Question Time

[percyprune]

Is it me, or is last night's Question Time one of those occasions where everyone comes out feeling as if they had a win? Nick Griffin can play the martyr to his party, the major parties can feel as if they gave him a kicking and the government and papers can trash-talk the BBC. Meanwhile the Beeb execs are doing conga lines at the ratings and can

Comments

[ophe1ia_in_red]

Not just you. I think Sayeeda Warsi and Jack Straw were hoping that they would look good if they just sat next to a horrible man for an hour, but neither of them managed to refrain from uttering nonsense of their own.

[stevegreen]

Warsi was particularly ill-focussed. Half the time, I could barely understand what direction she was trying to argue.

[percyprune]

That said, she was more coherent than Jack Straw, who exploded off at all sorts of tangents.

[monocat]

the immigration thing bugged me - limiting immigration numerically is unworkable & the way that came out with everyone patting themselves on the back that such a draconian & authoritarian 'rule' would be good plays up the the BNP as this is one of their starting points.

But as Louise points out - who watches Question Time? Is it those who are undecided about whether or not they should vote for them? Will it have an effect on the way these waverign people might feel about this 'party'? If Griffin did really shite & was lambasted completely (which he wasn't, not really - everyone wanted to be civillised - there wasn't that much booing from the audience).

And this is the BNP we're talking about - they actually can polish a richard - they will spin whatever came out of the appearance as a victory for them & the way that they think

[stevegreen]

Griffiths was booed during the pre-broadcast section of the programme (there was a clip from this on the C4 News).

[monocat]

heh

do you do an IT job for a living?
Excuse my flippancy, but that's pedantry (& as someone who works in IT ... ok - until recently work in IT - there's an elivated level of pedantry in this sector - which is a good thing, I might add).

you'd expect him to be booed when he's introduced to an audience of normal people, so best get the introductions out of the way before it's broadcast because, well, it wouldn't have set the tone of the programme too well - Question Time professing to be an 'impartial & informed' debating thingy

[stevegreen]

I wouldn't myself regard that as pedantry, merely an explanatory note why there was little booing during the actual broadcast. (The programme was also edited for swearing at one point.)

Actually, I'm an ex-newspaper reporter who earns the occasional crumb as a freelance journalist/editor. Not that journalists aren't prone to the occasional pedantic rant, of course.

Edit: On the subject of pedantry, I should point out that I mean "Griffin", not "Griffiths"...