his sexuality a secret for so long.
In a promotional video for Student Pride, the 53-year-old BBC journalist spoke candidly about his experience of publicly coming out.
“My experience was in my earliest jobs – it wasn’t that I wanted to lie to people, and it wasn’t that I was embarrassed about being gay, but I just wasn’t public about it.
“I’ve tried never to lie, but equally it was just constantly thinking about what you were saying, and treading on eggshells. I think it was a terrible mistake. It was hard work.”
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Davis also said it was important to be upfront about sexuality for mental health reasons.
“The issues of good mental health and being authentic and being true and comfortable with yourself are inextricably linked so I think it’s much easier to have a sound, comfortable mind when you’re one person and you know what that person is and you’re comfortable with it”.
Before joining the BBC as economics corespondent in 1993, Davis worked as an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Since then, he has gone on to present BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and is now a host on Dragons’ Den, Newsnight and The Bottom Line.
Speaking to R U Coming Out, an LGBT charity back in March 2013, the Surrey-born presenter said it wasn’t until he joined Newsnight in the late 90s that he came out.
“It was around the time I joined Newsnight in 1997/1998 that I decided I should definitely be publicly gay.
“It wasn't a courageous choice, it just felt to me that it was going to be slightly better for me to control the process of coming out by being up-front about it. The climate was always going to be very favourable for me. I never expected any kind of backlash.”
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Giving advice to young people who will be attending Student Pride, Davis encouraged them to be open about their sexuality.
“I just can’t stress enough, trying to be something that you're not, or hiding gaping great bits of your life at work is just tiring - I’ve been there - and it’s just not worth it if you can avoid it”.
Davis came clean with his family about his sexuality one Christmas Day in his mid-twenties.
Although he realised he was gay during his teenage years, he continued to keep it a secret for a long time.
“Coming out to myself was a long drawn out teenage thing. It was pretty tortuous really and I was resisting it for quite a while and then suddenly I just let go and it was the best thing that ever happened to me”.
QUOTED: "I don't want to sound like "chirpy Evan" who's just bouncing around with his unrealistic views and doesn't understand what's going on. The bleakness is, I think, on a five-year horizon--and it has to do with us having to make a number of very painful adjustments."
"We're at a critical juncture, post-financial crisis. The dust is settling, so this is a good time for the nation to ask what we did right, what we did wrong."
Evan Davis
Duncan Robinson
New Statesman. 140.5058 (June 20, 2011): p49.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 New Statesman, Ltd.
http://www.newstatesman.com/
Full Text:
How did you find time to write your new book, Made in Britain?
I cheated. I had a nice helper, Tom Bromley, who wrote quite a bit of it. And the Today programme leaves you a lot of space to do other things. The hours are very intense and unsocial, but they do give you most of the day to do your own stuff. The third answer to the question is that I haven't really had time to do it, so I've slightly overstretched myself.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Did you enjoy writing it?
I enjoyed it when I knew what I wanted to say. I really didn't enjoy it when I didn't know what I was trying to say. It's amazing, if you know what you want to say, how fast it is to write. So some of the chapters were written in--and I'm not joking--a day and a half, maybe two. Others took the best part of a month.
Did writing about companies such as BAE in glowing terms make you feel uneasy?
It only made me uneasy in the sense that I didn't want to alienate large numbers of readers by giving them an example to which they will say: "Well, we don't like that example, so your whole argument must be wrong." I'm not trying to be judgemental about the things I'm looking at. I'm just trying to say that, actually, we have quite a big capacity in this country to make things, to sell things and to earn money.
Were you tempted to take a moral view?
I didn't really feel I had anything to say on that. I mean, I see both sides of the argument. Do I think it would be better if BAE Systems hadn't been caught up in a Serious Fraud Office inquiry, paying fines and so on? Well, of course, and I suspect BAE also feels that. Do I think BAE Systems should be taken out of existence? No.
What makes you optimistic about British manufacturing?
Because the economy has taken a turn upmarket over the past few decades. And that wasn't some insane dereliction of our industrial heritage. That was a perfectly sensible move, given the way the world had changed. Did it work? Not quite. We only paid 95 per cent of the bills, not 100 per cent of them. So we've got to refine the model significantly to make sure we're paying 100 per cent of the bills.
Why is there such a discrepancy between most people's attitude towards the economy--which is very bleak--and your more hopeful argument?
The discrepancy is mainly around the time horizon. I don't want to sound like "chirpy Evan" who's just bouncing around with his unrealistic views and doesn't understand what's going on. The bleakness is, I think, on a five-year horizon--and it has to do with us having to make a number of very painful adjustments.
Do people want to read an optimistic book about the economy right now?
That is a real worry. We're at a critical juncture, post-financial crisis. The dust is settling, so this is a good time for the nation to ask what we did right, what we did wrong, what we did too much of and what we didn't do enough of.
