Scottish Televsion Underdog Supporter #STVFail

At the moment all the ITV regions bar those in Scotland are watching the Nick Clegg interview with Mary Nightingale. So what you say?

Well we have had the Gordon Brown interview with Piers Morgan and the David Cameron one with Trevor McDonald. The latter is the issue, there is one Conservative MP in Scotland, their leader in Scotland Annabel Goldie has said that Cameron can win the Westminster election without taking seats in Scotland. Oppose that to Nick Clegg who has 12 of his MPs in Scotland is determined that his party will take more. Of all the people that the people of Scotland need to know about is the one who says that it is the people who will be kingmakers in the event of a hung government, but we will do it on what we believe.

What we believe is likely to be front and foremost in this interview, yet that is not going to be shown now on Sunday night just after Dancing on Ice and the news like Brown and Cameron have had.

STV must justify why they are supporting the smallest Westminster group of the Scottish parties in this way while ignoring the second largest.

My New Letter of Complaint re: BBC Question Time

Back in December I wrote to complain about lack of Liberal Democrat representation when Jo Swinson MP was removed from the panel. It was also the last time that Melanie Philips appeared on the Question Time Panel. She seems at present to have a better appearance than the 63 elected representatives of the UK's third largest party.

At the time you responded with comments from Executive Editor Gavin Allen:

"We have to keep a constant editorial eye out for the best possible panel and this can of course mean last-minute alterations. To ensure the widest range of political views are heard there are occasions across the series when nationalists or minority parties are invited onto the panel."

This week the right leaning journalist Ms Philips was backing up former Tory Chair Teresa May. Then on the left we had Lord Faulkner and Claire Short, along with former Labour MP George Galloway.

Along with the Chilcot inquiry (when only Galloway join the Lib Dems on anti-war marches) this week we had euthanasia (you had a very conservative panel and while it didn't come up electoral reform from the death bed of New Labour was a potential topic.

How can the Question Time team and Mr Allen stand by his previous ascertation, when we are weeks away from a General Election being called?

Last time I wrote to you I expected a considered response and was left under the impression that action would be taken so that such blatant bias on the panel would not happen as evidently as it did tonight. I am greatly let down.

I will be forwarding my previous correspondence with this to OFCOM.

Yours very disappointedly

Stephen Glenn

The BBC Fail To Answer My Concerns

I see Mark Thompson has beaten me to it posting about the BBC's response to the complaints about the recent removal at the last minute of Jo Swinson from a Question Time panel in Edinburgh. However, that befits a man who shares his name with the Director General. Like Mark I'd raised the issue that the Lib Dems were the most differing opinion on the war of Iraq a big story of that week, on top of that I mentioned a couple of the more Scottish-centric issues that also popped up that week, I'm not sure if Mark mentioned those in his complaint, but I did.

Yet we both got the same response.

Thank you for your e-mail regarding 'Question Time'.

We forwarded concerns on this issue to 'Question Time' Executive Editor Gavin Allen who explained that we constantly monitor the balance of the panel and that in light of their national electoral strength, the level of representation for the Liberal Democrats on the programme remains very strong.

He added that on this occasion the panel was rearranged to reflect a change in the prominence of some of the issues due to be discussed on the programme and in order to facilitate debate by having representatives willing to question the central political consensus on these issues, of which the Liberal Democrats are a part.

He also added that:

"It was regrettable - but necessary - that the decision to replace Jo Swinson was taken relatively late, but we have to keep a constant editorial eye out for the best possible panel and this can of course mean last-minute alterations. To ensure the widest range of political views are heard there are occasions across the series when nationalists or minority parties are invited onto the panel".

We'd like to assure you that we've registered your complaint on our audience log. This is a daily report of audience feedback that's circulated to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers.

The audience logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions about future programming and content.

Thanks again for taking the time to contact us.

Regards

BBC Complaints

I've highlighted a few of the issues that we of my own concern, issues that didn't answer the issues I raised.. One of mine was that while Nicola Sturgeon was on that show there wasn't a single other Scottish based member of the panel. I have, as I pointed out in my original complaint no qualms about the SNP appearing on Question Time. What I did raise that on a Question Time with a Scottish audience they removed the only other Scottish representation from the panel.

