h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

These delightful gems on BBC1 all this week deserve their own thread I think.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/newsnight_election_2005/4421655.stm

All comments welcome.

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My

I watched CK's attempt and think Paxman wrong-footed him superbly. The 'average earnings of a fireman' question was an effective foil to CK wanting to present the policy in the round of other policies as a sort of "giveth with one hand taketh with the other" but overall better off. Paxman's relentless focussing on this one issue brought up some uncomfortable facts for CK and I think he struggled to meet Paxman's questions on their own without refering to the total package of measures he wanted to introduce. A dissapointing performance in the round.

Watched TB's one tonight and TB dangled on the end of paxman's hook and TB confirmed all my worst impressions. No big surprises - No regret on Iraq. Feels he has been exhonerated by the evidence and the enquiries. We are expected to have to make a judgement about whether he took the right decision or not. Trust *is( an issue. Glad he spotted that. And for those who take an interest in these sorts of things TB has no idea (or was very reluctant to say), what figure he would put the number of failed asylum seekers in the UK at.

MH is up on Friday - should proove interesting Howard has rather dominated the Tory election agenda of late - Paxman has been nothing short of his abrasive self in the previous two encounters, MH had better not have anything to hide if his performance is to be judged a success and get the otherwise stagnant polls moving again.

Morning All,

Watched the TB one last night. Good. Paxman stealthy, but didn't press hard enough on the Terms for the (Iraq) enquiries which TB said showed he was right. I cannot prove otherwise but the Terms of Reference were expressed in such a way that the outcome was predictable.

Enjoyed watching TB squirm on question of regret over Dr Kelly.

Waiting for Friday,

Novo

Ineed, however I was against the war, and I think that at best the evidence was very shakey.

However the is *no* proof to suggest that TB lied rather than just got it wrong. People have their suspicions (I have mine for sure) but it is flagrantly dishonest to suggest that the case is proven. It isn't.

Morning FB

Did I suggest that TB lied? . I didn't intend that to come across: I simply mean that the enquiries were set up in such a way that the restricted remits meant evidence was not looked at, or was inadmissable. To that extent the outcome was predictable. Like you I have my suspicions , but as I said there is no proof.

No you didn't and I am not ruling out that he did.

However lots of people (many of them here on hootoo) have stated as if it is vertabum that TB lied about Iraq.

It is beyond doubt that he was wrong about WMDs, but whether or not that constituted lying has not been proven and people should not assume that it has.

Aside, when someone *wants* to believe something is true it is often easy to be proved right on spurios evidence. In itself that does not make one a liar, just a fool.

God that was a pain - was a member here ages ago but had to spend 10 minutes going through an extremely tedious 'revalidation'procedure to get back in because I hadn't visited for a while. Plus someone had stolen my old user name.

Anyway, just a quick point. If Blair did actually lie to us all in order to justify Iraq then he's clinically insane and should be drugged-up and sent away to recover. I don't think he is clinically insane, it comes back to what he keeps saying: 'it was a judgement call'. (God, I wish he'd drop the management speak - says so much about him though.)

Accepting that, his judgement in the case of Iraq was spectacularly wrong. I suspect that he allowed himself to be bullied by the bullies with whom he seems to like to surround himself. People like Campbell, Mandelson, Reed and Milburn: all of them bullies to a T. It's an attempt at a good guy/bad guy thing that's gone horribly wrong. It's so easy to imagine Campbell scowling at equivocal intelligence service briefings and deleting all the qualifiers perhaps, it's possible, could suggest that, and so on - in typical sub-editor mode. That's what happened, there's no doubt, and Blair's failure is that he let it happen.

We should never forgive him for that. He is deluded about his role and its consequences and it's astonishing that Labour have let him lead them into another election. Astonishing, that is, until you remember that he has surrounded himself with bullies - some of the most unpleasant bullies I've ever come across.

I'm a bit bloody sick of political interviews to be honest. I remember watching the 'famous' Newsnight interview where JP asked MH the same question fourteen times. This is supposedly held up as a high point of British television. Pah. In reality, JP had run out of questions to ask MH. All *that* goes to show us is that too much time is afforded to politicians and political interviewers in the first place.

