David Cameron gave a poor performance on Question Time last night I thought. I'd hate to see us leave Europe personally and I'm not suggesting Michael Gove did better last week. Passionate Cameron may have been, but effective? I worry. When he was talking about controlling immigration from non EU countries he dodged the issue.
The stuff about terrorism could well do with being left out too, I'm pretty certain countries will co-operate over such a crucial issue. Pointing out blatant lies put about by the 'out campaign' is good, but most of the rest of what was said has been said many times and not apparently to great effect. Not that one can trust the polls either.
It would be nice to see people talking about the good things which have come out of European co-operation, work on the environment and human rights. One questioner referred to Europe's share of trade being in decline in percentage terms, he wasn't very convincingly answered. Europe's output has increased over time but you can prove anything with statistics by choosing set periods and all sorts of dodges. I don't want to go down that path.
What I would say is that economies like China and India who came late to modern capitalism, have huge populations and lower wages to boot will obviously grow faster, which in turn means established countries decline percentage wise by comparison, even if they too are growing. If you were a new car marque and you sold one car in year one and two in year two you'd have grown by one hundred percent, but it would hardly be a huge success. India and China are making a success of things, but statistics will still flatter.
A bad night for TV then, and for the current debate. The good old BBC then repeated a large chunk of its own programme on the news. BBC news is decidedly weak, repetitive and self serving these days. It's short, shallow and dumbed down. If you're going to broadcast news it should be wide ranging, informative, unbiased and thoughtful. The BBC is hitting one out of four at best.
Malcolm Snook is published at Amazon, Nook and Kobo
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