ANY QUESTIONS?

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This week's Any Questions featured a revealing encounter between Jonathan Dimbleby and a member of the audience (a typically left-wing audience, but then it was from just outside Swansea.)
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The questioner, a Mr Greg Wilkinson, offered the panel a choice of questions (war and peace or equality and inequality) - much to JD's surprise. Dimbleby wanted to be able to ask Labour leadership no-hoper John McDonnell about the Labour leadership and prompted Mr Wilkinson to use what was clearly the agreed question about the Labour leadership. The bolshie Mr Wilkinson was not playing ball: "I was given a question to ask, but that's my question. She said 'Any question', this is my question." He asked an anti-American, pro-European, anti-war question instead. (For more on Mr Wilkinson:
http://www.thisissouthwales.co.uk/news/Pensioner-picks-date-protest/article-594221-detail/article.html)
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Jonathan Dimbleby, clearly embarrassed, returned to the subject shortly afterwards, as he thought that the listening public might be "puzzled" about this exchange. He thought, naturally, that the listening public might leap to the conclusion that Mr Wilkinson's "I was given a question to ask" meant that the show's producers sometimes give their own pre-prepared questions to the audience for them to ask on their behalf - which, if true, would completely undermine the show's credibility. (Haven't we all suspected that from time to time though? And even more so about its sister show - or should that be 'brother show'? - Question Time?)
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JD explained that what Mr Wilkinson meant was that because the show gets large numbers of questions from the audience each week the producers must pick a handful to be read out. This is sort-of obvious, but it puts on record the fact that what gets asked and who is chosen to ask the questions is entirely at the discretion of the programme's producers. If a question attacking the coalition comes up first, or a question calling for the scrapping of Trident comes up third, that happens because the shows producers have chosen it to happen. If a left-wing, anti-Israeli protester (like Mr Wilkinson) gets called on to ask a question, that's because he has been picked by the show's producers. Everything is filtered through their lenses. There's nothing random about the show. All very obvious really, but sometimes the obvious goes unnoticed.
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As further evidence for all this, and in blatant disregard for the very idea behind the show, Jonathan Dimbleby then - after the four panelists had finished holding forth on Mr Wilkinson's question - simply went ahead and put the question Mr Wilkinson was supposed to have asked to John McDonnell, regardless. The programme's agenda was not going to be derailed that easily!
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MOOD INDIGO

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Talking of Ken Clarke...
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His office tells me that he himself enjoyed his evening out at the mosque a week ago on Any Questions. While we were all getting red in the face at hearing that braying mob of an audience, the stacked panel and a biased host, Ken was enjoying himself. He found the braying mob 'friendly'.
http://beebbiascraig.blogspot.com/2010/03/if-you-thought-question-time-was-bad.html
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It must be all that jazz he listens too.
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I don't think it would worth e-mailing him again about BBC bias. I don't think it bothers him one bit.
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IF YOU THOUGHT 'QUESTION TIME' WAS BAD...

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As I was typing the last post I was listening to The Other Dimbleby, Jonathan, on Any Questions. (I still am). My face is already growing red again!
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Coming from the highly controversial The Muslim Centre in London, this also began with the Ashcroft story. I've just had the misfortune to hear Ken Clarke being booed, hissed, screamed at and jeered at by a hysterical mob masquerading as an audience. He's also been savaged by fellow panelists Ken Livingstone, Mehdi Hasan of The New Statesman and Julia Goldsworthy (who have been whooped at or cheered to the rafters for saying nasty things about the Tories). And then, to cap it all, there was The Other Dimbleby, that insufferable popinjay, interrupting Mr Clarke repeatedly but letting the others attack Ken Clarke without interruption. It's a wonder there wasn't a public stoning!!

Livingstone's savaging of Andrew Gilligan for a programme attacking The Muslim Centre was also cheered to the rafters, as was Mr Hasan's savaging of the right-wing newspapers. Dimbleby wasn't so keen to interrupt here! (He never goes against a mob, especially the sort that might stone him for it!)
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Was Ken Clarke clapped for his brilliant attack on Gordon Brown's record on the economy? No. It didn't help that Dimbleby interrupted him before the climax of his answer and then, after asking him a critical question, interrupted him three more times in short succession before cutting him off again before he could finish for a second time! A single foolhardy person clapped. In contrast Livingstone's attack on the Tories was wildly cheered, Hasan was first booed for saying something nice about Ken Clarke then cheered and whistled enthusiastically for damning him and his party and Dimbleby let all three Tory-bashers speak. Dimbleby then intervened to ask Ken yet another hostile question, interrupted him shortly after and then cut him off for a third time. Astonishing levels of bias from Jonathan Dimbleby! Absolutely astonishing!
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Get rid of him, get rid of his brother and bring in Eddie Mair full-time!!
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I don't think my face could get any redder!!

THE OTHER DIMBLEBORE

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Having taken the plunge last year into watching David Dimbleby's Question Time again after a long, long break (the bias, the crazy left-wing audiences), prompted by the Biased BBC website's weekly commentaries, I thought I might tonight plunge into Radio 4's Any Questions (the bias, the crazy left-wing audiences), hosted by the other Dimbleby. Much as I'd love to provide a weekly review of it here, I don't think I'll be doing so (or at least that's how I feel at the moment, as I'm still seething).
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The panel was packed with left-wingers - Polly Toynbee, Sadiq Khan and that most left-wing of Lib Dems Simon Hughes. Only Dan Hannan stood up for right-of-centre opinion. Throw in left-liberal-to-his-green-fingertips Jonathan Dimbleby and that's four against one. And that's before you even consider the audience. Where do they get these audiences from? (From the Question Time audience list perhaps?) I listened to the programme back in the 1980s when Mrs Thatcher led the Conservatives to two large election victories - you would never have known that from the make-up of the audiences then. And now, twenty years on, it sounds just the same. The hostility shown towards Mr Hannan by tonight's audience was something to hear.
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The programme's nadir came during the section on the Conservatives' self-confessed 'screw-up' over tax breaks for married couples. All three left-of-centre panellists ganged up on Dan Hannan. Dimbleby only restrained them so that he could have a go himself - and the audience booed and heckled, as if they were a bunch of Labour Party hirelings. Dan, as ever, stood firm and (seemingly) unperturbed.
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At the end of this section Dimbleby said that all the clapping came for both sides of the argument. That was not what I heard. Not what I heard at all. He then, foolishly, put this clearly absurd statement to the test and conducted a straw poll that, surprise surprise, showed very little support for the Conservatives and a "large majority" of the audience against. Dimbleby didn't admit (unlike David Cameron) that he misspoke.