Monday 26 January 2015

Fun Online Polls: Danish Kroner & TV election debates

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

How much longer will Denmark peg its currency to the Euro?

Minutes - 3%
Hours - 2%
Days - 32%
Weeks - 23%
Months - 19%
Years - 10%
Forever - 11%


Those who voted minutes or hours have already been proven wrong.

FWIW, now that the ECB has gone mad, I voted days. We'll see.
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Hot topic du semaine, the televised leadership debates.

According to the BBC, the story so far is that originally OFCOM decided, on the basis of votes cast, to add UKIP to the traditional Big Three.

Fair play to Cameron, he knows that if he can rope in the loonie left (the Greens) to offset the loonie right (UKIP) he will stand a much better chance of being seen as the sane, middle-of-the-road option. So he threw his toys out of the pram and threatened to take the ball i.e. himself away.

So OFCOM caved in, and the Greens were added to the list, along with the SNP, on the basis they poll as many votes as the Greens, and as a counter-point to the SNP, they added Plaid Cymru.

At which stage, quite rightly, "The Democrat Unionist Party... indicated it will be writing to the BBC and ITV to ask why it is not being included when it is the fourth largest party at Westminster in terms of numbers of MPs."

Again, from Cameron's point of view, if he wants to represent himself as the sane option, chucking in another right wing nationalist party DUP (alongside UKIP) to offset the two left wing nationalist parties (SNP and PC) seems like a good bet.

But it's a democracy and not up to him, so who would you like to see on the podium?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

6 comments:

Dinero said...

My take on it was that Cameron didn't want Farage getting the Kudos from appearing at a leaders debate and so he wanted to downgrade it to a politicle seminar.

Tim Almond said...

It's all a bit shameful on OFCOM's part. This was supposed to have some rules based on support which meant that UKIP got a seat this time (but not last time).

I think bringing the Greens in is bad for Cameron. They're currently stripping votes from Labour and the LDs, but everyone will take Bennett apart in the debates and anyone who thinks they just want more recycling bins will realise they are nutters.

(they're backing a few good policies like citizen's income, but they aren't costing things out and hate capitalism, which you need to pay for the CI).

Anonymous said...

There are no hard and fast rules about the parties that must appear in TV debates. Ultimately the broadcasters must make judgement calls and they need not invite only Ofcom's "major parties" - indeed they are obliged to give "due weight" to "alternative points of view" (although that need not be in the same programme).

There should be no problem with inviting the Greens, although the broadcasters would prefer just two participants because it makes for better telly, and one would hope Greens' representative will be better prepared than Natalie Bennett was on the Andrew Neil show.

Jim said...

I don't get why they are having them at all.

In the UK you cant vote for a party leader, you can only vote for an MP. so to have a party leaders debate is a little pointless as we cant directly elect the next PM.

the only people who can elect Cameron are those who live in Witney, the only ones who can elect Milliband are those in Doncaster North. it makes no sense to me.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Din, yes, that was the general idea.

TS, re the Greens, that is Cameron's cunning pal, the more nut cases are on there, the more normal he will seem (even though he is actually a total psycho weirdo, he just hides it well).

UKL, hahaha. We must assume that Bennett, N. is the most capable Green speaker, or perhaps they'll send off Lucas, C. as the de facto leader.

J, these debates are a load of nonsense, somewhere downmarket of Question Time. It's just something which pol's take seriously, like film stars take the Oscar ceremony seriously.

Jim said...

"(even though he is actually a total psycho weirdo, he just hides it well)."

if thats hiding it well, then i would love to see it out in the open :o)

I was always, and still am, quite fair to all political parties, I hate you all, now debate