Love and Liberty

The BBC has once again shown its unquestionable political neutrality with tonight’s fair and balanced Question Time line-up. A BBC Spokesperson said:

‘No right-thinking person could disagree with the security industry having absolute power over every corner of our lives, so two panellists from the Snoopers’ Charter-supporting Labour Party and two from the Snoopers’ Charter-supporting Conservative Party, with UKIP for balance, reflects the views of all right-thinking people from neo-fascist to fascist. No Liberal view is possible (so we’ve refused to invite any). Any disagreement means you’re clearly a terrorist and, with our detector vans, we know where you live.’

With the biggest story of the week being the authoritarian Labour Party teaming up with the authoritarian Conservative Party to say they must go much further right – again – the BBC’s decision to exclude the Liberal Democrats from yet another Question Time beggars belief. By pretending that only the traditional party of the right, the party that’s urging them to be more right-wing, and the party that’s scaring them to death by being amazingly right-wing have anything to say about the Snoopers’ Charter they are gravely unbalanced.

This isn’t just about excluding the Liberal Democrats – again – who the BBC used to ignore because ‘They’d never get into government’ and now ignore because ‘They’re in government’. It’s about giving a completely one-sided view on major issues on which all the other parties range from deeply authoritarian to would-be totalitarian.

Labour’s former Home Secretary Alan Johnson called on Sunday for the Conservatives to reintroduce the Snoopers’ Charter with Labour support, clambering eagerly onto a soldier’s dead body to use as a platform. He is, of course, one of the guests tonight. And if you think “totalitarian” is hyperbole, he explicitly told Nick Robinson on The Andrew Marr Show that “these things are so much easier in China”. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether Mr Johnson’s eye-boggling totalitarianism is because he’s a former communist or a former associate of Mr Blair. Perhaps even his heavy-breathing desire to pry into the e-mails of every single person in the land comes from his time as a postman and a frustrated desire to open up everyone else’s post, now grown to maniacal proportions. Who can say? But whatever inspired his twisted psychological desire for control-freakery, that it’s there is a proven fact from his own mouth.

As Millennium Dome, Elephant said the other day about Mr Johnson’s disgusting opportunism in using a murdered soldier to feed his own neo-fascist wet dreams, he is not only wildly irresponsible to call for new powers before anyone’s been able to fully investigate what happened – but the security services themselves have admitted that they knew the suspects were suspicious and already had all the powers they needed to monitor them but didn’t have the person-hours to make them a priority:

“WHY, if the security services seem like they're saying that monitoring the THOUSANDS of people they ALREADY have powers to monitor is TOO DIFFICULT, WHY is the solution to monitor MILLIONS of people?!”

The Conservatives are desperate to move to the right because they’re terrified of UKIP. The Labour Party have a long and disgusting record of being far to the authoritarian right in government, and are now calling in Opposition for government to be far more illiberal still. But then, everyone should remember what the Labour Party did with thirteen years of war-mongering, evidence-sexing, amnesia-promising, freedom-crushing, LGBT-hypocrisising, rich-brownnosing, poor-taxing, crony-bribe-swallowing shameless absolute power.

Only the Liberal Democrats opposed the Snoopers’ Charter and the sticky-fingered urges of securocrats to peek into and keep every electronic communication, followed naturally by every phone call, every item of post and ultimately every telescreened bedroom in Britain. The only thing that stopped it was that Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg directly vetoed the Snoopers’ Charter. The Conservatives wanted it. The Labour Party is gagging for it. By silencing the only voice that is not identically securocrat, the BBC is not merely being ‘unfair to the Lib Dems’ but simply not doing their job for the public.


Fossilised relics of previous completely fair and balanced Question Time line-ups can be found here , here and here.

The BBC complaints form can be found here. For viewers who aren’t Daleks, if you want to complain directly to the BBC about their consistent and outrageous political bias, obviously they’re frightened of their viewers being able to get in touch, you can’t do so by e-mail – though if anyone wishes to supply me with the personal e-mails of, say, the director and producer of Question Time, the head of BBC1, the Director-General or the BBC Trust, I will very happily republish them here – and must instead jump through five pages of hoops on their website.

Labels: BBC, British Politics, Conservatives, Daleks, Labour, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Pictures, Questionable Time, The Golden Dozen, Things To Remember About Labour

No Liberal Democrats on this evening’s Question Time doesn’t mean a lack of political balance, the BBC claimed tonight, pointing out that while the guests may all be authoritarian illiberal egomaniacs, they’re different colours (pictured). In previous years, the BBC justified multiple Labour panellists because they were the government. Now the Lib Dems are in government, 60% of tonight’s panel consists of a Labour MP, a Labour-supporting journalist and a trades union boss. Pressed, a spokesperson apologised:

‘When we said before that the Liberal Democrats were irrelevant and didn’t deserve representation because they’d never be in government, we were wrong.

‘We meant to say that the Liberal Democrats are irrelevant and don’t need representation because they are in government, and that people are much more interested in hearing what the Labour Party’s impotent position is. Unfortunately, with only three guests tonight from the Labour movement not all of their positions will be properly represented.

