Where is the debate in the UK?

Why is debate so dead in the UK?  Do a video search on Google for Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Noam Chomsky and you will find lots of full length videos of debates at universities all over America.  People seem to debate like rubbish pop acts tour in this country.  Two outlandish contrarians get together and have a go at each other in front of a bunch of university students who then take it in turn to stand up in front of a microphone and ask either extremely complicated seventeen part questions or questions that have been asked and satisfied thousands of times.  Then the whole road show goes on to the next college.

We have Question Time, Any Questions, The Big Questions and Jeremy Kyle.  Three of which attempt to be proper debating shows but run into the usual problem of TV in that they are restricted by time and an apathetic audience.  This means that unless someone is saying something that has been said a hundred times before Dimbleby has to jump in and cut them off.  The other show runs into the problem of trying to appeal to simpler life forms and is required to take breaks so that the drool can be mopped up off the floor.

Can we be less interested in ideas in this country than they are in the States?  A place where politicians doubt the science of global warming because of the story of Noah.  A place where intellectualism has as much bad press as Communism.  Where the Christian far right utilise their political influence to bring about Armageddon.  How can such a place out debate us?

I suspect that the problem is that in the UK we pretty much take whatever the idiot in charge wants us to believe to be gospel.  It takes a lot to get Britain protesting on the streets.  The coalition government have had us protesting a number of times so far which really should be some indication that they are really taking the piss.  But still they know they can march on with cut after cut, privatising what little the state has left and ultimately we will let them get on with it.  The upshot of this is that nobody has to win the argument.  The press also have a tendency to fall into line on the big issues.  Who needs to debate a foregone conclusion.

Personally I find this sad.  The argument hasn't been won and there are some very important issues in the political arena at the moment.  Namely :- defence, the role of the government and its relationship with the  wealthy who have bankrupted the world, environmental issues, resource issues.