BUT SHIRIN'S AT THE HELM ACTUALLY

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This week's The Record Europe saw the heat transfer from the Conservatives to UKIP, as Europhile presenter Shirin Wheeler hosted another of her infamous round table discussions. Indeed the Conservative guest, Vicky Ford, was - most unusually - not interrupted at all. Far less unusually, neither was the Labour guy, Derek Vaughan.
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On the receiving end this time was that doughty campaigner against EU fraud Marta Andreasen (now, of course, a UKIP MEP). She was interrupted five times by Shirin, giving her an I.C. of 1.2. The whole interview began with a question to Marta asking her to agree that it was good news that for the second year running EU auditors had given a "clean opinion" of the EU's budget. Marta rejected the idea that it was a clean opinion, and persisted in doing so after Shirin had interrupted her to re-ask the question. Not getting the answer she wanted, Shirin then interrupted Marta for a second time, saying "Well...well, the court is saying it is a clean opinion" and passed the conversation on to Brian Gray, the current EU chief accountant.
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Christofer Fjellner, a chap from the Swedish centre-right, also fell foul of left-wing Shirin when he made the mistake of saying something unhelpful to our Labour prime-minister. He said, "There's a lack of political leadership. To me this is not a Brussels problem. It's the member states who set the rules, spend the money and, therefore, I'd rather blame Brown than Barroso...". Shirin leapt in at this point, saying "Yeah, but Brown's not at the helm actually" and, in time-honoured-Shirin-Wheeler-fashion, passed the conversation on to someone else! (Even if Mr Fjellner was wrong, and I think he was, her contradiction was a complete non sequitur in terms of what he was actually arguing and was surely designed only to shut him up).
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The final pair of interruptions were made against Marta Andreasen, just as she was (skilfully) facing down an onslaught from several of the other guests. Marta was complaining about the Commission's reluctance to stop payments to non-compliant countries when Shirin interrupted and contradicted her: "But they are doing that Marta, they are doing that!" and again shortly after: "But they did it last year, they did it with Britain."
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Another week, and more bias at The Record Europe.