Politics
He was appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1983, knighted in 1995, and created a life peer in 1997, as Baron Puttnam, of Queensgate, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. In 1998 Puttnam was named in a list of the biggest private financial donors to the Labour Party (UK). In 2002 he chaired the joint scrutiny committee on the Communications Bill, which recommended an amendment to prevent ownership of British terrestrial TV stations by companies with a significant share of the newspaper market. This was widely interpreted as being aimed at stopping Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation from buying channel Five. When the government opposed the amendment, Puttnam brokered a compromise — the introduction of a "public interest" test to be applied by the new regulator Ofcom, but without explicit restrictions.
From 2004-2005 Puttnam chaired the Hansard Society Commission on the Communication of Parliamentary Democracy, the final report of which urged all political parties to commit to a renewal of parliamentary life in an attempt to reinvigorate representative democracy. In 2007, he chaired the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Draft Climate Change Bill. Puttnam is currently a trustee of the think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research.
Read more about this topic: David Puttnam
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“It is not so much that women have a different point of view in politics as that they give a different emphasis. And this is vastly important, for politics is so largely a matter of emphasis.”
—Crystal Eastman (1881–1928)
“The average Kentuckian may appear a bit confused in his knowledge of history, but he is firmly certain about current politics. Kentucky cannot claim first place in political importance, but it tops the list in its keen enjoyment of politics for its own sake. It takes the average Kentuckian only a matter of moments to dispose of the weather and personal helath, but he never tires of a political discussion.”
—For the State of Kentucky, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country—and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.”
—Charles Krauthammer (b. 1950)