‘We apologise for this omission and will rectify it on next week’s show, when all five panellists will be Labourites and guaranteed to agree on absolutely nothing except that, whatever the problem is, it’s all the fault of the evil Tories who were in power for the last thirteen years and destroyed the economy. I’m sorry, what?’

Further pressed, the exasperated BBC spokesperson said,

‘Look, he may still be a Dalek, but to represent the Coalition, Travel Machine Secretary Philip Hammond has been painted orange. What more do you want?’

Of the other guests, rumours that Polly Toynbee is blatantly a fossilised relic of the ’80s have been strenuously denied confirmed. ‘It’s a fair cop,’ the BBC admitted.

Fossilised relics of previous completely fair and balanced Question Time line-ups can be found here and here.

The BBC complaints form can be found here.

Labels: BBC, British Politics, Daleks, Labour, Pictures, Questionable Time, Stupid Ideas

The BBC today* denied accusations (again) that stuffing Question Time with five authoritarian egomaniacs (again) displayed a jaw-dropping lack of political balance (again). ‘We apportion panellists according to the votes political parties receive,’ a spokesperson said. ‘By winning about one in four votes, the Liberal Democrats get one place in four. Hang on, does that say one place in four weeks? Shit! I mean, no comment.

‘With Peter Hain, Liam Fox, Elfyn Llwyd, Nigel Farage and Janet Street Porter [see our EXCLUSIVE advance photograph] representing, er, Liberal Democrat-run Cardiff, the audience can be assured a full range of political colours.’


‘As you can see, this is a completely different panel to any previous one this month that omitted any Liberal Democrats (or that other one, too).’


DISCLAIMER: The Daleks wish it to be known that they dissociate themselves from the far-right authoritarianism of Peter Hain and the inarticulate screaming hatred of Nigel Farage.


*All right, you’ve caught me. The BBC responded “today”? I’ve obviously made that up – they only responded to my last complaint a few days ago, and that with a bland mass e-mail that failed to answer any of my questions. Good job they’re not responsible to the public, right?

For viewers who aren’t Daleks, you can complain directly to the BBC about their consistent and outrageous political bias. As they’re frightened of their viewers being able to get in touch, you can’t do so by e-mail – though if anyone wishes to supply me with the personal e-mails of, say, the director and producer of Question Time, the head of BBC1, the Director-General or the BBC Trust, I will very happily republish them here – and must instead jump through five pages of hoops on their website. Even to ‘reply’ to their insultingly vacuous excuses for responses (they e-mail you, but won’t let you e-mail back).

So, to repeat, you can complain to the BBC here. You can also read what Welsh Liberal Democrat bloggers think about the BBC ignoring the voters of Cardiff who elected a Liberal Democrat council, a Liberal Democrat AM and a Liberal Democrat MP.

It is a fact that, although the Liberal Democrats average over 20% of the vote across all elections, they’ve been represented on only one of the last four editions of Question Time – and only one of the last three editions of its radio sister programme Any Questions.

By contrast, Labour and the Conservatives have each been represented on every single edition of Question Time – even the broadcast from Northern Ireland included a Labour Minister and a Unionist peer who takes the Tory whip, yet omitted the liberal Alliance Party – often by two or even three supporters on one panel. Even BBC maths must be able to work out that, if their method for calculating Liberal Democrat representation is “fair,” by the same standard Labour and the Conservatives must each average well over 100% of the votes across all elections. Newsflash: this is not, in fact, true.

Even the Liberal Democrat blogosphere’s most ardent devotee of Question Time, the unluckily named Mark Thompson, is so disgusted by this bias that instead of staying in to watch the programme and host his usual live webchat he’s gone to the trouble of being candidate in a local by-election and will be out for the count. I hope you’re satisfied, BBC (and good luck, Mark)!

Come on, BBC, sort it out! Or I’m going to have to buy more Daleks.

Labels: BBC, British Politics, Daleks, Pictures, Questionable Time, Stupid Ideas

The BBC today denied accusations that filling Question Time with five authoritarian egomaniacs displayed any lack of political balance. ‘Last week we had three Tories – today, three Labour people,’ a spokesperson said. ‘How much more balanced could we be? It’s not as if the Liberal Democrats have anything distinctive to contribute about tonight’s topics of Iraq and electoral reform. I’m sorry, what?

‘With Lord Falconer, Theresa May, Clare Short, George Galloway and Melanie Phillips on tonight’s panel [see our EXCLUSIVE advance photograph], the audience can be assured a full range of political colours.


‘We reject accusations that two embittered, self-aggrandising ex-Labour MPs with minuscule public support are in some way likely to agree. Everyone knows they consider each other “splitters”.

‘In fact, Clare Short will tonight join Theresa May in representing the Conservative Party, as a cheerleader for the war who voted it through and then, when it all went pear-shaped afterwards, angrily said that it wasn’t her fault, she’d been deceived, and how could she possibly have been expected to exercise any individual judgment (something that’s a lot easier to say in the absence of any awkward Liberal Democrats).’


DISCLAIMER: The Daleks wish it to be known that they dissociate themselves from the far-right authoritarianism of Melanie Phillips and the support for genocidal maniacs offered by George Galloway.


Update: and again…

Labels: BBC, British Politics, Conservatives, Daleks, Iraq, Labour, Pictures, Questionable Time, Stupid Ideas