GRUMPY OLD MEN

Thanks to Llew I now realise I can watch the regional versions of the Politics Show via the BBC i-Player. (Oh, the joy!)

The South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire edition presented a short report discussing the Greens and UKIP.

It gave 'talking head' status to 1 Green candidate (Shan Oakes) and 2 UKIP candidates (Jane Collins & Jonathan Arnott) and said that UKIP now starts from a platform of electoral success whereas the Greens disappointed themselves at the Euro elections.

This apparent anti-Green/pro-UKIP bias was countered a little by the reporter saying of UKIP, "This tiny conference in Southport showed just how small the party is". (How big was it compared to the Greens though? How tiny is 'tiny'?) Yet it was the video clip's "Play this again?" option that showed where the BBC's heart really lies, containing what almost amounted to a health-warning: "UKIP: Controversial claims that man is not the cause of global warming".

A clip was played of MEP Godfrey Bloom dismissing AGW as nonsense. This was followed by the reporter saying, "He's even co-authored a pamphlet on the subject". That word 'even' suggests that this (for some reason) is an odd thing to have done.

Checking out the website, its political editor Len Tingle's language revealed a similar bias:

'At their conference in Hove the Greens were passionate in their support of the battle against global warming.

On the same day in Southport, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire MEP Godfrey Bloom delighted his party by explaining how global warning was a "myth" - and the scientific truth was being suppressed by the media.'

Imagine how this could be re-written by some-one with a different bias and you'll see what I mean. A tiny change in punctuation makes all the difference:

'At their conference in Hove the Greens were passionate in their support of the "battle" against "global warming".

'On the same day in Southport, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire MEP Godfrey Bloom delighted his party by explaining how global warning was a myth - and the scientific truth was being suppressed by the media.'

Len's piece was not wholly unkind to UKIP, but he does say of Jonathan Arnott, "At just 27 he is one of a new breed of senior officials of a party desperate to throw off an image as a bunch of right wing grumpy old men from the shire counties."

Is UKIP really "desperate" to throw of its "image as a bunch of right wing grumpy old men from the shire counties"? Was that it's image? And what wrong with being "right wing" or "grumpy" or "old" or "men" or "from the shire counties" anyway?

There were, of course, no comparable references to the Greens as having an image "as a bunch of well-off-but-badly-dressed, asparagus-nibbling, sour-faced, left wing forty-somethings from the Brighton area" (or some such nonsense!)!!