LEFT ALONE

*
Here are some of the highlights of this morning's 'Today' programme:

In the first hour of Today (6.00-7.00), Adam Shaw's Business News reported on increases in petrol duty. He discussed it with Richard George, described as a 'road and climate campaigner' for the charity Campaign for Better Transport. He supported the rises. In the last hour this was balanced by a spokesman for the A.A.

Later came a report from the BBC's Ross Hawkins on a study of the social backgrounds of the likely new parliamentary intake (across all political parties) of 2010. This was prompted by a report from the think-tank New Local Government Network, and featured as one of its talking heads the organisation's director Chris Leslie, who was the Labour MP for Shipley from 1997-2005 (though this wasn't mentioned in young Ross's report). The other talking heads were the Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson and the prospective Labour candidate for the new constituency of Outer York James Alexander. The only talking head from outside the Labour Family was BBC regular, Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University. The report was, let me stress, not about Labour!

To round of this hour came an interview with Sonny Hundal, the blogger for the 'progressive' blog-sites Picked Politics and Liberal Conspiracy. He has written complaining to the Equality and Human Rights Commission about the Metropolitan Police.

In the second hour (c. 7.40) the death of the 100-watt bulb for environmental reasons was discussed in an interview between Justin Webb and Matt Prescott, director of the green campaign group Ban the Bulb.
(For a counter-balancing argument (not provided by any other interviewee on Today) here's a useful link:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1210150/MICHAEL-HANLON-Making-illegal-sell-100-watt-light-bulbs-simply-dimwitted.html)

I was prompted to look a little more closely at all this by the following thought-provoking comment:

Anonymous said...
If we took a period of time and counted the number of times that the Guardian was mentioned on bbc radio 4 then it would be 10+ times that of any other newspaper.
They hardly ever mention The Economist since it is objective and if they do they omit to mention the full picture.
The same goes for the LSE and left wing think tanks, most of which are not mentioned as such.

I will be keeping my eye on this from now on.