BBC are colluding with Brit parties to exclude SNP/PC

16/03/2010

Dear Sirs,

Thanks for your reply. The problem is that you are providing the UK wide parties with a political advantage over those parties which are only active in one country within the UK.

Nonetheless all the UK has an interest in the future independence of any part. Excluding arguments over independence in Scotland and Wales means an important political dimension of the UK general election has been ignored. This suits the unionists but it does not suit the peoples of Scotland and Wales whose potential political choice is being ignored.

Yes there will be 'regional debates' but Scotland is a country not a region and in these debates the local branches of the UK parties will be there as well. That means they get two bites at appealing to the electors while SNP get just one. Is that fair?

Post devolution much of the proposed debate will be irrelevant to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

You should therefore have had seperate debates for England with the three main English/UK parties and seperate debates including Plaid Cymru (to be shown in Wales) SNP (to be shown in Scotland) and the NI parties (for Northern Ireland).

The SNP is fighting every seat in Scotland and could potentially have 30 or more MP's. In a hung parliament (as is likely given the fact all the UK parties are politically indistinguishable) the SNP could hold the balance of power. The SNP are relevant therefore to the whole of the UK.

By treating the SNP as functionally irrelevant within the UK system you have proven that the UK is too inflexible to represent the views of Wales and Scotland. While this is no bad lesson to learn the BBC should still be ashamed of allowing the UK parties to easily portray their nationalist opponents as irrelevant.

I received a letter from Nick Clegg today, I quote: "And when it comes to Westminster elections, the SNP are irrelevant - too small to change anything."

Isn't that what your 'explanation' implies as well?

Clearly you take the British part of your name very seriously but you see your requirements for ensuring equal share of TV coverage as much less important. I am not impressed and I will personally argue for the removal of the license fee in future.

You have failed Scotland and ignored our politics, shame on you!

Joe Middleton


----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 11:53 AM
Subject: BBC Complaints [T2010031602N3S060]


> Thanks for your e-mail.
>
> We note that you're unhappy that the Scottish Nationalist Party has not been invited to take part in the planned Prime Ministerial Debates.
>
> Televised debates between those party leaders who aspire to be Prime Minister of the UK have never taken place before, despite some evidence that the electorate would welcome such a development. The BBC - along with ITV and Sky - put forward proposals aimed at establishing in principle that such debates would take place during the coming General Election campaign for the Westminster Parliament.
>
> It was announced on December 21st that the three largest parties at Westminster had agreed, in principle, to the broadcasters' proposal.
>
> The broadcasters also made it clear that each - individually - would put forward additional proposals to ensure due impartiality across the UK. The BBC will hold election debates between the largest parties in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
>
> The details of the BBC's UK-wide debate have now been agreed in full. You can read more in the following blog by the BBC's Chief Adviser, Politics, Ric Bailey:
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2010/03/prime_ministerial_debates.html
>
> Further information on the Prime Ministerial debates and the leaders debates in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are also available on the BBC Press Office website:
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/03_march/02/debates.shtml
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/03_march/02/debates2.shtml
>
> For all other parties, the BBC will also bring forward proposals to ensure that there are opportunities for their views to be given appropriate coverage in the context of the UK-wide debate.
>
> For the Westminster Parliament, that context is the aspiration to form a government and to become Prime Minister. The Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, each fielding candidates in only one part of the UK, do not aspire to win a majority of the seats in the House of Commons. The party leaders do not aspire to be Prime Minister of the UK.
>
> On the basis of the 2005 General Election, the number of seats held by the SNP and Plaid is a fraction of those held by the Liberal Democrats.
>
> It is entirely appropriate and consistent, therefore, for the BBC's Prime Ministerial debate to include the three largest UK-wide parties. Other parties, including the SNP and Plaid, will have the opportunity for their views to receive appropriate coverage, both in national debates in Scotland and Wales and additional coverage across the BBC in response to the UK-wide debate.
>
> However, we would like to assure you that we've registered your complaint on our audience log. This is a daily report of audience feedback that's circulated to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers.
>
> The audience logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions about future programming and content.
>
> Thanks again for taking the time to contact us.
>
> Regards
>
> BBC Complaints
> ________________________________________________
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/homepage/

Complaint to BBC: UK TV leaders debates are unfair to Scots

BBC Complaints Department (submitted online)

05/03/2010

Dear Sir/Madam,

As a Scottish voter I am deeply concerned that the proposed 'leaders debates' will unfairly exclude the SNP from UK general election coverage.

The fact the SNP will only be in regional debates while the Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems will be featured in both national (UK) debates AND regional debates suggests a clear unfairness.

The SNP form the Scottish Government and are in contention to win the UK General Election in Scotland. To provide their London based rivals with a debate which excludes the party is unfair and ignores Scottish interests.

While there will be so called 'regional' debates, this suggests that Scotland is a region, it's not. It is a country, unlike the UK, which is technically a union of countries. Labour (and other UK parties) will have two seperate opportunities to address the electorate in Scotland.

