Politics, The Election May 2015

[Hoboh]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 40230.html

I hope he's one of them!

Harriet Protheroe-Davis, who organised the demonstration, told the Morning Star that they were making a stand about Ukip’s “overall ideology”.

It's got to be a p*ss take, no one is called that!

[Hoboh]

The BBC initially refused to disclose the political make-up of the audience but eventually released figures on Friday afternoon.

They showed that, of the 200-strong audience, about 58 were Conservative or Ukip supporters while about 102 supported left-leaning parties - Labour, the Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid Cymru or the SNP – and the rest were undecided.

Ho, Ho, Ho! Lets not let that get in the way of Farage bashing.

eh?? last time I looked, the libdems were in govt with the tories!! left-leaning???

Eh?? look at the polls until the last few days and results of the Euro election, at least 40 - 45% right leaning voters would have been represented!

[thebish]

i'm not really sure what your riposte has to do with the idea that libdems are left-leaning... they aren't...

[a1]

star wars 7 trailer and all

this came up

[Beefheart]

i'm not really sure what your riposte has to do with the idea that libdems are left-leaning... they aren't...

Well, they were left of New Labour. Wanted a Mansion Tax before Labour did and were the first to call for the top rate of tax to be 50% as an example of a couple of left leaning policies. Pretty much everyone is left leaning from the point of view of UKIP, though.

[thebish]

i'm not really sure what your riposte has to do with the idea that libdems are left-leaning... they aren't...

Well, they were left of New Labour. Wanted a Mansion Tax before Labour did and were the first to call for the top rate of tax to be 50% as an example of a couple of left leaning policies. Pretty much everyone is left leaning from the point of view of UKIP, though.

It'd have to be a pretty extraordinary day for me to describe Labour as left-leaning, never mind the lib dems!! mainstream UK politics has virtually no properly-described "leftie" politicians... it's all a desperately samey scramble for the so-called "centre"...

[Zulus Thousand of em]

Where all the votes are.

Funny that.

[thebish]

Where all the votes are.

Funny that.

indeed... which is why it was ludicrous to suggest (as farage did) that the audience was some kind of leftish conspiracy by the BBC.. it wasn't - it was pretty heavily centreish...

[Zulus Thousand of em]

If you say do, your eminence.

[thebish]

If you say do, your eminence.

would you say otherwise, your excellence? pretty uncontroversial, I'd have thought - as you said - that's where the votes are - and the audience was put together by uk voter opinion polling organisations... stands to reason (if that's where the votes are) - that that's where a representative audience would be...

there's barely a fag paper between (new) Labour and the Tories and the Lib Dems on actual policy... tiny differences of emphasis are presented as if they were "clear blue water" - mostly they're not... if you accidentally shuffled up their speeches so that Cameron was giving a Clegg speech and clegg was giving a milliband speech and milliband was giving a Cameron speech - I bet nobody (except their speech-writers) would notice... or of you swapped the names on the manifestos...

[Zulus Thousand of em]

Yes. Fine with all of that.

[Bijou Bob]

I was under the impression that the BBC had now admitted that approximately 70% of the audience were left of centre? Certainly the reaction to anything Farage said was very muted compared to the support for the nationalist leaders.

[Prufrock]

No they haven't. They've given details of the numbers, which they didn't set, which were done by ratio. The ratios look odd to me, with Labour and the Tories both massively under-represented.

They were:

5 each for Labour and the Tories, 4 for the Lib Dems, 3 for UKIP, 2 each for the SNP and the Greens, and one for PC.

Anyone who is defining the Lib Dems and Labour as left-wing wants their head looking at. I even think "centre-left" is pushing it, especially with the Lib Dem leadership.

If anything UKIP are massively OVER-represented. They currently have far fewer seats than the Lib Dems, and are projected to end up with far fewer than the SNP (as well as the Lib Dems too).

[Caro-Kann]

When the Royal Statistical Society asked the current crop of MPs a simple question about the probability of flipping a coin and getting two heads in a row, only 40% of them got the right answer. As a result the RSS is running a campaign to increase the statistical awareness of MPs. They will be offering data handling and statistics training to all MPs taking a seat in the House of Commons following the General Election on 7 May. As part of this they are lobbying all potential MPs during the election. They have created an online submission which will automatically email your potential MP. The entire process takes less than 5 minutes. If you would like to get involved please see:
http://www.rss.org.uk/RSS/Influencing_C ... dates.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Bijou Bob]

As I understand the audience for the debate, ICM chose an audience of 200, with 58 to the right, 102 Labour or Lib Dem and 40 undecided. That doesn't look balanced to me and I can see why there have been complaints. Having said that, the Beeb would have been hung out to dry one way or another.

[thebish]

As I understand the audience for the debate, ICM chose an audience of 200, with 58 to the right, 102 Labour or Lib Dem and 40 undecided. That doesn't look balanced to me and I can see why there have been complaints. Having said that, the Beeb would have been hung out to dry one way or another.

i guess a lot depends on how you calculate "balance"... what would a balanced audience have looked like to you?

[Bijou Bob]

My version of 'balanced' would probably differ from yours, hence my comment that the Beeb couldn't possibly win. On the face of it, I do feel the Beeb set Nigel up for a kicking, as it did recently with George Galloway on Question Time, stacking the audience with a very large number of people from the Jewish faith. The bottom line is that it's not about fairness to the corporation, it's about what makes good telly.

[thebish]

My version of 'balanced' would probably differ from yours, hence my comment that the Beeb couldn't possibly win. On the face of it, I do feel the Beeb set Nigel up for a kicking, as it did recently with George Galloway on Question Time, stacking the audience with a very large number of people from the Jewish faith. The bottom line is that it's not about fairness to the corporation, it's about what makes good telly.

Once again, the Beeb did not select the audience.

I'd still be interested to know what you think the makeup of a balanced audience would look like - cos there are lots of very different ways of understanding that...

here's just a few (off the top of my head):

an audience that reflects the political makeup of the UK in proportion to the support each party currently has in opinion polls
(only those parties present)
an audience that reflects the political makeup of the UK in proportion to the support each party currently has in opinion polls
(including parties not present)
an audience that reflects the political makeup of the UK in proportion to the number of uk parliamentary seats the parties now have
an audience that reflects the political makeup of the UK in proportion to the last national election that we had (in this case - Europe? Local elections?)
an equal number of audience members supporting each party represented plus some not-decideds
an equal number of audience members for all parties (inc. those not there) plus some not-decideds
some AGREED definition of "centre" - then an equal number of "centre", "left" and "right" and some undecideds
a proportional number of "centre", "left" and "right" depending on number of MPs/opinion polls etc...

there are probably many more!

as you say - impossible to please everyone - but you do have to pick one... and Farage was plainly wrong to claim that the BBC manipulated the audience to follow its leftish agenda. the BBC did not pick the audience.

[Bijou Bob]

The BBC left it to ICM to select the audience. I don't for one minute believe that they didn't give ICM a briefing or commissioning document with some parameters though.

Personally, I would have gone with 50% of those who self describe as right of centre and 50% of those who self identify as right of centre. Does anyone consider they are straight down the middle?

[thebish]

The BBC left it to ICM to select the audience. I don't for one minute believe that they didn't give ICM a briefing or commissioning document with some parameters though.

Personally, I would have gone with 50% of those who self describe as right of centre and 50% of those who self identify as right of centre. Does anyone consider they are straight down the middle?

dunno! some must - as politicians all vie for the centre ground!

I suspect that your entirely reasonable 50% / 50% self-identifying right/left of centre would have appeared as an appalling majority leftie-conspiracy audience to farage and elicited much the same response! :0)