What we don’t want to hear
Aaro was pretty good in his movable slot (this time is was a Friday; I guess that's why they call it 'The Times' - no? anyone?).
If true, it's not as if the Murdoch papers and Sky haven't tried. I've hoped for the last three elections that politicians would get websites and thus be able to write directly to the public: in paragraphs, not soundbites. They have got websites, but my hopes are mostly vain.
Look, on 'bigotgate' my opinion is very simple. People say this sort of thing all the time. It's really embarrassing if you get caught, but you've all done it. And Brown was right, she did seem bigoted. (No one has even discussed this, but she also seemed to think that if you were of pensionable age, perhaps also if your spouse had died, you shouldn't have to pay tax. We will now look for a comment on this from Mr Paul McCartney. Brown fobbed her off; he used to be able to calculate this sort of thing in his head.)
Dave doesn't care for "our monitory democracy". I do. I don't see how we can make informed decisions without good auditing. If the country can be compared to a large company, we are the owners, and we're entitled to look at the books and weigh the directors' decisions. Curiously, Aaro backs the IFS here, and for the right reasons.
Generally, he's right. We need a better quality of debate. (Not that we'll get it; pretty much everyone believes that Kennedy won because Nixon sweated more.) Feel free, as always, to disagree.
Since the whole business kicked off in Manchester two weeks and a day ago, my profession has looked with ambivalence at the leaders’ televised debates. These confrontations have marked a limit in our ability as the media to continually interpose ourselves between the politicians and the voters. By and large you have seen and you have judged.
If true, it's not as if the Murdoch papers and Sky haven't tried. I've hoped for the last three elections that politicians would get websites and thus be able to write directly to the public: in paragraphs, not soundbites. They have got websites, but my hopes are mostly vain.
Look, on 'bigotgate' my opinion is very simple. People say this sort of thing all the time. It's really embarrassing if you get caught, but you've all done it. And Brown was right, she did seem bigoted. (No one has even discussed this, but she also seemed to think that if you were of pensionable age, perhaps also if your spouse had died, you shouldn't have to pay tax. We will now look for a comment on this from Mr Paul McCartney. Brown fobbed her off; he used to be able to calculate this sort of thing in his head.)
As the Institute for Fiscal Studies — one of the great new institutions in our monitory democracy — said this week, none of the parties has told us how it will reduce the deficit.
Dave doesn't care for "our monitory democracy". I do. I don't see how we can make informed decisions without good auditing. If the country can be compared to a large company, we are the owners, and we're entitled to look at the books and weigh the directors' decisions. Curiously, Aaro backs the IFS here, and for the right reasons.
Generally, he's right. We need a better quality of debate. (Not that we'll get it; pretty much everyone believes that Kennedy won because Nixon sweated more.) Feel free, as always, to disagree.
posted by Chardonnay Chap at 5/03/2010 08:02:00 PM
1 Comments:
This sentence:
These confrontations have marked a limit in our ability as the media to continually interpose ourselves between the politicians and the voters.
is telling. Both because a) it's wrong but especially because b) it shows what Aaro wants the media's role to be. The debates themselves were the result of careful negotiating between the politicians and the media while immediately afterwards the latter told us who had won. It had little to do with any direct voter participation, unlike bigotgate.
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