Scotland (and Wales and NI!) are also being treated as somehow an afterthought, that it doesn't matter if the SNP are excluded from a 'national' debate (even though the SNP obviously see Scotland as a nation) and devolved policy which will be irrelevant to Scotland (as our devolved parliament controls them) and policies/promises only affecting England will be presented as UK policy.

Similarly the SNP's policies on reserved powers (ie foreign policy and defence, amongst others) will be ignored yet these policies are directly relevant to Scotland in a UK general election, as they cut to the heart of independence ie SNP oppose Trident for example and always have done, yet only with independence can Trident be removed from Scotland. The Lib Dems will be able to present themselves as the anti Trident party even though they have only recently adopted this policy!

This whole situation is clearly unfair and I appeal to the BBC to refuse to show any debate in Scotland which entirely excludes the SNP.

Please show English orientated debates featuring London based parties only in England. Anything shown in Scotland or Wales or NI should represent all the relevant parties standing in the election in our country.

If you do not do so you will be breaching the spirit if not the law of broadcasting guidelines and will directly affect the election results in Scotland in favour of the UK parties over the SNP. This should not be your role in a healthy democracy in a multi-part state.

The SNP won both the European and Scottish elections and deserve a level playing field at the UK elections as well.

If this does not happen then by your own actions you are actually proving that the Union is not flexible enough to include Scots opinion fairly and you are also allowing the UK parties to treat Scots as if our country does not exist.

Since we pay our TV license fee in Scotland and are effectively joint shareholders in the BBC this is simply not acceptable.

Please make a representation to the BBC Trust on my behalf indicating this complaint if you are unable to address this issue directly.

Please urgently address this issue before these unfair debates happen.

Yours faithfully,

JOE MIDDLETON

Time for media to ignore this clown

It was a daft decision by the BBC to show the BNP on question time at all, but the media now needs to show some sense.

His squeals of political bias, whether by him or his merry band of skinheads from the English 'defence' league should be ignored.

This tube consorts with the KKK yet thinks a few questions equates to a lynch mob!

All parties should have maintained a boycott. Either that or pelted him with eggs, he should certainly not be chased around by reporters as if his band of bigots actually matter.

Excluding SNP from TV debate proves Scotland does not matter

I am pleased to hear that UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is going to appear in a Prime Time TV debate. Unfortunately it also appears that broadcasters are attempting to exclude the most popular party in Scotland from that debate! This simply cannot be fair and must be inconsistent with the BBC's position as a politically independent broadcaster.

The idea that Scotland's views are irrelevant to a UK parliamentary election are a direct consequence of being in an unequal union with a country ten times our size. If the fiction that Scotland and Wales do indeed share an equal place in Britain is to be maintained then the SNP and Plaid Cymru must have an equal voice in this debate. Scotland is not a part of the cozy British three party consensus and to suggest that Scotland has no say whatsoever in picking the next Prime Minister is to indirectly prove the pointless of Britain as a political concept.

Those TV channels who allow such a blatantly discriminatory situation to exist are opening themselves up to legal action. They are also hastening their abolition since they are showing themselves up to be ignorant of the Scottish national interest. In such circumstances why retain a BBC if it is prepared to entirely ignore Scotland during a UK election where for the first time ever the SNP are amongst the leading contenders?

The choice is clear. Either include the SNP Government and maintain a semblance of political democracy or ignore Scotland altogether and hasten the end of both the BBC and the British Union.

Diomhair - Excellent Gaelic documentary about British attempts to undermine Scots independence

I have just watched the excellent BBC Alba documentary Diomhair (Secret). This programme goes into great detail about British efforts to undermine the Scottish independence and home rule movements.

Well worth watching and available here.

Modern TV is rubbish! Scotland can and should do better

I was watching a couple of TV dramas the other night by Dennis Potter and it occurs to me that if TV ever had a Golden age it is well over.

There are no challenging dramas today that come even close to the brilliance of Potter. It's all reality TV, news programmes (usually pretty biased and leading) or bad cop shows, bad hospital shows and shitty soap operas.

If we had control over our own broadcasting (as Labour and Lib Dems recommended in the Scottish Constitutional Convention for devolution!) we could make programmes here by local authors that reflect our people's reality here in Scotland. I don't want to watch news about mad plans to put a curfew on kids in England, I want to see strong stimulating educational interesting TV dramas, relevant documentaries and news from Scotland and I want an international perspective that nonetheless puts Scotland and Scotland's interests front and centre.

We can do a lot better. The new Scottish licence fee and a proper set of guidelines for the proper TV channels could bring our broadcasting back to the educational innovative standard that at one time the BBC and ITV were famous for.

We can definitely do better, we can't possibly do worse. When talented artistic individuals like the great John Byrne are being refused commissions by BBC Scotland to make distinctive Scottish drama it shows that something is deeply wrong. Going our own way can only make sense when British TV is so absolutely and utterly awful.