SOPHIE SAVES THE WORLD

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No Andrew Marr this week. It was Sophie Raworth instead (pictured right. Funny how I don't tend to feature pictures of Marr, isn't it?)

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Besides interviewing Squeaker Bercow (and not asking him about his expenses), the fair Sophie's main political interview was with Ed Miliband. The interview (scoring an I.C. of 1) concentrated on climate change and in her introductory remarks Sophie mentioned the "poll yesterday" which "showed the public are sceptical about the threat of global warming" and that "less than half believe it's caused by human activity." It was good to have that mentioned and did the programme credit. That said, it was not mentioned again during the actual interview. Moreover, Sophie's own non-sceptical bias came out through each of the questions she put to Mr Miliband, which included - in all seriousness - an interruption to state that the 'deal at Copenhagen' "is about saving the world." When she pressed him about the 'deal', she phrased it as "a legally-binding one hopefully" and it didn't sound to me as if she was talking about Ed's hopes, rather about her own. Something similar happened when the question turned to Barack Obama's presence at Copenhagen. Sophie stated "because he needs to be there", before realising that this should be a question and re-phrasing it as such. She also asked (twice) about a report from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers which advocates even stronger measures to tackle this allegedly "really serious problem" - as we heard on Friday's PM, where Tim Fox of the I.M.E. said we need "a paradigm shift" in our attitudes to climate change and a "war-time mentality" to cope with the looming apocalypse. (What Eddie Mair, who conducted that interview, forgot to ask Mr Fox was whether the I.M.E. might not just have a slight vested interest in encouraging a huge number of new, expensive engineering projects over the next few decades, and may have that in mind at least as much as 'saving the world'!).

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