WE ARE ALL TO BLAME!

*
This morning's Andrew Marr Show featured a 21-minute interview with David Miliband, which contained a unexpectedly high number of interruptions (22) and resulted in an I.C. of 1. While it's true that a full 6 of those interruptions were concentrated in a less-than-2-minutes burst (when the topic focused on what Miliband knew about the Hoon-Hewitt letter), the interview was a little tougher than might have been anticipated given Marr's previously record (I.C.s of 0.8 and 0.3). So fair dos to Marr for that. That said, this is his third interview with David Miliband since I began my survey last June, whereas his Conservative counterpart William Hague has only appeared once, and his I.C was higher than any of those for Miliband, being a pretty high 1.3!!
*
No Andrew Marr wasn't the problem this morning. That was another BBC presenter, Kirsty Young, invited onto the paper review with Rory Stewart, former deputy governor of a province in Iraq and a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Conservatives. Kirsty is currently presenting a left-winger's take on the family for BBC2 (see http://beebbiascraig.blogspot.com/2010/01/bbcs-house-mag.html). Her left-wingery goes much further than that, as she revealed here. (Fancy that, yet another BBC leftie spouting off!)
*
Here are some of this morning's thoughts from Chairman Kirsty:
*
On the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts:
*
"It means that probably for 40 million Americans who are not currently covered under health care they might still not be covered under health care because this man could hold the votes that means Obama's health care reforms will not get through."
*
On Obama:
*
"I wonder as somebody who is hugely impressed by Obama - as so many people who live abroad are - what the Americans expected of him in a year. I think he's done quite a lot."
*
"But actually what he has done, when you read any reasonable analysis, is he has done a lot more than most politicians in his position previously have done, but the expectation was artificially high".
*
I love the 'when you read any reasonable analysis' bit! Where? In the Guardian maybe, or the Independent, or - even more likely - on the BBC News website?
*
On the Doncaster child torturers:
*
"My concern is that I'm worried about the way that the newspapers and the press are treating this story, and I think by calling them 'Doncaster devil boys' (a phrase featured on the front page of any self-respecting leftie's least favourite paper 'The Mail on Sunday'), these are the boys who perpetrated the hellish crimes against the two boys ('hellish crimes'? crimes committed by the citizens of Hell, aka 'devils', therefore 'devil boys'? - spot the lapse in Kirsty's language where she commits the same 'mistake' she is haranguing the 'Mail' for without realising it!!!) ...Horrific! My worry is that by calling them 'devil boys' we somehow distance ourselves from the fact that they are human beings who were brought up in our society. This was not, in my view, this was not something these boys were born with. (That is indeed her view. Many religious and non-religious people might disagree, albeit for very different reasons.) These boys are the product of their environment (a clear a statement of Marxist belief as you could ever get) and I think as long as the press uses emotive phrases like this then we get no closer to understanding ourselves (ourselves?) and understanding why an appalling problem (problem?) like this happens."
*
When I was young I used to laugh at Peter Simple in the Daily Telegraph & his daft sociologist Dr Heinz Kiosk, who ended every lecture with the phrase "We are all to blame!". I wish I'd fled the room (like Dr Kiosk's unlucky audiences always tried to do) before hearing Kirsty Young's Kiosk-like conclusion:
*
"It's society, it's what it is. And 'devil boys' doesn't even begin to cover it. I think it's irresponsible."
*
Don't forget you can see Kirsty Young's programme on the family tomorrow night on BBC2. She's going to be discussing the 1980s, and Mrs Thatcher and consumerism. I've fled the room already!!