So, Columbus, What's The Point of This Exactly?

I hadn't planned to blog this evening, but watching Newsnight - background noise while I was finishing the washing up and emptying the washing machine - forced me to by virtue of Paxman enraging me at his absurdly curmudgeonly attitude towards Major Tim Peake, the British astronaut who will be taking a trip to the International Space Station in 2015 and was a guest on the show.

Paxman, channelling his best Meldrew impersonation, managed to ask the fantastic question on going to space "So what's the point of this?" which seemed perhaps a tad dismissive. Had he been around 521 years ago he'd have certainly stood on a Spanish dock, haranguing Colombus as to just what the point of this westward voyage was when there was a perfectly sensible route already existing to the east. I will take the time tomorrow to watch it on iPlayer to pull out some of the better quotes, but there was a not insubstantial amount of chutzpah when Paxman (annual salary for presenting Newsnight: £800,000) asked whether it was worth £16m on going into space. Yes, Jeremy, it is.

Sadly the astronaut was better trained in the wiles of PR and instead of calling him a moron to his face, which would have been beautiful to watch, took the question seriously and unsurprisingly pointed out that there was a fair bit of use to this whole 'space, science, exploration, learning things' malarkey that goes on up there.

I'd still prefer he'd responded with a witheringly contemptuous putdown. "Well, £16m isn't a huge amount of money when it comes to public spending, Jeremy. For example, you could cover your presenting salary for 20 years. Now, if you asked the average man in the street about the better value for money - yourself fronting Newsnight for 50 minutes three nights a week for 20 years, Jeremy, or putting a man into space - I think most people would think the man in space gives slightly better value for money."