the brilliantly leaping gazelle

The one abiding thought that I was left with after watching the ‘Question Time Leaders Special’ last night was that there was nothing even remotely special about it. 

No, tell a lie – which seems highly appropriate – not for the first time it made me realise that politicians hate having to answer questions from the public. Despite them all giving it large about how they welcome the chance to it, the truth is that they’d rather being doing something else, something that they at least have some control over.

The benefits of having a studio based interview with a journalist are many. Everyone involved is aware not only of their role in the proceedings, but also the role of everyone else too The politician knows that the journalist will ask them some difficult questions, but not too many, possibly because the broad range of topics to be discussed – and not discussed – will have been arranged in advance, but mainly because the journalist knows that their career prospects are at stake. 

Too combative, too adversarial and their once bright future will be dimmed, as requests for interviews will be denied and access to political events and contacts will dry up. By contrast, if their not combative enough, they’ll be seen as a soft touch, someone who politicians can ride roughshod over precisely because of them being such a soft touch and because of that, be happily interviewed by.

Why am I thinking about Julia Etch-a-sketch?

Anyway, last night we Fiona the Bruce hosting, doing quite good a job actually. Keeping all the politicians to answering the questions they’d been asked, and the not ones that they wished they’d been asked. Paraphrasing audience members sometimes rambling questions into concise English and demonstrating an impressive command of detail to both inform us and to challenge them

First off, we had Daddy Bear from the Goldilocks party. To me, the Goldilocks party being involved in this election are the equivalent of Scotland being at the Euro’s. Everyone is glad that they made the effort to get there, not least because their supporters always enliven proceedings, but no-one seriously rates their chances. But at least they had a go and that’s the main thing! 

At one point Daddy Bear claimed that he would build 300,000 homes were each year in government to help with the housing crisis and ease the pressures faced by first time buyers attempting to get on the property ladder.  Fantastic. 

Although less fantastic was any sense of him being aware of the problems those 300,000 homes bring with them. No allusion to where they’d built or changes to planning legislation to allow them to be built. And I know that I already mentioned this in relation to rape cases not going to trial but where is the capacity? Where are the necessary tradespeople needed to build going to come from? Are we as a country even providing enough apprenticeships and vocational training to achieve that ambition.

And even if all that were to be magically resolved overnight, in a not so Grimm fairy tale, what about the necessary infrastructure that those 600,000 would need, assuming 2 person occupancy of these houses And what happens when they have children?? What about the hospitals where those children are to be born, the schools they might go to, the roads upon which their parents will drive to get to access them?

He didn’t need to go into any great detail, not least because he didn’t have the time to explain how interconnected everything was and how one solution revealed more problems to be solved but regardless of that, the audience wasn’t buying it.

Much like they’re not buying affordable homes, not just because they’re unaffordable, but also because last year they made up less than quarter of all homes built. According to the government, 212,000 houses were built last year, of which 45,000 were supposedly affordable.

And, to no-ones surprise he was repeatedly challenged as to why anyone should trust the Goldilocks, given their craven abandonment of a manifesto commitment to abolish student tuition fees in 2010, after entering into a coalition with The Status Quo  Not only did he claim that the political realities of  government finances had rendered that pledge impractical – which means that he could easily do the same thing again with everything with everything he promises this time – he also refused to answer repeated questions from Fiona the Bruce as to whether or not he’d enter into another coalition. 

He was swerving so much that had he been driving, the police would’ve arrested him for drunk driving.

Although the best swerve of the night for me came when John Swindle, leader of the Tartan party was challenged over the waiting times in Scottish NHS hospitals, something that as part of the devolution agreement, he has responsibility for.  Wonderfully, he claimed that as many of those on the waiting list had complex problems, that that was reason for the waiting list problem and so essentially, it was their fault!

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Just a quick observation about this whole betting irrelevance 

I can’t understand why its become such a thing. A few people made bets on the date of the general election before it was announced. Using information only someone privy to Pravda’s innermost thoughts might have. Is that it?

Were they putting on large bets, maybe £5 or £10.000? Had they told their friends to rush out a put on multiple bets of £1,000 all over the South East? 

No. According to The Daily Telegraph, suspicions were raised when £2,7000 of bets were placed on one day, when previously the daily total was usually for £500.

The only people who think its a big deal are the media, who seem compelled to report endless guff about it, and then have the temerity to claim that its news because everyone is talking about it. Only because they fucking go on about it!

This is an election campaign. There are serious issues that need to be discussed. This is so not one of them.