WHILE TWEEDLEDEE'S AWAY...

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Today's Today programme didn't include Jim Naughtie (or John Humphrys) so the bias was far less extreme than yesterday. There was, for example, an interesting discussion on aspiration between Conservative cutie Justine Greening and likable Labour MP John Hutton (chaired fairly enough by Justin Webb). The left-liberal bias appeared, however, in the choice of guests. For example, the only other guest who talked about aspiration was another voice from the Left, Lisa Harker, co-director of the Labour-aligned Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). Evan Davis, who I (perhaps very naively) place some hope in for the salvation of this deeply biased programme, blotted his copy-book here by asking Labour-leaning Lisa a question critical of the Conservatives, though no questions critical of Labour (and asked it as if she were a wholly non-aligned expert): "The difficulty associated with the Conservatives is that if you just talk about all the horrible things you have to do it's not going to get you very far so you need some positive word, and this is a bit of a catch-all." Lisa said "yes" to this.
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This was not wholly the case, however, as the school closures caused by the snow were discussed with Stephen Alambritis, chief spokesman of the Federation of Small Businesses, and Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Headteachers. Still we had 'economics expert' Simon Johnson, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, discussing banking system reforms, a self-declared man of 'the centre', though one who openly says he voted for Barack Obama.
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The issue of bias really arises though over the discussion of David Blunkett's warnings that the Conservatives will spend more than Labour at the general election. Here the guests were a neutral, Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, an authority on political finance at Brunel University, and a partisan for Labour, Sir Chris Powell, Labour's former advertising expert. Why no Conservative supporter?
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