Question time
There was a strange piece on the Today programme after the Tory party conference.
Assuming the Tories win the next election, many of the MPs will be newcomers to Parliament.
The Today programme had the reasonable idea of asking a random section of PPCs some questions to get an idea of what they were like.
So far, so good. But then it went all BBC.
Warning: this question is loaded
Here are a couple of the questions they asked:
Who’s your favourite 20th century PM?
Do you believe in God?
Are there any circumstances in which you’d favour the return of capital punishment?
Ask me another
Question 1:
Of course, most of them said Margaret Thatcher. And of course, this was meant to get Today listeners choking on their organic muesli.
Question 2:
Just weird – since the Beeb is staffed by the kind of people who go all po-faced and censorious at the notion of bringing religion into politics;
Question 3: capital punishment (something most voters support, btw) won’t come up, and has always been a free-vote issue anyway;
A question of bias?
It couldn’t be…I mean, you don’t think the BBC is trying to curdle the voters’ blood by conjuring up a Guardian fantasy of a hanging and flogging Tory party bewitched by the spirit of Margaret Thatcher?
Noooo.
The BBC is totally impartial.
Everybody knows that.
There was a strange piece on the Today programme during the Tory party conference.
Assuming the Tories win the next election, many of the MPs will be newcomers to Parliament.
The programme had the reasonable idea of asking a random selection of PPCs some questions to get an idea of what they were like.
So far, so good. But then it went all BBC.
Warning: this question is loaded
Here are three of the questions they asked:
- Who’s your favourite 20th century PM?
- Do you believe in God?
- Are there any circumstances in which you’d favour the return of capital punishment?
Ask me another
Question 1:
- Of course, most of them said Margaret Thatcher. And of course, this was meant to get Today listeners choking on their organic muesli.
Question 2:
- Just weird – since the Beeb is staffed by the kind of people who go all po-faced and censorious at the notion of bringing religion into politics.
Question 3:
- Capital punishment (something most voters support, btw) won’t come up, and has always been a free-vote issue anyway.
A question of bias?
It couldn’t be…I mean, you don’t think the BBC is trying to curdle the voters’ blood by conjuring up a Guardian fantasy of a hanging and flogging Tory party bewitched by the spirit of Margaret Thatcher?
Noooo.
The BBC is totally impartial.
Everybody knows that.