Election 2015: Tangled up in news

STILL not decided who you are going to vote for when the polls open? Don't bother listening to the national press - which seems altogether pretty confused.

In fairness to the newspapers, this is a General Election in which the result and the aftermath are going to be much more fascinating than a largely uneventful campaign.

There has been no Gillian Duffy moment, no John Prescott punches and certainly no incidents of party leaders falling into the sea.

Green leader Natalie Bennett has had an unfortunate frog in the throat in an "excruciating" interview - while UKIP has had inevitable problems with a candidate or two.

The three main Westminster parties, however, have run sickeningly dull, stage-managed campaigns in which journalists have been restricted in how many questions they could ask - and even in their access.

Of course, there were always going to be the broadcasters' set piece events: first, David Cameron and Ed Miliband were quizzed by Jeremy Paxman before being questioned by the audience on Sky and Channel 4 in the Battle for Number 10.

A couple of weeks later, there was a seven-way leaders' debate on ITV - and then, two weeks after that, an opposition leaders' debate followed on BBC.

Finally, last week, the usual Question Time panel format was replaced by questions from the audience to Mr Cameron, Mr Miliband and Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg separately.

Unfortunately, none of it has been particularly enterprising or even stopped me - a self-confessed political geek - from watching football during the Battle for Number 10, going to a football pub quiz during the leaders' debate and a gig during the opposition leaders' debate.

Of course, I did the best I could to catch-up on such events by watching the news headlines and then full re-runs where time allowed.

But at no stage did it feel, at the time, as if I had missed out on anything particularly major - and the complete stalemate in the polls would suggest this to be true.

As such, perhaps it is no surprise to have seen national newspapers over the last few weeks ramp up the rhetoric in an attempt to get something - anything - extraordinary to happen.

Instead, all they seem to have achieved is a bunch of, often contradictory, headlines which make them look rather silly indeed.

For instance, after the seven-way leaders' debate, the headline on the front page of the Guardian was "Labour buoyed as Miliband edges Cameron in snap poll".

By contrast, the Telegraph went with "Miliband flops as outsiders shine" and the Sun produced a dreadful double-entendre next to a photograph of Mr Miliband.

In fact, an average of the four polls held after the debate made it difficult to tell who had 'won' - with Mr Cameron on 22%, Mr Miliband on 21.5%, UKIP leader Nigel Farage on 21% and Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon on 20%.

Ever since, of course, Ms Sturgeon's reputation has grown and she has emerged as one of the principle figures of the campaign - even though she is not standing for Parliament herself.

The Scottish Sun has even backed her party in a complete contradiction to its own national edition which has backed the Conservatives to "stop the SNP from running the country" under a minority Labour administration.

The Daily Mail has also taken to a demonisation of Ms Sturgeon - even referring to her as the "most dangerous woman in Britain". Funnily enough, that again did not quite make it into its Scottish edition.

It also appeared rather confused again yesterday when top half of its front page ranted against a potential Labour government and the bottom half despaired at a basic public service, waiting times for GPs.

Elsewhere, the Telegraph seems to have become obsessed with offering the whole of its front page to letters from business people backing Mr Cameron's government.

Shortly after the Budget, it published a "key" list of supporters - and then, in a separate list, the solicited responses of 5,000 small business owners were plastered across the paper just over a week ago.

Except the impressive number of 5,000 was rather less than that - some of the names were duplicates, others no longer had current business, and at least one signatory even asked to be removed.

Daily Express readers will no doubt be disappointed when it slowly dawns on them that, under the First Past the Post electoral system, UKIP's relative popularity will not translate into dozens of seats.

Meanwhile, the Independent must also be bracing itself for disappointment having stuck by the Lib Dems.

The Guardian, which backed the Lib Dems in 2010, has switched its allegiance to Labour - but it, too, was caught out when it prematurely predicted a surge for Mr Miliband's party on the back of just three half decent polls in a row.

Instead, the polls, averaged week-on-week, have remained obstinately level.

