Eddie Barnes: Kerr throws it away
Is this a moment which David Kerr will come to regret? In the TV debate show last night on STV's Politics Now programme, the SNP candidate had a moment of madness. Click here and scroll forward to five minutes in for the full details. I was among those watching the show in STV's green room, along with all the various party spin doctors and I can assure you that none of them thought it was the greatest moment in by-election history.
But the debate was an excellent format, allowing each candidate to cross-examine one another, with host Bernard Ponsonby offering some light-touch chairmanship from the sidelines. Definitely one for the future. We learnt that Labour candidate Willie Bain opposed the invasion of Iraq (which Labour candidate doesn't these days?) and that Kerr thinks the cancellation of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link was the right thing to do, in tough economic circumstances.
Ponsonby, who lives in the Glasgow North East seat, said before going on air that he had brought along his postal vote and would decide who to vote for after chairing the debate. Sadly, Bernard was too much of a pro afterwards to let us know what he had decided. But congrats to STV for a well-conceived show.
But the debate was an excellent format, allowing each candidate to cross-examine one another, with host Bernard Ponsonby offering some light-touch chairmanship from the sidelines. Definitely one for the future. We learnt that Labour candidate Willie Bain opposed the invasion of Iraq (which Labour candidate doesn't these days?) and that Kerr thinks the cancellation of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link was the right thing to do, in tough economic circumstances.
Ponsonby, who lives in the Glasgow North East seat, said before going on air that he had brought along his postal vote and would decide who to vote for after chairing the debate. Sadly, Bernard was too much of a pro afterwards to let us know what he had decided. But congrats to STV for a well-conceived show.
Labels: Eddie Barnes, Glasgow North East, STV debate
posted by Administrator at
10:13
6 Comments:
It was a good and fair show without excessive intrusion for the presenter, which makes one wonder if STV are the new kid on the block as far as balanced political reporting in Scotland is concerned. It's something that Ponsonby should build on and hopefully sideline our 'great, impartial public service broadcaster', BBC Scotland. Not!
So what's David Kerr's crime? The chucking of a £2 coin or that god awful tie?
Eddie,
Perhaps the next time you interview Willie Bain you ask him these simple questions.
Do you agree that your predecessor’s MP’s expenses were excessive in that he claimed £75,000 "expenses" to run a second home with NO mortgage... while living FREE in a stately London palace?
Mr Martin – supposed to be in charge of cracking down on the Westminster gravy train - was actually milking the public by claiming the money, even though he and wife Mary lived free during the week in the Speaker's opulent grace-and-favour home in the Palace of Westminster. Unlike most MPs, who have mortgages or rents to pay on constituency homes, he owns his £400,000 detached villa in Glasgow outright.
His expenses claims for his second home, totalled £17,166 in 2007, and £75,324 over the last six years.
Q. Will you undertake not to deceive your officials, unlike your predecessor, Speaker, Michael Martin, whose salary was £138,000, deceived the public over taxpayer-funded taxi journeys taken by his wife Mary - for which she claimed more than £4,000 in expenses?
Journalists were told that she had used the taxis while shopping for food for official functions, but it emerged that the "functions" concerned were actually personal occasions.
Q. Will you refuse Air miles for trips paid for by the tax payers of Glasgow NE and elsewhere, unlike your predecessor Martin who earned more than a million Air Miles on trips to and from Glasgow, despite the fact that MPs are banned from using Air Miles for personal trips?
The trips were funded by the taxpayer - but seven members of Mr Martin's family used many of the air miles.
Agreed Kerr's cheap trick of throwing a 2 pound coin then being snide at him not catching it was not clever.
So Bernard was only considering the 4 parties on show the other night? I would have thought he'd maybe want to vote for the 3rd biggest party in Glasgow- the Greens.
Flip side of the coin that it won't affect the vote.
How many of the potential GNE voters were watching Politics Now?
Five days of campaigning to go and all still to play for...
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