Is It His Name Or What He Drinks Before A Show ?

While the Mothership was in space dock, Lembit Optik (Lib Dem, Venus) popped into the Beeb and took the opportunity to help Johnnie Walker set a new standard for non-confrontational interviewing. All I’ll say about Cadet Optik’s performance is to note that at one point he accused the US of ‘environmental terrorism’ – is that like flying an airliner into Lake Windemere ? We never found out – this, and many other pearlers, was spewed forth by Cadet Optik with nary a challenge from JW. Come to think of it, this non-interview was almost a textbook example of what’s wrong with the Beeb. There’s the trainwreck view of economics:

Is it too simplistic, or is it true to say that a proportion of the wealth of the West is dependent on these [Third World] countries remaining poor ? How could you persuade a French farmer to give up his subsidies ?

How about option C: neither true nor simplistic, just moronic. Far be it from me to complain about people bashing either the French or the CAP, but what’s with this ? It’s the pizza box back again – the belief that if have too many slices some dude in Africa is going to be left munching cardboard. The idea that Africa might be poor because it doesn’t generate enough wealth never even enters these people’s heads. Nope – it's The Man making off with their rightful slices.

Then there’s the strange view of the constitution:

Up to 2 Million people marched to prevent war against Iraq and it made not a jot of difference, politicians took no notice whatsoever.

I’ll let this idiocy speak for itself, as I’m enjoying my new found genius status as befits a bloke with an IQ of ‘up to’ 350.

How do we make it that we have votes that actually mean something ? In other words, proportional representation, which should mean more parties will have to work together ?

Never mind the bias, or the rather quaint view of PR, why exactly would we want these weasels to work together ? They already do that once a year when it’s pay review time: say no more. Personally, I’d rather they stay as they are now, like rats in a sack, rather than give us 365 days of the year with them demonstrating the kind of broad vision and commitment to public service that they demonstrate on pay day.

Now, no one’s saying the BBC shouldn’t give air time to the fruiter ends of the spectrum, or that interviews necessarily have to be confrontational, or even that there isn’t a place for the opinionated presenter, except that these are all things that, in other contexts, the BBC has strongly come out against (see here for example).That’s the bias – that there are different rules for Libs as compared with those on the right.