To Justin Webb….
Justin, when interviewing people it helps if you actually interview them. Part of that is an inconvenient requirement that you ask questions, any questions, but preferably ones that actually make the interviewee reveal something of relevance to the subject.
Unless a presenter is thrown into an interview without notice, they need to go in armed with good background knowledge.
Presumably Justin, this morning you were somewhat busy, too busy to do any research that would have allowed you to challenge Peter Hain’s furiously msileading rant about the economy and Public opinion.
Instead of keeping Hain on thread, talking about any challenge to Miliband’s leadership, Webb allowed Hain to bluster on for an extended period dodging the real point.
Judicious use of opinion polls may show that politicians are out of step with what the public wants
Webb instead of challenging Hain decided that he rather quite liked what he was hearing and when Hain raged that the economy was failing, other countries are doing so much better than us, people are disillusioned and angry with this government Webb’s only quibble was to ask why, when people are so angry and disillusioned, Miliband isn’t profiting from that.
Basically it seemed that Webb accepted Hain’s premise about the economy and people’s beliefs.
It was the same Webb yesterday that when interviewing a LibDem accepted that ‘Tory’ policies such as the ‘Bedroom Tax’ were wrong and LibDems should possibly have resigned on principle in opposition to them.
Killer facts, produced at the right moment, can be a highly effective way of challenging a guest’s argument
Of course if you enter into an interview seemingly not intending to ask any questions I guess ‘Killer Facts’ are unnecessary when faced with a oleaginous politician who spouts lazy and fabricated tripe that suits your narrative.
Peter Hain being lovingly carried to the interview by his loyal team of police manservants. Lazy sod.
Just business as usual for the BBC which has a habit of bringing in Labour politicians for a cosy chat that verge on ‘party political broadcast’ with a few questions chucked in for appearances sake.
I heard that, too, and wondered if I’d inadvertently tuned to the wrong station. When I realised who it was ranting, I reluctantly had to accept it was Radio 4 “Today” with the softly spoken (so softly spoken, indeed, I couldn’t hear him asking any questions) and rather leftie Webb, listening in thrall, to Hain. (As an aside, why does Webby sigh so much?).
. . . and a few months ago Evan was so enamoured of Mandelson’s opinions on the EU that he allowed him an unchallenged 5-10 minutes to utter a stream of lies in the cause of maintaining Mandy’s EU pension. BTW, Alan, Webb’s one-sided conversation with Hain didn’t “verge” on a party political broadcast. It was one.
I heard that “interview” and Party Political Broadcast was exactly the phrase that came to mind at the time.
The Orange One had the nerve to criticise the current government for the possibility of power cuts this winter when the forthcoming lack of generating capacity has been a problem clear to anyone who knew anything about the subject for 20 years. What did he do about it when he had the chance? Nothing, unless you count some rather useless windmills. You’d think Justin might want to tackle him on that. Or maybe you wouldn’t.
It amazes, and depresses in equal measure, that when it comes to the adverse consequences of poor energy planning, the role of a certain climate change clown does seem to have gone down Aunty’s astoundingly uncurious memory hole, along with much else.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/oct/03/climatechange.energy
An interesting piece with many worthy quotes, the value of which history can judge.
‘a source close to Ed Miliband said the two brothers were personally very close’
As in keeping close or closer still, presumably?
This is like dejVous all over again!
This morning on BBC 1 some guy called Ben Bradshaw gave a similar party political broadcast from Exeter.
He ranted on for a good 5 minutes about the big bad government without interruption, when asked about Millipede (Micropede?).
Unbelievable – but par for the course.
This morning on the Today programme, some EU person called Helmut was being interviewed by Humphries about how ungrateful the Brits are not to cough up a miserable £1.7bn into their coffers when we are already taking £70bn out and only paying in £6.7bn. It sounded such a good deal that he repeated these figures twice without being challenged by Humphries that we are, in fact, one of the few net contributors.
Humphries then went on to challenge our man about the fact that the EU accounts had never been signed off. Usual load of bluff and guff about the extremely efficient accounting practices of the EU but still no explanation as to why they had not been signed off.
We did, of course, have the opportunity of resolving this problem when the Welsh Wind Bag was appointed Vice President for Administrative Reform and the AUDIT but, as would have been expected from the worst Prime Minister we never had, all that he achieved was to ensure that the Kinnock clan got on to the EU Gravy Train and are now living happily ever after and great cost to the net contributors to the EU – namely us.