Did you ever feel that you had to self-censor what you were writing?
What comes with a job as a staff member of the BBC is a certain self-censoring that you get utterly used to. You don't say everything you think. You hold back on some things. You phrase them in a way that is open-minded--I'm not talking about everything, but about things that might have some impact on partisan debate.
One interesting debate is whether government is too big and is a burden on the economy or not. Is the private sector carrying such a big burden of government that it can't export and it can't invest? I made a decision not to go there.
Is having to be so careful a frustration of working for the BBC?
Not if you're an open-minded person. I swing both ways. I can see things from a kind of conservative point of view and from a more socially liberal or left-wing point of view. The Today programme gives you access to the entire chattering class of the United Kingdom, for several hours a week.
So it's not a constraint I think about.
Everyone has constraints in their work. This is not a serious one.
Interview by Duncan Robinson
Evan Davis's "Made in Britain " is published by Little, Brown ([pounds sterling]18.99)
Robinson, Duncan
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Robinson, Duncan. "Evan Davis." New Statesman, 20 June 2011, p. 49. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A260691801/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=62b96f82. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A260691801
QUOTED: "Post-Truth has plenty ... sweet little encapsulations and byways to keep the reader entertained as well as informed."
Books: Wading through the rubbish
Chris Deerin
Management Today. (July 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Haymarket Media Group
http://www.haymarket.com/home.aspx
Full Text:
Evan Davis lifts the lid on the wave of lies, spin and waffle that pervades our daily lives. But he's hopeful that the truth will out, says Chris Deerin
Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It
Evan Davis
Little, Brown, pounds 20
Speak to civil servants working in the departments charged with delivering Brexit and you'll often hear the same sad story. The reason so little detail exists around the plan for leaving the EU is that ministers, paranoid about leaks, have discouraged their staff from devising it. We are woefully underprepared, pursuing a strategy that is little more than a Hail Mary pass. Why are ministers so worried? In part, because the denizen of No 10 has set the tone: secretive, unforthcoming, and with a vicious revenge promised to anyone who shows disloyalty. In part, because they're making it up as they go along and are struggling to cope with the sheer scale and complexity of what's been undertaken. And finally, because they're terrified of the media.
The baloney that has emerged in place of facts and straight-talking (think 'Brexit means Brexit' - it's utterly meaningless) is the kind of thing that has inspired Evan Davis' new book. In the modern climate - for businesses as much as for politicians - transparency and accountability are not just expected, but demanded. But that transparency can mean the accountability comes at you good and hard. As Davis writes: 'It's a difficult balance. Too little accountability and we never get the best out of people... yet too much accountability and we inevitably end up paralysing those people rather than challenging them. A vibrant media culture, populated with sceptics fired up with the self-proclaimed duty to 'speak truth to power', can ironically end up creating a hopelessly secretive culture of administration.' Journalists, he adds, 'need to overcome bullshit to hold people to account, but in the process of holding them to account they can induce people to produce bullshit.'
As someone who works across the media, communications and academia, I expect I produce more than my fair share of bullshit. But as someone who teaches the art of writing to the public and private sectors, I also spend a large part of my time ranting against it. In the end, who can blame us for sinning? We are surrounded by corporate drek, by adverts fit only to bring on an aneurysm, by the wall-to-wall, 24/7 cliched opinions of 'experts', by ghastly business-school-ese. Which regular Virgin Trains user can now hear that toilet message - 'Please don't flush nappies, gum, old phones, unpaid bills, your ex's sweater' etc - without wanting to stick Richard Branson's head down the bog instead? 'We are assailed by the stuff...,' he writes.
As he points out, bullshit isn't new. There was plenty of it around in the time of Henry VIII, or in the medieval Catholic Church, or in the Victorian era, or in the totalitarian guff that emerged from the Soviet Union. Donald Trump is only the latest jowly purveyor of arrant nonsense.
But it certainly seems true that there's more bullshit than ever before And the world of 'post truth' seems to continually morph into new shapes. Davis lists a number of them, including 'using the right words to give the wrong impression' (think Bill Clinton's lawyerly denial of having 'sexual relations' with Monica Lewinsky); 'selective facts', or, in civil service speak, being 'economical with the truth'; 'spin', or presenting a slanted and favourable interpretation of the facts; 'deception through self-delusion', for which he references Tony Blair and Iraq; and so on. Our seemingly endless run of referendums and elections has left us staring into a deep, dank, steaming pit of verbal poo.
In the 'science bit' of the book, Davis looks at the various economic and psychological theories behind why bullshit is produced. He points out that the language of the modern communications profession has come to resemble the abnormal animals produced by dog breeders: 'physically unnatural and ill-adapted to basic functions like breathing'. Post-Truth has plenty of these sweet little encapsulations and byways to keep the reader entertained as well as informed.