However, this does, of course, leave the election wide open with claims to post-election legitimacy perhaps even extending to the total number of votes overall as much as total number of seats.

It is important then for everyone to use their vote, and for everyone to vote on the strength of their own views - not those of anyone or anything else, least of all the newspapers.

Polling stations are open from 7am-10pm.

Cassetteboy strikes again...

Following his success with the Bloody Apprentice, and then his uncanny ability to derive humour from Nick Griffin's Question Time appearance, Cassetteboy has struck again with his latest creation.

This time, George Alagiah from the BBC News receives the mash-up treatment with the resultant script:

"OK, hello. The BBC has won a High Court for the right to broadcast child pornography. And there could be more bad news on the way..."

<titles>

"Good evening and welcome to the BBC News taken out of context. Our top story tonight: the battle over bonuses is far from over. Hundreds of city traders and bankers wearing balaclavas ambushed the Royal Bank of Scotland today.

"Business tycoons carrying sledgehammers smashed Britain's biggest bank, shoplifting their multi-million bonuses. Police have described the high-flying bosses as 'dangerous'.

"But, first tonight, the celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson has delivered a defiant speech at his local branch of Tesco. He promised he'd use an iron fist to deal with protests against his TV programmes.

"When it comes to alcohol, how much is too much? A court in Paris has said it's up to Scotland to decide. They say you should have 300 units every 45 minutes and stop off for a beer on the way home. That's already a guideline in Scotland. 

"Our correspondent Jeremy Cook has been focusing on the market town of Hereford..."

Cook: "Hereford. Hereford. Hereford. Jeremy Cook, BBC News, Hereford."

Alagiah: "A reminder of tonight's main salacious gossip: there's been a shock response around the world to video footage appearing to show US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urinating on Boris Johnson for an ITV programme. It was deplorable behaviour. 

"The Labour leader Ed Miliband has told the BBC that his cock's remained untouched for thousands of years and maybe, just maybe, the longest on record for a British citizen. Thousands of women remain confused and worried.

"The government says it has no plans to get the economy moving again. But David Cameron said the Olympic games and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee would provide opportunities to showcase the country struggling to pay the bills.

"In the meantime, there are still plenty of people who want to kill off David Cameron but today there was a rare display of unity in the Commons as David Cameron and the Labour leader Ed Miliband both decided that they should be allowed to end their own lives. And Nick [Robinson] is in Westminster for us...

"What's David Cameron actually up to?"

Robinson: "The British Prime Minister is a posh, English queen. He has his own dick up his arse."

Alagiah: "Nick, thanks very much.

"Goodbye."

The BNP on the BBC: A worthy exercise

THE BBC can feel vindicated by their decision to allow British National Party leader Nick Griffin a place on the Question Time panel.

Although it was always going to be an imperfect debate, it seemed to me to be a worthy exercise which was in the public interest.

There was no question that the BNP leader merited his invitation, despite this giving him the platform to espouse his vile beliefs.

Success in the European elections in June, when the BNP recorded just under one million votes and won two seats, had earned him his place on the panel.

Certainly, previous panellists had been on the show having achieved less.

Though it was inevitable, the threat of the BNP gaining from this exposure was heightened by the build-up Griffin's appearance was given in the press.

And the anti-fascist protesters who were looking to gag Griffin did more harm to their reputation than his by taking the ludicrously fascist stance of opposing free speech.

I will admit that, even as a viewer, I was nervous before the show went to air.

Griffin is known as his party's best orator and he has looked comfortable in front of the cameras in the past. Could he seize the opportunity and force the BNP into the mainstream?

Thankfully, the answer was a resounding 'no'.

I wrote in my previous post that "we may yet get the best result where Griffin loses all credibility it proves to be the end for him and his bunch of racist thugs".

While this somewhat dream-like scenario will not happen and the BNP retains a core of support, Griffin will have failed to impress unsure voters with a disastrous performance.