You may recall that Kinnock actually had the lady chief accountant or financial director or whatever her job title was, dismissed. Her crime? To complain about the lack of accountability and the fact that she could not do her job with all the obstacles put in her way by vested financial interests, e.g those connected with all the financial gravy trains and associated corruption and fraud.
He is the one who should have been sacked.
Her name was Marta Andreasen
http://www.theeuroprobe.org/2013-018-whistle-blowers/
If she had been allowed to continue in her job, she would have exposed the rotten incompetence and corruption at the heart of the EU gravy train.
‘As soon as Miss Andreasen began looking at the EU’s accounting system, she saw that it was a shambles. Between the 2000 and 2001 accounts, €200 million had gone missing without explanation. She was told these were “loans” which had been â written off……It soon became obvious that her attempts to introduce changes were being blocked at every turn……Miss Andreasen insists she was not a “whistleblower” but merely trying to do her job.
Her telephone was bugged. She was followed outside the building. In desperation she sought an interview with Neil Kinnock, the Commission Vice-President charged with fighting fraud, but she describes how he treated her with “bullying” contempt. At Lord Kinnock’s instigation, she was first suspended and consigned to a tiny office without a telephone, then dismissed, finally to face disciplinary proceedings,
Thus her life descended into a five-year nightmare, as she faced one tribunal or court after another, all finding her wholly to blame. At one point she had to appear before all the Commissioners, like a naughty child, only one appearing to listen to her while Kinnock made grimacing signs to indicate that she was mad.
Her book reads like a chilling cross between two Kafka novels, The Trial and The Castle…..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5301009/A-look-in-the-EUs-unbalanced-books.html
Right now they are debating the EU on Have Your Say, if you can call it a debate with a limit of a few lines per comment:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-29944564?postId=120740043#comment_120740043
From what I’ve seen of it, a large majority of the comments are against the monstrosity known as the EU.
Ben of course being on ‘The Future of the BBC’ inquiry committee, thanks to him being a BBC pensioner with no conflict of interest at all.
Oddly his contributions, though on occasion critical of management, did tend to err more on best means to ensure the BBC’s flow of cash was ensured.
Guys and girls don’t pay the licence fee, I am waiting for my visit from thier enforcement team and will decline to pay. They can take me to court and I will invite other media professionals to report on the outcome. How can I possibly be guilty? I am not getting what I paid for.
Get rid of the TV. Use the iplayer for catch up. Stay legal.
Heard that ‘party political interview’ this morning. It wasn’t so much that Hain wasn’t asked any penetrating questions, or challenged on the hypotheses he was throwing around regarding the government, he basically wasn’t asked any pertinent questions at all, and turned the time alloted to the sham ‘interview’ into a tirade against the Conservatives… lies and half-truths abounded, but not, apparently in the eyes of the BBC.
In addition, I was appalled that the Today reporter ( I think it was John Humphries) interviewing some shill for the EU, basically sat back and lett him utter a bunch of half-truths and half -stories. The UK has perennially been a net contributor to the EU coffers, one of the very few countries in the EU who are, even with our ‘rebates’. But this EU plonker adamantly repeated the same incredible claim that the UK annually contributes something like £6 billion to the EU, but receives £70 billion in benefits…… Where the h€ll did that come from ? Or is he conflating different data – like the net contribution the UK makes to the EU (i.e. the difference between what the UK contributes directly to the coffers, and what it actually gets back in various forms), and comparing that to only one side of the annual trade figures with the EU, in which I actually though we had a net deficit in that respect… i.e. we buy more from Europe that we sell….. to the tune of several billions annually ? But did the BBC reporter even seek to question or challenge him on these figures ? Not a prayer.
Having had a good look around the web, I can’t find anywhere a reference to the UK getting handouts from the EU to the tune of £70 billion a year.
What a disgraceful lack of interest by the BBC in providing accurate information to the public in the UK. These guys basically become ‘newsreaders’, rather than ‘reporters’, investigative or otherwise, when it comes to topics dear to their hearts..
I was in the shower when I heard the ‘Today’ programme giving Peter Hain (Labour Peer in waiting?) several shots at an open goal instead of answering Justin Webb’s actual question about Ed Miliband’s diminishing status as the leader of the Labour party. I vowed then to break my duck on Biased BBC with a complaint about a BBC-sponsored ‘party political broadcast’ but I have been so slow in getting to my PC that I am already about fifteenth in the queue. When Hain said that the ‘Daily Mail’ was against Labour why didn’t Justin point out the recent ‘New Statesman’ condemnations of Miliband?
