On the Question Time panel from where the Conservative conference was held – Salford – tonight we have the inclusivity box-ticking Baroness Warsi, Shadow Junior Minister for Drains Andy Burnham, Charles *hic* Kennedy, Hello! and Sun journalist Jane Moore and, returning to our BBC screens after an absence of at least 25 minutes, Billy sodding Bragg.
TheEye is Back and Beautiful tonight, so will rejoin the Two Davids…Vance and Mosque in the moderator seats.
On the Question Time panel from the Labour conference in Liverpool tonight we have Grant Shapps, housing minister; Tim Farron, president of the Liberal Democrats; Caroline Flint, shadow communities and local government secretary; toothy freak Janet Street-Porter; and columnist and commentator Peter Oborne.
TheEye is unable to join you this evening So leaves you in the splendid hands of the Two Davids…Vance and Mosque. Play nicely!
On the Question Time panel from the LibDem conference in Birmingham tonight we have the increasingly senile Vince Cable, Priti Patel, Harriet Harman, Private Eye editor Ian Hislop and Justine Roberts from Mumsnet (married to Ian Katz, deputy editor of The Guardian).
TheEye is unable to join you this evening So leaves you in the splendid hands of the Two Davids…Vance and Mosque. Play nicely!
Question Time tonight is a 9/11 Special.
On the panel tonight in London we have Secretary or State for Defence Liam Fox, failed Labour leadership contender David Miliband and US Assistant Sec of Defense Richard Perle
In the cheap seats we have ‘playwright’ by the name of Bonnie Langford Greer, race-agitator Tariq Ali and a lady called Christina Schmidt who lost her husband serving as a bomb disposal officer in Afghanistan.
So good luck there.
TheEye is unable to join you this evening So leaves you in the splendid hands of the Two Davids…Vance and Mosque. Play nicely!
Guido is running with this Tweet right now – and it’s a sight to gladden the heart of seasoned bias-watchers.
Could it be? Or is he just playing hard to get for a salary bump? Who is likely to replace him? And (a different question entirely) who should replace him? Or is the whole concept past its usefulness?
David Cameron may have recalled Parliament today to discuss the looting and criminality, but we all know who really think they run the country. Yes, the BBC have recalled Question Time.
As usual the media are exaggerating the disturbances. What the BBC called looting in Liverpool, we all knew as Wednesday but most importantly for Police Force Service quotas we have heard no reports of smoking ban violations or inner-city foxhunting.
On the panel tonight we have an utterly unbelievable lineup of John “thug and adulterer” Prescott, LibDem Brian “my boyfriend didn’t deal in pot” Paddick, an exotically be-hatted Iranian called Camila Batmanghelidjh, also exotically be-hatted but in a different way Rev John Sentamu and Fraser Nelson. UPDATE: and David Davis – Cameron’s opponent for the leadership and a critic of his prisons policy.
As a frequent critic of the government Fraser Nelson fits the BBC panelist profile of token rightist nutter so why isn’t there a representative of the government? At all? Society has fallen apart after 13 years of socialist education and social policy but you’d at least expect BBC pet wet rag Ken Clarke on their speed dial to make a mess of the case for the defence.
TheEye will be joined by the splendid David Mosque in moderating what promises to be a partisan carve-up unparalleled in the West since the Treaty of Versailles.
TheEye intended to put together Shot Bingo for this event. “Deprived”, “Cuts”, “Fatcha” and so on. Maybe even doubles for Miners Strike. But the targets are too obvious and there’s an ‘elf’n’safety lawyer risk to how much liver damage would be caused. Tequila, my friends, is the way forward. But limit yourself to a bottle. TheEye, to keep a sense of refinement, may open some calvados.
Join us at 10:30pm at your peril.
UPDATE: The spat between the BBC and No10 about a Minister being on the panel
Question Time is currently on its summer break, and is scheduled to return on 8th September.
But! In terrific news for Bias-Watchers everywhere – there will be a special edition broadcast live this Thursday specifically to discuss the riots. It’s going to be terrible and you know it.
Join us here for the usual Live-Chat at 10:30pm on Thursday….and bring alcohol. You will need it.
One of the worrying things about the BBCs current wall-to-wall coverage of the Murdochalypse* is that when the Eurozone utterly collapses your average BBC viewer will ask themselves “when did that start?” and “how come nobody put that on the telly“?
It’s been brewing for months…years…eh? Why didn’t anyone say anything?
The BBC, mindful of this, are getting their defence in first. Good tactics, lads.
Interesting because it flies in the face of the facts.
Consider the results of searching the BBC News site for references to “hacking”, “euro” and “libya” over the last week:
Libya: 23 mentions
Euro: 32 mentions
Hacking: 246 mentions
Still – let’s not allow BBC gloating to get in the way of impartial news reporting, eh?
* Copyright SeanT 🙂
Today The Guardian has published a breakdown of what the BBC is spending in 2011 on its channels – which is number-crunched from the latest annual report. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Some of the details are very interesting. They highlight the facts that:
The report shows that BBC overheads rose by about £15m in its last financial year because of spending on the controversial relocation of several thousand staff from London to Salford and the redevelopment of Broadcasting House.
The media focus is on the costs of the big talent stars, and that data is in the report too:
- The BBC’s overall talent costs dropped by £9m to £213m in the year to the end of March
- In 2010-11, 274 people earned over £100,000, compared with 270 last year
- 19 stars earned between £500,000 and £5m – down from 21 in 2009-10
With typical Guardian slant, a controversial rise becomes “compared with” and a tiny margin of error drop becomes “down from”. But they crunched the graphics so its unkind to complain too much…
A spreadsheet with with the full figures lives here. Feel encouraged to rip it apart in the Comments.
Question Time comes tonight from Basingstoke, which is twinned with Isengard and Mordor. Locally known as Gaysinblokes it is a marginally stylish buffer between the twin dumps of Southampton and Reading. It only features a swimming pool, two instantly forgettable colleges and a massive nightclub called Liquid which is populated by tattooed grannies dressed as 17-year olds.*
On the panel tonight we have Dept of Work and Pensions Minister Chris Grayling, the most self-righteous woman in the entire Universe Shirley Williams, Wee Dougie Alexander, the unpredictable but usual voice of sanity Jon Gaunt and…wait for it…Hugh Grant…
..right that’s right. Hugh Grant. This show has finally jumped the shark. An ugly-cheap-slapper-acquiring bloke who is notorious for trying too hard with high profile “girlfriends” to deflect the fact that he’s obviously gay. He appeared in some B movies. Years ago. Mug shot here, just for fun 🙂
Oh yes. That’s the BBC’s premier political programme tonight.
The LiveBlog will also stay open for the bizarreness of This Week with Andrew Neil, and Michael Portillo. They are joined on the Sofa of Mediocrity by the crater-faced failed postie Alan Johnson and the pompous Max Clifford. Sylvia Syms is promised as an extra (from Ice Cold In Alex? Surely not!), and a political round-up from Guradian bore Nick Watt.
David Vance, TheEye and David Mosque will be moderating the abuse here from 10:30pm. See you later!
* Note to the bloke who emailed me last week about the description of his town – I’ve never been to these places and it’s only humour, eh? *It’s a laugh* Go shoot yourself. Slowly.