As Iain Dale wrote on his blog, Griffin bombed. Mr Dale wrote, "He was nervous, trembling, acting with exaggerated gestures, grinning at inappropriate moments and at times incoherent."

Perhaps his jitters should not be surprising as Griffin came under sustained attack from all the other panellists and the majority of the audience.

Among other matters, they were able to expose his links to other far-right groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, his inability to define 'genocide' and his prejudice on race and homosexuality.

Most startlingly of all, citing European law, he refused to explain why he has denied the holocaust in the past, only saying he has now changed those views.

This focus on Griffin's personal views has come in for some criticism in the programme's fall out.

But, though it may have looked unedifying, he was fair game. He put himself up for the show by accepting the invitation, surely knowing what to expect.

I agree that the chair David Dimbleby could have done a better job at steering the debate to ensure that more time was dedicated to other issues.

But Griffin should not have been surprised at the jeers and the number of hostile questions which he faced. That was purely a fair reflection of the general hostility to him in the country.

Meanwhile, it was a shame to see that the other party political panellists seemed preoccupied with scoring political points by contrasting their views against those of the BNP, rather than debating the issues.

This was most in evidence when Justice Secretary Jack Straw made a botched attempt of explaining the government's immigration policy.

American playwright Bonnie Greer was excellent, however. Without the ties of party political dogma, she was most adept at tripping Griffin up and generally patronising his ludicrous views.

The BBC will, of course, be happy with their own work, with a record-breaking eight million viewers tuning in, massively raising the profile of Question Time.

But it would be churlish to suggest that the broadcast did not also adhere to the corporation's public service remit and, as such, it was a worthy exercise.

I will personally choose to remember it, with great satisfaction, as the night that Griffin bombed.

The BNP on the BBC: Undue exposure?

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Evelyn Beatrice Hall

The vile British National Party must be loving this week.

A guest slot on the BBC's flagship political programme, Question Time, reams of articles in the build up and countless blog posts, including my own.

Party leader Nick Griffin is probably smirking, thinking his work is done. He will gain credibility for his party by appearing on BBC One. He will get their vote to increase at the general election.

Unsurprisingly, this has led to calls for the BBC to pull the plug and deny the fascists the oxygen which they crave.

But, as Fleetstreetblues writes, the rise of the BNP is unfortunately too big a story to ignore.

Their total vote in the 2001 general election was just 47,129.

In the last general election in 2005, it had increased four-fold to 192,746 as the public showed their disgruntlement with the political mainstream.

More recently, the party has won a seat in the London-wide assembly and two European Parliament seats.

Those two seats in Europe is the same representation as that of the Green Party and its leader Caroline Lucas has appeared on Question Time twice already this year.

But Nick Griffin is wrong. Just by being chauffeured to the studio and appearing on television, he does not give his party legitimacy.

For a start, despite the huge increase in numbers, the performance of his party in general elections remains poor.

The BNP started the decade at a low base and has never come close to winning a seat at Westminster, even when pooling all its resources into an area such as Oldham.

And, for all the arguments that the BBC are giving the BNP undue exposure, my instincts tell me that the best way forward is to oppose their politics directly.

For this reason, I would have chosen different panellists - perhaps Diane Abbott for Labour and/or the highly-principled David Davis for the Tories.

As it is, Jack Straw appears for Labour, Baroness Warsi for the Conservatives, Chris Huhne for the Liberal Democrats and playwright Bonnie Greer are around the table tonight.

We may yet get the best result where Griffin loses all credibility it proves to be the end for him and his bunch of racist thugs.

But I doubt that will happen. As well as being a bigot, Griffin is often a smooth operator in front of the rolling cameras.

Odd that the BNP website which espouses their nauseous views is offline today, though.

A message appears instead, which states, "We have had to take our normal website offline due to the enormous amount of ordinary people, just like you, visiting our website."

Or is it not the fact they are not prepared for the spotlight suddenly shining on them and their ridiculous views?

Question Time is on BBC1 at 10.35pm