Friday, 5 March 2010

Bully For Them

Not only did Question Time follow its unvarying rule, shared with Any Questions, of always having two Tories on the panel. But, not for the first time and in an edition pointedly featuring no MPs or even PPCs so close to a General Election, it also featured, if you count the very opinionated and outspoken chairman, two members of the Bullingdon Club.
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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous5 March 2010 at 21:35

    In this case: Boris Johnson and Carol Vorderman (Con.), Lord Adonis and Will Self (Lab.), plus Shirley Williams (LD).

    Two leading members of the main parties, plus two prominent assumed supporters of those parties. Reasonable balance since those are the parties who will form the next government, unless you are right to think Adonis is a potential turncoat. It isn't as though you object to FPTP which hardly favours the fringe parties you vote for these days.

    So former Bullingdon Club members should not appear on the programme? The connection is one more reason to find ridiculous Dimbleby and Johnson.

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  2. Anonymous6 March 2010 at 09:17

    The panel, as well as many outspoken members of the audience, seemed awfully out of step with public opinion on the case of James (for it was never 'Jamie') Bulger's killers.

    I finished watching it thinking I was the only person in England who thought these men should have been banged up for life.

    Evidently not.

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  3. David Lindsay6 March 2010 at 18:14

    Will Self is not Labour as such. Carol Vorderman is an advisor to the Conservative Party and was there in that capacity. No comparison at all. Two Tories, as always. Three, if you count Dimbleby.

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  4. James7 March 2010 at 00:26

    Isn't it as though you object to first past the post?

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  5. David Lindsay7 March 2010 at 00:44

    It's not the most urgent problem. That is the failure of the parties to put up serious candidates for every seat, and to campaign properly for every constituency. If they did that, then First Past The Post would be far less of a problem.

    My mind is open, but other systems either involve the abomination of party lists, or are unworkable in rural areas, or involve the ridiculous spectacle of people losing their seats to members of the same parties as themselves, or what have you.

    People sometimes say that that last involves voters choosing among different wings or factions of a given party. To which I say, dream on. All the candidates from all the parties, never mind any one of them, would be exactly the same in every constituency, never mind in any one of them.

    The problem is the parties. Among the three of them, they cannot find the two thousand or so people needed to give every voter a meaningful choice. So they don't bother trying, a cosy arrangement which suits them all down to the ground. This cartel simply has to go.

    In other words, new MPs need to be elected, so that, once at Westminster, they can coalesce into new parties such as will re-enfranchise the electorate. Thus did the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and, albeit at a greatly accelerated pace, the SDP all emerge.

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