TURNING OFF AT THE THIRD LEFT

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I gave up on watching Dateline London with Gavin Esler yesterday within about 5 minutes. It was becoming far too annoying.

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The three topics up for discussion were going to be:

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- Why is it going wrong for the Conservatives?

- Israel and the Palestinians

- What would a Conservative government mean for the EU?

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That's a lot about the Conservatives, isn't it? So, you might have expected a Conservative-supporting British journalist to have been one of the programme's guests. Well, it didn't quite turn out that way.

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The guests were stacked towards the Left (as ever), with only the wise German journalist Thomas Kielinger representing right-of-centre opinion. The others were:

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Michael Goldfarb, one of the programme's seemingly endless supply of liberal Americans

Mina al Oraibi, a left-wing Middle Eastern journalist

Yasmin Alibhai Brown, that excitable left-winger from The Independent

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Oh yes, the barely coherent rantings of Yasmin Alibhai Brown were to the fore, flinging denunciations at the Tories!

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I sat through Mr Goldfarb's attacks on George Osborne with complete equanimity, but when the lovely Mina (pictured) began denouncing the Conservatives for being about 'spin' and then said that Labour were far less involved with 'spin' I reached for the off switch!!