In the end, he strikes an optimistic note: 'For all the rubbish we speak, ultimately the fate of human beings is driven by reality not words. The central guiding principle has to be that, in the long term, the truth will out.' That's as maybe, but perhaps the last word is better left to the behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman. Does understanding the tricks of the door-to-door salesman make it easier to avoid being a sucker? 'I've been studying this stuff for about 45 years,' he says, 'and I really haven't improved one bit.'
Chris Deerin is director of external relations at Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government, and Scotland editor of the New Statesman
--------------------
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Deerin, Chris. "Books: Wading through the rubbish." Management Today, 1 July 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497599238/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=88910064. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A497599238
QUOTED: "Davis ... has a gift for explaining abstract ideas in clear language. At a time when economic literacy remains woefully low (I have heard several MPs confuse the national debt with the deficit), Made in Britain deserves a wide readership. But even though the book has analytical appeal, it is of little prescriptive value."
The perils of optimism
George Eaton
New Statesman. 140.5059 (June 27, 2011): p49+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 New Statesman, Ltd.
http://www.newstatesman.com/
Full Text:
Made in Britain: How the Nation Earns Its Living
Evan Davis
Little, Brown, 274pp, [pounds sterling]18.99
In recent times, the belief that the last Labour government left Britain "bankrupt" has become alarmingly widespread, so it comes as a relief that Evan Davis begins his disquisition on the nation's economy with a blast of sanity. "Britain," he writes, "is not a basket case." He concedes, with classic English understatement, that things went "somewhat awry" in 2007-2008, but refuses to accept that the UK must settle for managed decline.
Davis's optimism is premised on the belief that Britain still has a manufacturing sector to be proud of. Manufacturing may account for just 12 per cent of the UK's output - down from a third in the 1970s - but, he contends, we should not confuse a smaller sector with less dynamism. He singles out the McLaren sports car company, the fold-up bicycle-maker Bromp-ton and the defence behemoth B AE Systems as examples of the high-end, niche areas in which Britain now specialises. Elsewhere, he makes the astute point that greater efficiency creates a misleading impression of decline. As companies become more productive, they inevitably require fewer people to produce the same volume of goods. Conversely, "It takes the same number of people to play a quintet as it did in Mozart's day."
He identifies Britain's historical openness to trade as one of the factors that has guaranteed its prosperity since the Industrial Revolution, and sketches an excellent description of the 19th-century free-trade movement and the repeal of the Corn Laws. An instinctive economic liberal, Davis rightly warns that the coalition's short-sighted cap on immigration will have deleterious consequences for many sectors, not least our universities, which will lose significant numbers of foreign students, worth [pounds sterling]8.sbn a year to the British economy.
Davis, who presents both the Today programme on Radio 4 and Dragon s Den, has a gift for explaining abstract ideas in clear language. At a time when economic literacy remains woefully low (I have heard several MPs confuse the national debt with the deficit), Made in Britain deserves a wide readership. But even though the book has analytical appeal, it is of little prescriptive value. He echoes the new consensus that the economy needs to rebalance away from its dependence on financial services, but fails to indicate how this should be achieved. Is the state "crowding out" private investment, as George Osborn e suggests? Or is active government a precondition for a successful industrial policy? Davis avoids raising, let alone responding to, such matters.
He also dodges the question of whether the City - large parts of which were aptly branded "socially useless" by Adair Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority - has grown too big, arguing that the authorities should refrain from making judgements about its size and focus instead on making sure that "it works properly". A well-regulated banking sector, he concludes, will "inevitably shrink somewhat". He is silent about the issue of whether investment ("casino") banking should be separated from retail operations to ensure that we no longer run institutions "too big to fail". Similarly, though he argues passionately that a healthy university sector is important to the economy, he fails to say whether the state, or the students, should foot the bill for it.
Such omissions make Davis's account simultaneously rousing and deflating. He assumes what he has to prove, namely that Britain will recover from the near collapse of its financial system. The spectre of Japan, which suffered a similar meltdown in the 1990s, is a permanent reminder that some nations never do. The author's abiding belief is that ultimately Britain will thrive. But, in the long run, as Keynes quipped, "we are all dead".
