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Time to begin catching up.
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Back to Sunday and Radio 4's Broadcasting House. The left-liberal bias of this programme has been a weekly theme of this blog. One topic this week was the private sector v. the public sector. Presenter Paddy O'Connell began by spending some time at a demonstration by public sector workers before staging a debate between a businesswoman and a teacher. As anyone who listens to BH (or has read my reviews of it) could have guessed, Paddy sided with the latter. One of his questions ran like this: "It seems to many people that it was capitalism and it was greed and it was breaking the rules that got us into this trouble as bankers flogged debt that they didn't understand around the place. Do you accept that who led us into this was a great deal of private enterprise?" Does Paddy really think that banking accounts for a 'great deal' of the private sector?
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Soon after he introduced us to the two people who are going to be his guides throughout the general election. They are the former New Statesman editor/Observer columnist Anthony Howard and the constitutional expert Peter Hennessy. I always enjoy listening to both of them but they are both self-confessed men of the Left. Mr Howard began by doubting the idea that the Conservatives had a good start and Prof Hennessy dismissed the NI debate as a 'distraction' and forecast problems for the Conservatives over Europe. Shouldn't the programme have a broader spectrum of political opinion?
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When Paddy quipped (at least I hope it was a quip!) "Can we hear it for Gordon Brown, Laura Tenison?" and the paper review moved onto Gordon Brown's smile, and Laura (a business woman who had earlier attacked Conservative education plans) talked of how it showed "the human face" of Gordon Brown, I note that it was Merril Stevenson of The Economist who pointed out that there is another photo of Brown's smile that shows it was probably fake (though she didn't put it that way) rather than Paddy O'Connell.
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And when Paddy O'Connell read out the results of a poll that showed that SamCam was considered to be having the best Leaders' wife campaign so far, Laura Tenison dismissed it.
ReplyDelete"She the thinnest!" she cried. "That's all there is to it. It's so ridiculous!"
Come to think of it, "That's all there is to it. It's so ridiculous!" would be quite a good way to sum up most editions of 'Broadcasting House'!
ReplyDeleteBBC journalists who get to work on the Andrew O'Neill show must breathe sighs of relief that they've found refuge amidst the sea of bias.
ReplyDeleteHe's the BBC's token right-wing interviewer but he's at least as tough on the Conservatives and UKIP as he is on Labour - and he does the Lib Dems the courtesy of challenging them on their policies. No politician, not even a Green, can expect an easy ride from him - especially if they are being evasive. That's how all BBC interviewers should be - firm but fair.
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