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Have to go to work shortly (for a full day, damn it!), so I will have to watch Question Time tonight. I've just watched the first five minutes though, and the first question was "So who won the debate tonight?"
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The initial polls and the BBC/Mori's 'wriggling worm' survey confirmed my sense that Nick Clegg 'won' by putting in an impressive performance and just outperforming David Cameron, who did pretty well. Brown was the clear loser. His unconvincing smile alone must have put off many viewers. His clunking, repetitive attacks on the Conservatives and his constant interruptions of David Cameron contrasted badly with Mr Cameron's coolness and Mr Clegg's relaxed reasonableness. His killer lines fell flat and his over-obvious wooing of Nick Clegg annoyed even Nick Clegg and made me chuckle.
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David Dimbleby immediately turned to John Sargeant and said "John Sargeant, as an independent observer, who won?" The dancing ex-BBC/ITV political editor said Clegg won on performance, but on substance it was Brown who won. "The person who did not do as well as he should have done was David Cameron." He then elaborated on each point, running down Mr Cameron - even saying that his one-liners fell flat. Well, what debate was he watching? It was Brown's heavily-rehearsed one-liners that saw most of the tumbleweed rolling by. Clearly, unequivocally. Mr Sargeant used to rile me with his biased reporting during the days of Mrs Thatcher, and the honesty and independence of his reporting then carries through to today! The comments on the Biased BBC blog attest to widespread disbelief at the distance of John's verdicts from Planet Reality.
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Still he's entitled to his (skewed) view.
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What's not on though was Dimbleby's endorsement of them: "We've got incidentally polls that have come through, taken immediately after the debate. They rather endorse what John Sergeant was saying". No they didn't!!!! "ITV's poll has Clegg on 43% as the winner, Cameron on 26%, Brown on 20% and The Sun, who also did an immediate poll, had Clegg on 51%, way ahead, Cameron on 29%, Gordon Brown on 19%." In what way do these figures back up Sargeant's spin that Brown convincingly beat Cameron, who was poor? In no way do they do any such thing! Dimbleby then turned to the Conservative on the panel, and asked "Michael Gove, did something go wrong?"
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You may doubtless have already seen whether Dimbleby, the future moderator of the third prime ministerial debate, got any better after such a bad and biased start. I'll have to wait until tonight to see the other 55 minutes of this programme. I am turning off just after the first Labour plant in the audience says that Brown did brilliantly, was funny and personable. No he wasn't! Nigel Farage is to speak next. I can't wait to hear his take on things, but I'll have to wait...!
David Dimbleby needs watching very carefully as moderator as, on the evidence of his performances on Question Time, he will not be an unbiased one... http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2009/07/bbclabour-relationship-in-one-video.html
ReplyDeleteWhy was John Sergeant on the panel ? So far as I am aware he is a mere journalist, therefore irrelevant .
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