Debate around the festive table on the importance of liberty

WHEN I started work as a journalist, the sports editor on my first newspaper was an all-round good guy.

- PHILIP BOWERN

But he did like a debate - some would say argument - and voices could sometimes be raised and points hammered home with fists on desks, especially after he had become well refreshed following a largely liquid lunch. In the newsroom, we used to call it The Taunton Debate, because it tended to follow a fair intake of Taunton Natural Dry Cider.

Something similar happens here at home when the family gathers around the table at Christmas and New Year, but without the Natural Dry Cider. In that long period of extended family meals around Christmas and New Year there are plenty of occasions when the generations, this year ranging in age from 27 to 90, gather and calm discussion can turn into something a little more feisty. I'm all for it. Vigorous debate is the way you learn things and I am happy to say my views about a whole lot of issues have been swayed, sometimes through a full 180 degrees, by things my daughters have taught me as well as things I have picked up from my mum and dad... and, of course, my wife.