George Eaton is a staff writer for the New Statesman
Eaton, George
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Eaton, George. "The perils of optimism." New Statesman, 27 June 2011, p. 49+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A261394818/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=81593c5a. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A261394818
Review: Paperbacks: Non-fiction: Made in Britain by Evan Davis (Abacus, pounds 8.99)
The Guardian (London, England). (June 2, 2012): Arts and Entertainment: p19.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Guardian Newspapers. Guardian Newspapers Limited
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian
Full Text:
Byline: Ian Pindar
Davis, a presenter on the Today programme, comes across as a soothing economic agony uncle in this engaging TV tie-in. Britain can still be a world player, he argues. We just need more confidence in ourselves. "We made some colossal mistakes in the years running up to the financial crash," he admits, but our economy can bounce back. Sadly, his shining example of Britain's global manufacturing success is BAE Systems. "Many, of course, feel uncomfortable that such a prominent manufacturer is in the defence sector, and that it has been the subject of a high-profile Serious Fraud Office corruption investigation. But whatever one feels about the sector . . . the company is at least an answer to the question, 'Do we make anything these days?'. Yes, some very expensive things that foreigners want to buy." As well as selling military hardware to Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, we should build on our strength in science and research, Davis says, and make more of our universities (the British export industry of which he is most proud). It's the knowledge economy, stupid.
Ian Pindar
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Review: Paperbacks: Non-fiction: Made in Britain by Evan Davis (Abacus, pounds 8.99)." Guardian [London, England], 2 June 2012, p. 19. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A291668588/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b5960a26. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A291668588
QUOTED: "dense but accessible argument."
"Throughout, Davis' approach is unquestionably British, and it will help if readers have a sense of British politics."
Davis, Evan: POST-TRUTH
Kirkus Reviews. (Jan. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Davis, Evan POST-TRUTH Little, Brown UK (Adult Nonfiction) $26.99 3, 6 ISBN: 978-1-4087-0331-1
A British news anchor and economist turns a gimlet eye on the "post-truth era."
Lying, writes BBC2 Newsnight main presenter Davis, is a species of bullshit. But so, too, is "trying to deceive without lying" as well as "the myriad forms of padding that are designed to impress, obfuscate or attract attention." All these are myriad indeed, and ubiquitous; whether fake news or bullshit that has been accepted as truth, they fill our heads every day. Usefully, the author observes that facts are like construction beams: not only does it matter what a fact is made of, but it also must be "capable of bearing the weight that is being loaded upon it." In a time of bullshit coupled with intense, willful intellectual laziness, all kinds of not-up-to-code constructions are being built on bad faith and bad information. Yet, as Davis holds in this dense but accessible argument, there is sometimes a use in that bad information--e.g., as a means of solidarity-building, "a way of strengthening a sense of membership of the tribe." Thus, one supposes, Fox News and Breitbart. As the author adds later in the discussion, even knowing that a bit of information or argument is bullshit does not necessarily protect us from swallowing it. Throughout, Davis' approach is unquestionably British, and it will help if readers have a sense of British politics--some conversational fluency in, say, the issues surrounding Brexit--and geography. The latter is useful in understanding why "more trains to Hammersmith" might be a desirable development even if, as Davis uncovers, it means reducing service to other destinations on the Circle Line. One hopes that the author's assertion that we have, in fact, reached "peak bullshit" is not wishful thinking; after all, there are entire industries devoted to producing the stuff, and their energies do not seem to be flagging.
Useful fodder for the factually inclined and politically disgusted.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Davis, Evan: POST-TRUTH." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A522643051/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8f92a6e5. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A522643051
QUOTED: "Post-Truth is one of the first, and by far the most successful, analyses of post-truth in its context, its historical antecedents, the cultural factors that enable the post-truth environment and an insightful discussion of its implications."
"Overall, Evan Davis’s Post-Truth manages to combine journalistic flare and accessibility with the substance you would expect from a scholarly volume. Admittedly, that substance does come at some cost: those expecting quick answers will be slightly disappointed as the author’s ambition is obviously to go beyond the trivial. However, those capable of dedicating the necessary amount of time (but not necessarily patience – Evan Davis is a great storyteller) will be rewarded with a multi-faceted understanding of how post-truth has emerged and functions in our societies."
Book Review: Post-Truth: How We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It by Evan Davis
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In Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It, Evan Davis analyses the rise of a post-truth environment, its historical antecedents and the cultural factors that enable it to flourish in the contemporary moment. Ignas Kalpokas praises this book for combining journalistic flare, accessibility and substance to offer a multi-faceted understanding of how post-truth functions in society today.
If you are interested in this book, you may like to listen to a podcast of Evan Davis’s lecture, ‘Post-Truth: How We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It’, recorded at LSE on 18 October 2017.
Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It. Evan Davis. Little, Brown. 2017.
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Over the past few years, the concept of ‘post-truth’ has been attracting increasing attention in both scholarly and journalistic circles. It is, of course, primarily associated with the success of Donald Trump as well as with the UK Brexit referendum campaign. As a result, it is no coincidence that ‘post-truth’ was chosen by Oxford Dictionaries as the ‘Word of the Year’ in 2016 nor surprising that there has been a proliferation of books on the subject (of which, publications by James Ball, Matthew d’Ancona or Julian Baggini are perhaps the most notable). While someone with an interest in post-truth might find it difficult to choose a worthwhile read, if one was to select just one book out of those currently available, Evan Davis’s Post-Truth would undisputedly top the list.