Just imagine the sharp contrast if, say, William Hague had been asked to comment on David Cameron’s current grasp of the Tory party. Webb would have been hectoring him, talking over him and generally preventing him from expressing any audible comments; I have heard Webb doing this countless times before, curiously only when Tory reputations are at stake.
Biased BBC gets its ethos from biased presenters and journalists. The sooner they are all reined in the better!
I heard this trailed earlier in the programme and knew what to expect.
Hain was allowed to pursue a party political rant so detached from reality all I can think is Webb just let him get him off his chest asap just to get shut of him. Nah, forget that, it was the BBC giving Labour a free platform to tell us everything in the garden is rosy, that they’ve got great policies for sorting out……sorting out….(actually, all the shit they got us in when they were in government which is going to take decades to put right), that the Tories are a bunch of public school toffs who look after their wealthy mates whilst grinding the rest of us into poverty. Webb just let him speak until he ran out of breath then simply added ‘You sound pretty angry’ – cue more bile and political propaganda from Hain for another couple of uninterrupted minutes. There was at least 5 minutes of this and no mention of Miliband’s suitability as a leader – which was the whole reason for the interview.
Even by BBC standards this was unbelievable bias towards Labour, a clear helping hand in their hour of need. Either that or totally incompetent journalism. Whichever, Webb and his editor are not fit for purpose.
PS Mrs jtf just reported that Jeremy Vine’s callers on the topic all in support of Miliband. Some suggesting it’s a non-story hatched from within the Westminster bubble to detract attention from Cameron’s problems with the EU.
The BBC wagons are circling….
More likely that Milliband Tower has just organised a phone in.
Yes, Hain was claiming it was all a right wing plot led by the Daily Mail…never mind that Mehdi Hasan from the lefty Huffington Post was on minutes before laying into Miliband…Hain wasn’t reminded of this by Webb…or that for over a year the left wing websites have been heavily criticising Miliband….the BBC totally ignored that criticism.
And here’s Guido’s look at things….
http://order-order.com/2014/11/06/that-miliband-leadership-crisis-in-full/
That photo reminds me of a movie I saw called ‘My mother’s new boyfriend.’ The single mother had let herself go and was plump and eating junk food. Looking unattractive and dishevelled, she goes to a take away joint, gets some junk food and a drink in a paper cup and plonks herself down on the pavement. She’s about to take a sip of her drink when someone drops a coin into the cup.
I was practically rolling on the floor holding my sides.
I thought I heard Justin say (at the end of the interview(?) with Mr Hain, “and that was a party political broadcast on behalf of the Labour party”. But then I might have been mistaken.
Justin Webb conducted an interview? I recall that years ago, when he was North America ‘Editor,’ he ‘interviewed’ Barack Obama.
That alleged interview consisted mostly of Webb staring in awe like a rabbit caught in the glare of a car’s headlights as the great man spoke.
That photo with the beggar leads to one obvious question: if Miliband says his Labour Party is not about style over substance then why did he walk past that beggar with two photographers at hand? (There’s one in the photo and one taking the photo).
Personally I think Ed Milliband is a decent cove, but not Prime Minister material. But my main objection is to the policies he promotes, and they don’t seem up for debate in this current ‘drama’ so it’s all a bit unreal. Does anyone see Labour changing leader 6 months before the General Election?
“Personally I think Ed Milliband is a decent cove..”
Whatever makes you think that? Someone who married his long term live in partner and mother of his children so that he could become Prime Minister, after a year earlier rudely saying he didnt ‘think getting married would be a good idea’? Someone who stood against his older and more experienced brother for the same role causing his aged mother great distress?
Please explain what part of this power crazed egotist is ‘decent’?
And some one who entered into an extremely dodgy trust scheme with his brother and mother to avoid paying inheritance tax on his millionaire Marxist’s fathers mansion and now supports a mansion tax on others .
Does anyone see Labour changing leader 6 months before the General Election? Dear God! I hope not. Having that tosser leading Labour is the best hope for a Tory Ukip coalition with Ukip putting some spine into the effort to save the country.
I’m personally shocked that the BBC hasn’t realized this and backed a coup. Talk about an own goal.
Its very unlikely as a vote of no confidence requires a show of cards a party conference (after GE) so unless he can persuaded to resign its not possible to push him.