The prominence of the issues to be discussed. How they could know these 24 hours before the audience turned up to ask their questions is beyond be, however, I was far better at guessing these than the BBC editorial team seemed to be. Yes there was going to be the Iraq war enquiry and no the Lib Dems never have been part of the central political consensus on that issue. There were also Questions on:

• Jim Murphy's White paper delaying more powers to Scotland to the next Parliament
• the SNP alcohol's policy where the Lib Dems in Scotland do have an agreed alternative policy
  
• the banks getting away with more, another area that the Lib Dems are and have been leading the political debate

So how the BBC can justify

• a) dropping another Scot to counter Nicola Sturgeon, especially when they were already on the panel
• or
• b) dropping the one party that stand outs on many of the questions that were actually asked

is beyond me. I though it was meant to be "My BBC". Yet despite the questions that were going to be asked they went for three colours of sameness in Lord Falconer, David Davis and Melanie Phillips.

As for it being regrettable but necessary to drop Jo Swinson, this is the second time this year she has been dropped at such sort notice. At least this time she hadn't made plans to go out of her way. Edinburgh after all isn't that far away from her East Dunbartonshire constituency. Also when have they ever dropped the Labour or Conservative politician from the panel to add diversity, or indeed ever dropped one not to be replaced by another. Indeed only last week as well as a Conservative MP we had Kirsty Allsop who is advising the Tories on housing, where is the balance in such a panel. Often the Lib Dems only have a liberal leaning celebrity to raise our points instead not as well as a politician.

Blogging Bias of the Times - Or Ignorance of @JoanMcAlpine?

I see that Joan McAlpine has done a write up of the Scottish Blogosphere in light of recent events that have seen a bit of a decimation of the politic blogs here in recent weeks. Understandably Jeff is quite pleased about it:

Who can blame Jeff from her comment:

"Scotland is different in that our bloggers are highly individualised. They often link to each other’s sites, even when they are on opposite sides of the political fence.So you can access Scottish Tory Boy and Soapbox, by Labour’s Kezia Dugdale, from Jeff Breslin's SNP Tactical Voting, the most widely read political blog in Scotland."

Which may well be true but only in last month's Wikio rankings he was only one place ahead of me, although with technical difficulties mid month I floundered slightly. So by one measure we are pretty close as is Caron and was Subrosa. But it is far to say that there is an interconectiveness between all the blogs. I remember on my return from hiatus at the end of 2007 gently getting relinked to back on opposition blogrolls and pulling a few others along with me.

Joan went on the say comment about the colour that makes up the 'tartan blogosphere' but in all the various examples of blogs that she mentions fails to mention any of the Lib Dems who make up three of the top ten Scots in this month's Wikio rankings as I blogged yesterday.

Following the recent dropping of Jo Swinson from Question Time with just over 24 hours to broadcast. Caron set up a group on Lib Dem Act*which looks at media underepresentation of the Lib Dems. This is just another case and indeed one which cannot be justified, even the other bloggers from other parties emphasis the input that myself, Caron and Andrew in particular bring to the MacBlogsphere, not bad for a Englishman, a Scotswoman and an Irishman.

This is not a rant brought on by sour grapes, but is one that looks at the wider issue of media representation. It is also one of the reasons that Lib Dems blog in the way they do. We have to get our party message across in an accessible way and for us the controlled media that is blogging is one gateway to do so. Maybe Joan, who blogs at Go Lassie Go, merely made an omission in error, maybe it was just ignorance.

Some will say I'm getting pent up about an opinion piece. But we are within six months of a General Election and the only main Tory blogger and the two main Labour Bloggers as well as several Nats all get mentioned in a piece with deals with politics. Ignoring the not insignificant presence of Lib Dem Blogs in Scotland.

All in all she gave a balanced piece as far as the woes facing blogs has been in recent times as indeed I myself did pointing out not all anonymous bloggers or commenters are nasty following the sad demise of Subrosa. Indeed seeing as that was a major conduit of news to a large number of people it may well have been one other example of the Blogosphere looking out for and policing their own. The sad fact is that in this piece which is in a national paper seems to demise the influence of all but three parties, and a couple of non-aligned commentators.

* You don't need to be a party member to join act.