A potential reader must be forewarned that there are things which this book does not do. If one’s interest in post-truth does not stretch beyond the anecdotal or juicy Trump stories, then the advice would be to go for other titles. Likewise, one should look somewhere else for catchy doom-and-gloom stories or easy answers and solutions. Instead, Post-Truth is one of the first, and by far the most successful, analyses of post-truth in its context, its historical antecedents, the cultural factors that enable the post-truth environment and an insightful discussion of its implications.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the book is the author’s broad-ranging engagement with ‘bullshit’, conceived broadly as the absence of any regard for truth whatsoever (in contrast to the mere lie, which still has a relation to truth as an attempt to hide or obfuscate it). Bullshit is seen in this book as one of the key features of our culture and as permeating everything from everyday norms of civility through quotidian artefacts, such as advertisements and product reviews (perhaps including this book review as well), to high-level diplomatic negotiations.
Image Credit: Author Evan Davis at LSE Institute of Public Affairs and Polis Lecture on ‘Post-Truth’, 18 October 2017 (© LSE in Pictures )
Certainly, such everyday bullshit should not be perceived exclusively negatively – and Davis is very good at demonstrating numerous cases of positive, or at least neutral, bullshit, such as ‘white lies’ in complimenting a friend for a dessert they have ruined in order not to offend their feelings – but it still piles up, demonstrating that, actually, bullshit is all around. Indeed, as Davis states in the introduction, post-truth is nothing other than carefully calculated strategies to attract attention in a bullshit-permeated environment, and is therefore ‘rooted in styles of communication that we are familiar with and we all use’ (xiii). Hence, bullshit – the enabling factor of post-truth – is a collusion in which everyone participates.
The structure of the book is composed of three core building blocks. The first is the exposition of bullshit as a phenomenon and the different forms that it takes. Here, the author is capable of extracting forms of bullshit from the most banal actions, such as smiling in photos or sharing selfies. Effectively, Evan Davis demonstrates how bullshit is one of the key threads that hold the fabric of our society together in the forms of politeness (not hurting somebody’s feelings); as a way of not telling the truth without lying outright; as gaining the attention of your customers with slogans nobody believes in anyway; and as a means for service providers to conform with the public’s expectations of overstatement, as well as myriad other ways.
Having established the basic manifestations of bullshit, Davis moves to its explanation, providing four kinds in total: indirect honest manifestation, when an exaggerated claim allows the communicator to claim a particular ground (e.g. a voter may not have agreed with Trump that Mexican immigrants are ‘rapists and drug dealers‘ but they will have memorised that Trump is against immigration); psychological manipulation, i.e. manipulation of audience fears and expectations in order to trick them into adhering with a post-truth narrative; short-term rationality, referring to a propensity to utter false claims if future debunking is not an issue; and the social rewarding of bullshit.
The account of the latter particularly demonstrates how we all collude to entrench bullshit as deeply as possible: paradoxically, we ourselves seem to encourage and incentivise people to spread bullshit if they want to proceed with even the most innocent of goals. After all, if everyone overstates or obfuscates the truth, and audiences come to expect outlandish statements (the more outlandish, the greater attention ostensibly given), an honest person, abiding by the rules of well-reasoned discourse and avoiding unsubstantiated claims, will be at a disadvantage, their claims being seen to demonstrate a lack of commitment. Taken in sum, these four explanations provide a comprehensive account of why bullshit (and post-truth as its manifestation) prevails in contemporary societies.
Finally, the third section of the book deals with possible improvements, once again starting bottom-up, focusing on what we ourselves can do to improve the situation and make bullshit less sustainable. The measures offered include raising the (self-)awareness of communicators, the promotion of greater authenticity among politicians and efforts to involve the public as discerning listeners rather than passive recipients. However, as with any project for improving the public’s mores and tastes, this part does read as rather speculative and far-fetched. In particular, change actors and factors are not elucidated clearly enough. Nevertheless, this part still broadens the understanding of post-truth and bullshit by delving deeper into political and journalistic practices, e.g. when aiming to demonstrate how efforts to keep a message on the agenda through permanently repeating it regardless of the context (another example of bullshitting) should eventually backfire by tiring out the audience. In other words, even this, perhaps the weakest part, is still a worthy read.
