INFO : BBC Question Time Special @ 9.20pm

SEE ABOVE

This will be different to the endless streams of rentapunditry already on TV in what way, DJ M?

because at least with question time, it is members of the public asking questions and commenting - rather than a closed loop of pundits.

I was about to agree with Tom, but followed the link and discovered that Tam Dalyell MP will be on. He is very knowledgable about the Middle East and I have been to meetings held by him in The Houses of Parliament opposing Sanctions against Iraq.

Rentapunditry still, but propably diffrent.

I was hoping it would be arrant nonsense b/c I dont have a TV.

But apparently it's quite good.

It's on just now. Some people are saying some very interesting things. The studio audience have been shouting at each other. Pretty good stuff.

Very strange moment when a Muslim woman made a point (in response to Paddy Ashdown's call for some kind of Geneva convention-style global law against the harbouring of known terrorist groups) that many people around the world see Israel as a terrorist nation, and the US as harbouring Israeli terrorists - the ex-US ambassador on the panel looking close to tears, so horrified was he by this point of view.

Didn't see all of it, but Dalyell was making sense, which members of the studio audience then ignored, or misconstrued. Story of his political life, I suspect.

The BBC have just apologised for that programme. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/tv_and_radio/newsid_154 4000/1544897.stm

Link not working Jonathan: give a summary

Greg Dyke apologises for Question Time. hope this works ok.

He'll resign before the tabloids tell him to, if he has any sense.

thank you for the link billy: but of the page itself was too fancy to download; i'll try again in the morning — maybe it won't be so slow

they architect the bbc website = they are monkeys

how could have researchers or whoever deals with the audience, know whether they had "an anti-American perspective"" or not?

bizarre.

maybe it shouldnt have been live though eh. i saw ab it on the net, but only saw up till that guy was going on about the americans "protecting the iraqi

Dyke will resign before the tabloids tell him to, if he has any sense in his head whatever, which is doubtful

Sorry if the same post came up twice, this computer is doing weird things.

A comment in today's Guardian:

"But the response of some of the Question Time audience reveals a darker side an shows the awful truth that these days there is jsut one racism that is tolerated - anti-Americanism. NOt just tolerated, but often applauded. Like any other country, the US makes mistakes at home and abroad.

But the disdain with which its failures and its efforts are greeted by some in Britain and elsewhere in Europe is shocking. Anti-Americanism often goes much further than criticism of Wachington. Too often the misfortunes of America are met with glee, a schadenfreude that is quite horrifying."

I don't want to overhear any more anti-american talk on the bus. I don't want to feel the need to defend any military action that hasn't even occured yet. I think that the BBC was correct in apologising.

(hope that shuts down the italics)

in terms of the audiance being disproportionate, apparently, various anti-american groups had its members clamboring to get audience spots on the program.

One year on: another QT special: in NYC. Thank goodness, it was NOT an exercise for unopposed warmongering: somehow the audience was packed with intelligent people, but US and UK. Watching Geoff Hoon tell sceptical, thoughtful *Americans* about how great their president is and how much we ought to feel America's pain and start bombing to increase other people's -- well, it made him look a terrible, sold-out fool.

Ed Koch was rumbustious and stupid; the heavy Republican lady was a kind of pantomime act, whose preeening idiocy may just have made even some right-wingers nervous. A Muslim geezer said sensible things quietly and insistently. But most of all - and here I go vs much ILX opinion and some of my own: MICHAEL MOORE's contribution was heroic. Taken away from the too-easy good-time-already-converted audience of his own show, and having to stand up in a contested public space for hard truths, moral facts and historical thinking, he put in as good an individual performance as I've seen on TV since Chris Waddle retired.

At one point it looked like Ed's head was going to explode. Especially when he said to Moore: 'You lost!!'

Michael dealt with him and ppl in the audience who thought he was an idiot really well.

It was much better than the question time last year. It was so heated (this was too but not as much as last time)...pity I came in half way through

"Greg Dyke apologises for Ground Zero Force, The House That Jack Built, Monarch of the Glen, The Chair, Mersey Beat, Patrick Kielty, Bosses From Hell or whatever that awful thing on before Question Time was called, Any Day Now and Watchdog" would have been a much more desirable headline surely?

That name...Patrick Kielty, I think he was there before Dyke came in, and somehow no one has been decent enough to put a bullet through his head.

Panellists: pinefox = OTM

I've barely been able to stomach M.Moore before in those other contexts, but fair do's to him for last night. I wish every edition of QT had that kind of shouting in it - but with so many media trained arse-protecting smoothie politicos about it's not likely.

isn't moore's routine problem that his everyday audience = uncritical self-selected fans of his own persuasion? (he is hardly alone in this problem obv)

''I wish every edition of QT had that kind of shouting in it''

not really, it would be better if the politicians just answered the questions straight, though if there was a bit of shouting it would be more entertaining.

Julio I'd hope they'd be more likely to lose it and blurt something out. I liked it when Prescott or Frank Dobson used to get manifestly pissed off with interviewers.

"That name...Patrick Kielty, I think he was there before Dyke came in, and somehow no one has been decent enough to put a bullet through his head."

(Um.. considering his father was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries, you might wanna rephrase that, Julio. I do agree tho that the guy is an unspeakable arse.)

QT last nite was great. I think the Muslim guy upstaged Moore to a certain extent by stating his case with calm and convincing assurance, as opposed to Moore's rather predicatble self-righteous gurning. Tho rather Moore anyday than a pop-eyed fascist like Koch or that bloody woman. Hoon made me laugh, he made such a buffoon of himself.

''(Um.. considering his father was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries, you might wanna rephrase that, Julio. I do agree tho that the guy is an unspeakable arse.)''

OK then...can someone at the beeb apologize for kielty then.

Hmmm ... I spoke to Tam Dalyell on the phone only this week! I should be interviewing him some time soon.