It's all a stupid game. I get about as much pleasure from this stuff as I get from watching an angler play a fish on a hook, that is, very little indeed. And as for coming away feeling better informed? I wish that my radio had a John Humphreys detection mode which blanked the sound every time that man came on. He asks questions which all of us could easily come up and gets the same degree of obfuscation and dissembling that we ourselves would expect. Yet somehow we are meant to believe that there is a vital democratic audit process going on here, and that were it not for the likes of Humphreys and Paxman the politicians would now be ordering the slaughter of the first-born.

Most people aren't that anal about matters of political detail. The issues that concern them are *not* whether Michael Howard threatened to overrule the HM Inspector of Prisons on a point of detail. And despite what politicians and political people like to maintain (mainly out of starggering self importance), not everything has or should have a political dimension. Less Paxman, please, except on University Challenge.

It seems as though the interviews have become more about Paxman than the interviewee and the issues are not as important as the sight of another politician being made to look foolish.
Asking the same thing over and over might make for headlines the next day but if he can see the interviewee isn't going to respond he should move on so we have a shot of hearing some answers instead of Paxman droning on with the same sentence for 20 miutes.

While we're at it, we can shorten the Today program by at least an hour so I and many others can listen to some more stimulating stuff, like Start The Week. And this could be done but cutting out the political interviews and just having analysis by corrspondents.

Or.....

We could learn from the "broken record" form of questioning that the politician concerned had absolutely no answer that would be palatable to promote his cause, and use our own intelligence to make our own decisions, rather than listening to ANYONE else's analysis of what it might mean?

Just a thought

Analysis is just what it says on the tin ~ one persons interpretation of an event or speech.
I'd prefer less analysis by so called experts and more simple facts.

I like to believe that's what most of us want.



Since we all have eyes to see and brains to function, do we really need to even bother with paying any attention to the campaigning and spin that's going on? At best, it is mildly amusing. At worst, it is tragic to see the patent manipulation that has been allowed.

Surely we are all bright enough not to believe a word of it anyway?

IMO we only need to look at our own lives and the quality of life around us, in our homes, in our society, in our communities, to perceive facts for ourselves.

So, back to my original point, if the Today and Newsnight programs axed the political cross-examinations, would we feel any less-informed? I think not.

Following Clive's original link, I watched all three of them one after another on the Beeb's streaming media, as I'd missed them on TV during the week.

As I got about half way through the third one, a strange realisation struck me. I could barely tell which politician was being interviewed as the style of questioning and of the responses was indentical in all three shows.

So yes, I'm agreeing with FM here. We gain very little from these televised combats.

It'll be interesting to see them together on Question Time this week.
Hopefully the audience won't be to sanitised and Dimbleby will keep them from making too many speeches instead of answering questions.

Afternoon Grey Desk

I felt the same as you. Half way through MH's combat with JP there was a distinct feeling of deja vu, and I found Paxman's feigned surprise, with arched eyebrows and wide open eyes, VERY irritating.

I don't think we learned too much, though I was astonished at TB's attitude re Dr Kelly, ( second thoughts no I wasn't!)

A debate between all 3 leaders might be of interest(?), though perhaps not overly helpful

Novo

okay so consensus seems to be prety much against the interview then.

Would a solution be to have the televised face to face debate between the party leaders - they are after all all appearing on Questiontime together?

a bit of searching and QT is the replacement for a live debate.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/4469857.stm

I read somewhere that Blair wouldn't agree to the face to face interviews but the other would. I can't remember where I read it so feel free to think of this as an unsubstantiated rumour of dubious accuracy.

Morning All

Good to se that the three leaders are appearing on QT. The only problem is that they get 30 minute slots each , to take questions from the audience, not the same as a debate, and whilst we might see 'follow-on' arguments I only hope that Mr Dimbelby keeps out of it more than usual. We could do without his input, and spin!

Novo