Overall, Evan Davis’s Post-Truth manages to combine journalistic flare and accessibility with the substance you would expect from a scholarly volume. Admittedly, that substance does come at some cost: those expecting quick answers will be slightly disappointed as the author’s ambition is obviously to go beyond the trivial. However, those capable of dedicating the necessary amount of time (but not necessarily patience – Evan Davis is a great storyteller) will be rewarded with a multi-faceted understanding of how post-truth has emerged and functions in our societies. One will come to understand, among other things, that bullshit is a long-standing and deeply embedded issue; that we all contribute to it through spreading it and encouraging others to do the same; that bullshit can play a positive role since, when considered carefully, even bullshit can reveal something honest; and that bullshit (and, by implication, post-truth) can offer a welcome escapist fantasy. In short, there is more to bullshit than the conventional use of the term might suggest.
Ignas Kalpokas is currently assistant professor at LCC International University and lecturer at Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania). He received his PhD from the University of Nottingham. Ignas’s research and teaching covers the areas of international relations and international political theory, primarily with respect to sovereignty and globalisation of norms, identity and formation of political communities, political use of social media, political impact of digital innovations, and information warfare. He is the author of Creativity and Limitation in Political Communities: Spinoza, Schmitt and Ordering (Routledge, 2018). Read more by Ignas Kalpokas.
Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics.
QUOTED: "This is all sensible and thoughtful, and one hopes these ideas will gain wider currency, but many of Davis’s conclusions on “the measures society and its institutions can take to improve public discourse” are disappointing and weak.
He seeks long-term thinking from professional communicators, but ignores the insecurity of the short-term contracts that so many work on plus the need for quick results. ... His focus is so much on personal psychology that it’s almost as if the wider influence of cruising corporations on public discourse doesn’t exist, which is bizarre."
Post-Truth: Why We have Reached Peak Bullshit
Review: Evan Davis draws a few conclusions about lies and political manipulation
Evan Davis has a message for PR people and media advisers: it is time to move on. The age of controlled messages is over.
Evan Davis has a message for PR people and media advisers: it is time to move on. The age of controlled messages is over.
Toner Quinn
Sat, Jun 3, 2017, 06:00
First published:
Sat, Jun 3, 2017, 06:00
What is your response to bullshit? Annoyance? Indifference? Analysis? Broadcaster and economist Evan Davis’s response has been coming for a while. ‘I work in the bullshit industry,’ he writes in Post-Truth. “My job is to listen to bullshit, to try to expose it and to manufacture my share of it too.” In 2013 he had “already started thinking about this book”, and no doubt last year’s catastrophe of mendacity from politicians and media sped its passage towards publication.
A presenter of BBC 2’s Newsnight, Dragon’s Den and the business-focused Bottom Line on Radio 4, Davis is well-placed to provide us with an insight into how public discourse became so ghastly; on the Bottom Line, he regularly punctures the platitudes of business strategists.
In Post-Truth, his definition of the phenomenon is as clear as you will get: “a willingness on the part of politicians to stretch the truth on a basic point of fact, and [sic] the predisposition of so many people to believe it despite the prevalence of reliable advice to the contrary”.
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Focusing on “communication and honesty”, he brings us through a range of psychological theories about how we use untruthfulness in our lives, and how it can be used against us. His definition of bullshit is broad: “any form of communication – verbal or non-verbal – that is not the clearest or most succinct statement of the sincere and reasonably held beliefs of the communicator”.
From “Nonsense and Gibberish” to “Better Bullshit”, we should in theory be well-tooled with this book to tackle our new disarray, with glowing access to free information on one side and incredible manipulation of facts on the other.
Political messages
There are highlights: Davis does a service by analysing a classic Donald Trump lie about unemployment statistics, while exploring why the message still resonates; his passage on Jeremy Paxman’s interview with British home secretary Michael Howard is laugh-out-loud funny; and wherever he draws on his broadcasting experience and looks under the lid of political message managing, the book instantly picks up pace.
But for much of the first 218 pages, I read with little enthusiasm. Davis is not a psychologist, and however well-researched his sections are, his insights are often flat and overwritten. So we are slightly dishonest with a partner if we want to go bowling and they want to go to the cinema; and we tend to go for prices that end in 99; and the John Lewis Christmas ads are manipulative: it all tends to comes across as terribly obvious. I’m sure this scientific foregrounding is included to set up the last 87 pages (when we finally get down to what the title of the book suggests – some bullshit from the publisher there for sure) but it is frustrating and unnecessary.
What does Davis have to say about the crux of the matter? As someone who interviews politicians on television for a living, he has reflected hard on what their motivations are for avoiding questions, for mendacity and for simply not being themselves. He remarks on his experience of speaking to politicians off-air and how much more engaging, thoughtful and interesting they can be. He urges them to be more sincere.
Davis also has a message for PR people and media advisers: it is time to move on. The age of controlled messages is over. Whatever one may think of Trump, the author argues, he has shown the advantages of directness.
Public credulity
Davis writes that people were fed up of politicians and controlled messaging before 2016, and the fact they responded to the mendacity of Trump and Brexit campaigners illustrates they were already open to that message. The challenge now is to understand the conditions that led people to believe such messages.
