DIMBLEBY GOES FOR MELANIE PHILLIPS

Last night's Question Time from Edinburgh showed yet again the peculiar nature of the programme's audiences. Judging by the applause they all seemed to be anti-Iraq-War, pro-Global-Warming (with one exception), anti-banker and pro-minimum pricing for alcohol. A Scottish audience might be expected to be more left-wing I suppose (given how they vote these days), still surely they can't all agree on everything!!
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David Dimbleby's habitual bias this week was focused on Melanie Phillips. As she was the most right-wing of all the panellists, this is hardly surprising.
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Melanie was speaking complete sense on the question of the Supreme Court's dismissal of a case against the banks for charges on unarranged overdrafts. She was saying, "In fairness people should be rewarded for being prudent and should pay some kind of forfeit for being imprudent", when Dimbleby interrupted her and used a member of the audience to try and undermine her perfectly valid and morally spot-on point. "Is that fair Melanie?", he asked afterwards. "I think that is unfair. As I already said David I think that is disproportionate." She had indeed already said it.
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This may have been intentionally disruptive but at least it wasn't rude. He had been rude earlier, when man-made global warming was discussed. Melanie thinks it's a scam &, facing down a hostile audience, said so forcefully. She also attacked BBC bias on the issue. David Dimbleby was not going to let her get away with that and, with that nasty smirk of his (the smirk of a bully), he interrupted her and said "Melanie Phillips, come to the point and get on with it please then we can have other people involved in the discussion". The audience laughed and applauded.
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Do the timings for each contributors back up Dimbleby's charge that she was hogging the limelight? Of course not. She got 7 minutes 45 seconds in total to speak, whereas Lord Falconer got 12 minutes 46 seconds - i.e. five minutes more!!!
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When the questioner backed Melanie Phillips up, the audience responded with stony silence and shortly after, without allowing Melanie back in, Dimbleby changed the subject: "We must go on."
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We must always go on.
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