MORE ON MARR

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Continuing on the subject of this morning's Andrew Marr Show, there were even more signs of bias throughout the paper review.

Here's the charge-list:

1. That he began his initial skim through the papers with an anti-Conservative story from The Observer (naturally), "Miliband in fresh attack on Tory links to far right".

2. That when he read out the Sunday Times's headline, "Brown's millionaire lord and £38,000 in 'dodgy' expenses", he 'failed to see' or read out the word "Brown's": "The Sunday Times has got the story about Lord Paul, millionaire lord and expenses". That's all he said. He then moved swiftly onto (and spent a lot more time on) the paper's second main story!

3. That he brought up the story about Brown's eyesight only to launch a surprisingly passionate defence of Gordon Brown: "But a lot of what he's criticized for, you know, the kind of slightly frozen facial expressions from time to time, apparently blanking people, is down to the eyesight problems actually". And his throwing things when he gets in a temper, and his surrounding himself with the nastiest of the nasty, and his dishonesty, and his incompetence, are they all explained away by this too? Then when Jane Moore of The Sun agreed, he added softly "It is very difficult for him". All together now, "Aaah!"

4. That he then turned on the Tories, and encouraged adverse comments about them with this generous question: "On the other hand the Conservatives are beginning to get a bit of a tougher time too, I notice, in the papers". (They've never had anything else from Andrew Marr!).
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5. That he stayed on the Tories, and encouraged more adverse comments about them in his following question too: "I mean the Independent On Sunday has devoted much of its coverage to attacking Cameron's speech, you know, a few days later."

6. That when Labour-supporting author Robert Harris made adverse comments (in answer to this question) about the Tories, Marr 'mmm'-ed approvingly four times (one a particularly heartfelt sounding sign of agreement - an "mmmmmmmm"!)

7. That he stayed on the Tories and encourage yet more adverse comments about them in his next question too: "I notice the Sunday Express has a big couple of pages about the Conservatives and unemployment for instance, you know, what is going to be the jobless effect and so on. There's just a slight turn in the mood of the coverage."

8. That when Robert Harris brought up the subject of the Tories. toffs and fox-hunting, Marr "yeah"ed approvingly, and interjected "It's said he (David Cameron) went fox-hunting himself and indeed there's pictures of him somewhere".

I pronounce him 'guilty' of bias!