PMQs continues to be an enthusiastic “sausage fest,” this time with nearly every single Tory question taking the piss out of Brown. Brown retaliates by condemning them for not taking ‘the house’ or ‘the situation’ seriously.
Actually I don’t think that’s how it looks. It looks like they have no respect for him or his Government, that there’s no point asking serious questions that don’t get proper answers anyway, so taking the piss is the perfect and appropriate response for a Prime Minister entirely undeserving of respect and lacking in authority or credibility.
Even Clegg called Brown stupid to his face, “at least I say it to your face! They say it behind your back!” to much shock and joy from everyone.
Niklas Smith said...
6 May 09 at 12:59 pm
Do you know where I can find the video of today’s PMQ’s? iPlayer doesn’t seem to have it. Why does Parliament have to make it so difficult to watch what our MPs are doing?
Anthony Lawrence said...
6 May 09 at 1:17 pm
It will be put up a bit later I imagine Niklas, save for flying Nokias.
Stu said...
6 May 09 at 1:18 pm
Videos (of any programming) don’t appear on iPlayer until four or five hours after they’re broadcast. They tend to take slightly longer for live recorded content. If you’ve ever dealt with encoding and collating video for on-demand broadcast to millions of people, you’d probably know that this is because these things take quite a long time to get right.
The BBC make it incredibly easy to see what’s going on in the House – not only do they have a 24-hour broadcast channel devoted to parliamentary matters, they run prime time political programming and carry live footage of important events such as PMQs, along with analysis of the events from a studio team. They also make all that content available to all residents of the UK on demand for a full week after broadcast.
I can’t think of a country which has as good political broadcast coverage as the UK.
Oh, but it takes them more than half an hour to put it online. Shame on them.
Niklas Smith said...
6 May 09 at 1:21 pm
Thanks Anthony. Jo Swinson has a point when she wants Parliament to allow clips on Youtube.
Niklas Smith said...
6 May 09 at 1:23 pm
Re. Stu: you have a point, but this makes it all the more strange that Parliament have dug in their heels over Youtube. Obviously I don’t have technical knowledge, but I assumed that streamed content could be directly made into a video file as it was being streamed. Now I know better!
AyeWeCan said...
6 May 09 at 1:50 pm
You comments are bang on – why take this lying, scheming, inept, dead man seriously.
So wooden, he could be in advert for Ronseal. So phoney, he outdoes Tony.
Stu said...
6 May 09 at 2:12 pm
“So wooden, he could be in advert for Ronseal”
That would require him doing exactly what it says on the tin. Fat chance of that kind of honesty.
Macha Maguire said...
6 May 09 at 2:48 pm
Niklas – I’d say there’s no video of it because it’s just too toe-curlingly embarrassing for our elected representatives to be seen exhibiting behaviour that would be considered sub-standard at a chimpanzee’s tea party. But then they do show it, so that’s clearly not true.
Quite how they can expect anyone to respect any of them when a) they’re all clearly on the take (with a few honourable exceptions) and b) they demonstrate an emotional intelligence in single figures in a weekly display of infantile histrionics (ditto honourable exceptions) is beyond me…
But then maybe I’m missing something
Andy said...
6 May 09 at 3:15 pm
If Gordon Brown would be willing to give straight answers, then he’d have the right to more serious questions. In the meantime, keep on taking the p*** as it’s much more fun
Darrell said...
6 May 09 at 5:01 pm
Clegg’s remarks were actually the highlight of his performance. I’m not sure what the point is here; Cameron played the right cards as did the other Conservative MP’s. Andy has a point too; Brown blatently was looking at the Speakers Chair, not Cameron when he was busy totally ignoring his question…..
AJS said...
7 May 09 at 8:09 pm
Niklas — streamed content can be made into a video file, if you’re a sufficiently hardcore hacker. That’s what rtmpdump, which is used by get_iplayer, is all about.