Humour Alert: Courtesy of the excellent Man Widdicombe blog.
Talks between David Cameron and Nick Clegg have broken down this afternoon, much to the shock of pundits and journalists. Most of the major hurdles; voting reform, taxation, education, and immigration, had been overcome and both parties were heading confidently towards a formal coalition for stable government.
Then the question of BBC Question Time was raised.
Both leaders agreed that if they were going to jointly form the government then it would be ‘unfair’ to have two seats around the table on a Thursday evening but the question of how to allocate representatives from both parties have lead to difficulties. The Tories are adamant that they should have 6 out of every 7 weeks while the Lib Dems are holding out for alternating appearances on the show.
Meanwhile we have learned that when Gordon Brown tried to derail the negotiations he offered to arrange a permanent seat on the panel for Sarah Teather in exchange for replacing Dimbleby with Charlie Whelan. We have to assume from the angry outburst reported from the leader of the Labour Party that this was turned down.
Both teams have returned to their respective parties to discuss their options and to see if there are any suggestions to move the negotiations forward. Senior Tories are looking at the idea of arranging for Lembit Opik to be the showbiz correspondent for the This Week show, now that he is no longer required to attend Parliament, as a way of resolving the impasse.
An announcement is expected soon.
Heh…the love affair between the Limdem Oik and the BBC has already started – he was on some BBC programme last night. I forget which one but I don’t mean a news programme. It was some entertainment thing.
Enough’s enough; this war of the phonies needs spicing up.
I would love to see some Conservative pols and/or non-usual suspect ‘guests’ turn round and flat out accuse The Mirror, Guardian, Indy press and especially the BBC and the so-called ‘objective’ ‘reporter/interviewer/analyst’ spouting off opposite them of being in the pay of the unions and/or a corrupt multi-billion pension fund or whatever, and totally biased in their views.
Full cojones accusations as per Bradshaw, Campbell, etc.
Then see how THAT goes round the sniggering student-uni twittospehere that passes for a politico-media ‘establishment’. ‘How very DARE they…! Only we can lob out wild accusations like that!’.
Kay Burley and Adam Boulton of SKY seem a typical heat vs. lightweight ratings hungry mic-jockey and pompous blowhard respectively, but I DON’T HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM NO MATTER WHAT ON THREAT OF FINE – http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/may/11/charles-moore-fined-tv-licence
So they can be as ‘challenging’ as they like, frankly.
Sticking Kevin Maguire up to pontificate, lie and smear by proxy all day is not.
And inviting on to capture the odd ‘opinions’ of such bitchy wets as Ian Dale or Matthew Pierce as ‘balance’ is simply pathetic.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/7709065/The-BBCs-worst-scandal-lies-in-our-courts.html
The above link is to an article by Charles Moore about being taken to court over not paying his TV licence fee in protest.
On Radio 5 this afternoon the completely non partisan Richard Bacon, Boyd Hilton, and Kevin Maguire launched into a coordinated attack on Sky and Boulton. Maguire whined that the BBC would never show such partiality. Has he listened to none of the beebs output this election?! Radio 5’s own Steven Nolan’s outrageously hectoring ‘interviews’ of tories in the weeks before the election by themselves prove otherwise.
I’m sure we’ve all seen/heard other examples!
Surprisingly enough, the Indy has a view…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/have-the-cracks-begun-to-show-in-skys-duty-of-impartiality-1971401.html
Meanwhile, in The Gaurdian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/may/11/mark-thompson-bbc-image?&CMP=EMCMEDEML665
‘Director general backs research suggesting journalism output is more important to country’s image than UK government’
Reassuring. Depending on what one’s definition of ‘output’ is.
Now there’s a thing. The Gaurdian has found an OFCOM campaign theme to push that, this time, it likes:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/may/12/sky-news-adam-boulton
How many staffers can it wind up between the paper and Aunty?
Actually, a potentially better strategy by those the BBC clearly seeks to undermine is to ignore them or put them bottom of the list.
That way they can wail all they like, and then explain why those they feel they have god given access to are not very interested in dancing to their tune and/or then being ‘enhanced’ in the edit suite.
Even the public might weary of non-stop agenda pushing by presenters and one-degree of separation proxy agenda complements. There are clearly many ex-Labour MPs ready to provide the valued opinions that got them booted out by their own voters.
Probably won’t work as there will always be publicity junkies from the coalition side who will be unable to resist access to 60M folk, and they will be the saddest of the bunch. Mind you, they were the only one’s invited on anyway, so no real diff.