IT’s good to have regular habits or rituals, things that you do every day or every week, they help to remind you of your plans for the day. However, one ritual I could do without is reading facebook on a Friday morning and seeing, as regular as clockwork, all the complaints about Question Time.
Yet again the BBC and its production company manage to outdo themselves in presenting a totally biased show, with suspicions that on many occasions Tories and other right-wingers are simply bussed in to the recording sessions and then disappear into the night to return to Tory HQ.
Thursday night’s show seems to have been the most obvious example of bias, with the audience including two Tory councillors, two Tory activists and even a former Tory MSP pretending to be a member of the public. Can you imagine the outcry if Alex Salmond turned up as one of the “public” asking a question to the panel!
Of course there will be the usual complaints to the BBC, swiftly followed by “it was just a mistake” or “we didn’t do anything wrong” – to be honest the reply is meaningless because as one person is dealing with the complaints another is on the phone to Tory Central Office lining up the “public” for the next show.
The BBC know the show is fixed, but they simply don’t care if we know – they believe their still getting their biased message across to some who are less media savvy. It is no surprise that Scotland has the highest rate of refusals to pay the TV licence, and with shows like Question Time highlighting the BBC’s contempt for Scotland I can only see this increasing. The BBC have no one but themselves to blame. Never trust the BBC.
Cllr Kenny MacLaren
Paisley
REGARDING your story “Scots furious with BBC as ex-Tory MSP appears in Question Time audience” (thenational.scot, May 17), what is there to complain about? The person in question has been out of politics for several years.
Certainly long enough to be forgotten in Scotland, and of course she was probably unknown in the rest of the UK as rank-and-file MSPs are rarely, if ever, seen on nationwide BBC TV political programmes.
When Fiona Bruce asked the audience to show if they supported the SNP, about seven people put their hands up out of about 80 in shot.
The programme is broadcast to all of the nations in this precious Union and the apolitical BBC tries to maintain a proportionate mix of political opinion in the audience.
The BBC was obviously quite generous with its allocation of approximately 9% to the SNP, which is on only half that figure in UK-wide opinion polls.
Had the BBC allocated more than 40% of the audience seats to SNP supporters in line with its share in the Scottish opinion polls, several political parties would today have been accusing the BBC of bias and that would be unthinkable.
John Jamieson
South Queensferry
LAST night on Question Time we had convincing evidence that the BBC loads the audiences on these programmes against SNP and pro-Brexit.
Fiona Bruce had to plead with arms outstretched for speakers to support John Swinney ... there were very few takers despite Scotland voting 62% for remaining in EU and with a SNP-led government. Once again disgraceful bias from the BBC.
Richard Reece
via email
IT would be a joke if it wasn’t such a serious issue – the BBC is caught time and again with stacked audiences yet just ignores any complaints and carries on regardless.
Jonathan Musgrave
via thenational.scot
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