This is all sensible and thoughtful, and one hopes these ideas will gain wider currency, but many of Davis’s conclusions on “the measures society and its institutions can take to improve public discourse” are disappointing and weak.
He seeks long-term thinking from professional communicators, but ignores the insecurity of the short-term contracts that so many work on plus the need for quick results. He spends just a page and a half on media diversity – not just different broadcasters, newspapers and websites but different voices within each; and there is nothing about media ownership, media decentralisation, the influence of companies with huge resources and state timidity. His focus is so much on personal psychology that it’s almost as if the wider influence of cruising corporations on public discourse doesn’t exist, which is bizarre.
Davis can compose a memorable phrase, describing our current position as “society stuck on the low road”, yet he believes that good sense will prevail, helped by a “cool-headed honest-hearted media”. Maybe, but I would still want our media heavy-hitters to bat much better than this.
Toner Quinn is editor of the online magazine the Journal of Music and a lecturer on the MA in literature and publishing at NUI Galway
Sat, Jun 3, 2017, 06:00
QUOTED: "He has a chatty, broadcaster's style of writing."
"lively, upbeat account."
Reviews
Made In Britain, By Evan Davis
The more we make, the less we know
Sean O'Grady @_seanogrady Saturday 21 May 2011 23:00 BST
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The Independent Culture
Here's an old trick that never loses its fascination. Look around you.
Think about the things you own or use. How many are British? The Honda Civic in the drive? Made in Swindon, as it happens. The Apple iPhone in your pocket? Made in China, designed in California, but the chips made in China are under licence from ARM Holdings of Cambridgeshire. Your tea-time treat of a Cadbury chocolate bar? Made in Bournville, Birmingham, but by the Illinois-based transnational Kraft, which recently took over Cadbury.
Years ago, as Evan Davis argues, things were simpler. If you bought one of the first Honda Civics imported into the UK in 1972, you could be fairly sure that it was 100 per cent Japanese. Your (fixed-line) phone would have been assembled at a Post Office factory in South Wales, from British components. Cadbury Schweppes was a proudly British firm that aspired to world leadership. "Off-shoring" was unthinkable.
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Globalisation has changed all that, and the rise of China in particular made us more nervous about our future. Davis tries hard to offer reassurance about the sometimes bewildering pace of change. For Britain has won as well as lost, as the success of McLaren racing cars, Brompton bicycles, BAE Systems, ARM and Inmarsat (tops for satellite-phone technology) all demonstrate.
Davis's argument is that Britain has lots of creative, clever people educated at excellent universities, and they are better off applying themselves to the supply of the high-value goods and services that the world wants, and leaving the T-shirts and tellies to places where wage costs can never be beaten. If the Chinese eventually catch up in hi-tech then we just migrate elsewhere, as we always have. And the Chinese may well, one day, challenge us in aerospace, pharmaceuticals, chip design and £1m supercars.
In one of those nuggets that Davis is good at chucking in – he has a chatty, broadcaster's style of writing – he tells us that in 1983 the average Chinese citizen had a standard of living equivalent to the average Briton at the start of the 17th century. In the decades since, they have made the same progress that took us 200 years. It is not that much of a stretch, then, to imagine them making a jet engine to rival Rolls-Royce's product.
Yet we need not fear that. Davis rightly points out the fallacy of extrapolation – that if the Chinese economy is growing at 10 per cent a year now, it will do so for ever. He demonstrates how every economy has to adapt, and how you can lose manufacturing jobs while making higher-value things and growing more prosperous in the process.
But I wonder. For me, it is still perfectly rational to foresee a world turned upside down in, say, 2100, where the relative living standards of the West and today's emerging economic superpowers – China, India and Brazil – are reversed. Despite enjoying Davis's lively, upbeat account of the way we make our living, I'm not at all reassured about that.
QUOTED: "This book’s strength is that it works hard to explain the economics lucidly for the general reader—Davis is a skilled communicator—while not falling for sloppy thinking that overstates the problem."
"His account ... is a thoughtful analysis of where the economy stands. The most useful skills, he says, are the basic ones of literacy and numeracy, which allow people to transfer from one activity to another as the economy adapts—not original but, nonetheless, true."
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Made in Britain
Review by Brian Groom MAY 20, 2011 Print this page
Made in Britain: How the Nation Earns Its Living, by Evan Davis, Little, Brown, RRP £18.99, 274 pages
Britain may not be the world leader in manufacturing any more but it scoops all the prizes for worrying about it. Across the political spectrum there is consensus that the country got its priorities wrong in the years before the global crash: a debt-fuelled consumer binge was built on illusory growth in financial services. Now, it is widely held, it is time to get back to making things.
