Last night we went to hear a talk by A C Grayling - a brilliant lecture in defence of civil society and enlightenment values. I always read his articles in The Guardian and other sites and I've just ordered the book (plus its predecessor which is the story of of the struggle for liberty and rights in the modern West) from my favourite on-line retailer.
After the talk Grayling took a series of questions including one about the future of print media. In his view the mainstream press is under huge pressure from the internet; he described the growth of blogging as giving people access to the biggest lavatory wall ever built in order to express their opinions, with at least 95% of what is published online being worthless.
It is not for me to comment on the value - or otherwise - of this blog. I hope that it will reflect the hard work by members of our committee to get our film club up and running: we have fun choosing our films and it's a pleasure to see a new film or revisit an old favourite. But I can't help remembering the warning words from Alan Bennett in Forty Years On:
"When a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, then the writing is on the wall".
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