“Rebalancing” is today’s mantra – an effort to shift the focus back towards industry. It is an understandable anxiety for a nation that was the cradle of the industrial revolution and the 19th-century “workshop of the world” yet has now, according to some calculations, fallen to ninth in the league table for manufacturing output, behind Brazil and South Korea.
But is the concern overdone? This level-headed account of how the nation makes its living by the BBC’s Evan Davis accepts that something went awry before 2007-08 and that there are problems to be solved but refuses to overdo the gloom. “Britain is not a basket case,” Davis reminds us. After all, it remains one of the richest nations. “At the same time, we have no grounds for snootiness.”
This book’s strength is that it works hard to explain the economics lucidly for the general reader – Davis is a skilled communicator – while not falling for sloppy thinking that overstates the problem. He feels no compulsion to reach over-dramatic conclusions. Its weakness is that it avoids the political debate about how far, and in what way, the state should intervene to boost manufacturing.
Britain’s fretting on this topic goes in phases. There was huge anxiety in the 1970s when strike-prone industries were losing ground to Japan and continental Europe. By the Cool Britannia era of the late 1990s, the British were getting smug about their postindustrial smartness: the Anglo-American model was seen as prevailing over the Rhineland one and Germany and Japan had stagnated. Now soul-searching is back in vogue.
Davis’s book is linked to a television series and this shapes his approach. He visited the 2010 Shanghai Expo and found that, while the Italian pavilion had a Ducati motorbike and a huge designer shoe, and the French had wine and Louis Vuitton bags, Britain’s was “less about product and more about art”. There was, he says, sensitivity that “although ours was clever it was also insubstantial” – a metaphor for the whole debate.
UK manufacturing accounts for just 12.8 per cent of output but, Davis argues, it is dynamic and productive, which he illustrates by visiting BAE Systems, the aerospace giant, Brompton, the fold-up bicycle maker, and McLaren, the sports car company. He visits Berwin & Berwin’s suit-making factory in China and argues that the company was right to let a lot of UK manufacturing go there: painful as it was for those whose jobs were exported, low-income households in Britain saw their spending power enhanced by lower prices.
Along the way, Davis describes the benefits the UK has historically gained as an open trading nation, in which the consumer view has usually prevailed over that of the producer. He acknowledges the psychological power of making things, from a Greek potter inscribing “Exekias made me” on his work to a Brompton brazer leaving his signature on the parts he created, but suggests we should learn to appreciate the value of non-physical labour.
Davis brings his even-handed approach to the other two main parts of the economy: the knowledge economy and the dominant service sector. The UK’s strength in science and research is illustrated by the historical example of Pilkington’s invention of the float glass process and the contemporary success of ARM Holdings, the chip designer whose components are in 95 per cent of the world’s mobile phones – and which does no manufacturing.
He portrays marketing and advertising as core UK strengths. But he also admits the drawbacks of basing an economy on “being clever”. Intellectual property can be capricious, as shown by the speed with which Facebook usurped MySpace in social networking. It is also a winner-takes-all world that increases inequality.
His example here is the Harry Potter novels and films, which brought the author, JK Rowling, a personal fortune of half a billion pounds. That is equivalent to the output over 10 years of a manufacturing business employing 1,000 people earning £25,000 a year. Some of Rowling’s wealth trickles down – she pays taxes and is generous in philanthropy – but, says Davis, “an economy built on intellectual property is a tough place for people with little intellectual property to sell”.
His conclusion, sound if unsurprising, is that the British economy needs all three categories of items that it produces – manufactured goods, intellectual property and services – to flourish. The balance between them will change but there is no way the capital-intensive manufacturing sector could usefully employ more than about a fifth of the working population.
He lists three challenges: the need to encourage more saving and investment, and less consumption; the need to find ways of coping with the inequality and regional imbalances that have arisen from the intellectualisation of the economy; and the need to ensure the economy is oriented towards the most productive activities.
A whole range of political questions surrounds those issues, which Davis does not get into. Was the “industrial activism” championed by Lord Mandelson, the former Labour business secretary, complete with pump-priming grants and loans, the way forward? Or is the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition’s approach, with fewer grants and more emphasis of getting tax and regulation right, a better way? The book is silent on this and on questions such as whether a smaller state can create room for private enterprise.
Davis also sidesteps arguments about whether the banking sector has become bloated by arguing that the authorities should refrain from deciding what size the sector should be and simply ensure that it works properly. If the UK gets the tax, structure and regulation of the City right, he says, it will inevitably shrink somewhat.
His account, though, is a thoughtful analysis of where the economy stands. The most useful skills, he says, are the basic ones of literacy and numeracy, which allow people to transfer from one activity to another as the economy adapts – not original but, nonetheless, true.
Brian Groom is the FT’s UK business and employment editor