Kirsty Wark jumps the shark

Sally C

Noone on the right watches Newsnight anymore.
They are just talking to themselves.

Anthony

Broadly speaking I agree with you on the bias issue. However...

A few years back on BBC 4 (I believe, though it could have been late night News 24) there was a short series based around Kirsty Wark interviewing key thinkers of our time. The line up was left wing in it's entirety and in most cases very hard left indeed - Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Michael Moore etc. Furthermore Ms Wark's renowned forensic questioning abilities somehow managed to desert her and the interviews largely consisted of a series of startlingly softball questions that were basically invitations for the interviewee to set out his stall free from critical response as she sat there, smiling and nodding. I've been pretty suspicious of her ever since.

Wilfred

Speaking of James Purnell, I can't think why several Spectator journos were so impressed with him in the summer.

Tonight's interview revealed him as simply a boring repetitive drone who said almost nothing and used the word 'fundamentally' 8 times or more. Utterly anonymous.

(As for your high opinion of the BBC, James, is there anything else you should be telling us?)

Austin Barry

Kirsty grew up in Scotland in the 60s/70s and will always have an unthinking Pavlovian response to anything denoted conservative. I think we should try to be more understanding and accept that now, in her mid-fifties, Kirsty is unlikely to change. She should therefore immediately make way for an energetic, well-formed, young blonde lady for whom the word conservative means no more than a glazed extension to a house, and bias just the cut of her clinging dress. After all, it's a hiring policy that works for Sky News.

KMcC

and she enunciates like a tramp who's been slugging meths for years

Nicholas

It is time the BBC bias was opened up to scrutiny. Personally I think it deserves a public enquiry. The partisan political connections of major BBC personalities should be explored (Kirsty Wark's is well known) and the "institutionalised leftism" exposed.

Having said that I have to say that Dimble's performance on QT this evening was much more even handed than recently. He firmly terminated the usual party political broadcast on behalf of the Labour party.

Matthew Blott

Hmm, funny I tend to think the opposite whenever you get some grandee old conservative being interviewed by Paxman. Compare the total deference he shows to, say Pauline Neville-Jones with some hapless nobody junior minister. The words straws and clutching spring to mind James.

ChrisD

Just remember the hatchet job they did on Michael Howard in the run up to the 2005 GE.
It was a disgraceful display from a supposedly impartial and publicly owned Broadcaster. The fact that it was during an election campaign just compounded the problem.
Wasn't there some controversy a while back when Kirsty Wark interviewed Alex Salmond?

Lord Elvis of Paisley

Someone out there needs to organise a national campaign of civil disobedience in the face of such clearly biased reporting. The BBC has become a joke over the last few weeks (well, more of a joke) and it really needs to be put in it's place which is as a public service broadcaster with a non-partisan ethos.

Bill (Scotland)

She's a personal friend of Jack McConnell. No idea whether she is a friend of Gordon Brown, but I think it is a safe assumption she is not a rabid Conservative. I discounted her objectivity on matters political (or anything else really) years ago! Nuff sed.

haroldM

There is probably some bias in play, but the truth is Osborne looks hopelessly out of his depth and we cant disguise this by going on about BBC bias.

Focusing on bonuses at PMQs was a stupid mistake and I think they realise that now.

We should be pressing for assurances we get our money back, not worrying about city pay like some left wing rag.

karzlekki

Osbourne got his botty smacked like the small boy he is. Of course we don't like it.

AlDresder

Comes to something when this is the best explanation for our shadow chancellor being made to look a right wally on TV

Buck your ideas up osborne!

StepneyMum

Kirsty Wark is a much easier interview than paxo. Why did george do so badly?

Maggie

A tasteless stylist has been given a large amount of money to buy new clothes for Kirsty. She's gone from looking like a bag lady to looking like an Imelda Marcos lookalike. Its all far too distracting to watch.

- But Derek Draper's little footsoldiers are out conducting a noisy rubbishing of Osborne so he must have been brilliant.

Mark

Prompted by this post I checked out the interview. The first questions about it being the Tories' fault from big bang in 1986 were either breath-takingly ignorant or completely biaised. Or perhaps both.
They were so wide of the mark that I think Osborne was surprised. He answered, correctly, that Gordon Brown had introduced the present regulatory regime, not the Tories.

save our stock

DD's gentlemanly persona often belies the fact that he sees through all the crap that politicians spout. He was on form last night - as was Ken Clarke. George osborn may have back room form, but at the moment what happens in front of the cameras is playing a huge role in punter confidence in the Tories, and George Osborn looks seriously worried rather than an alternative. Watch this space - DC will replace Geo with Ken.

John Lea

Well said, Bill! She gave up her right to be taken seriously as a hack when she started going on holiday with the McConnells.

Mat G

Agreed it was the worst example I've ever seen.

As for Purnell, how did you guys ever think he could be leader ? His performance was surely a hilarious parody of vacuous and inept nu-labour politicans who fail to answer every question with patronising smug drivel ?

Scott

"Wasn't there some controversy a while back when Kirsty Wark interviewed Alex Salmond?"

Wark was forced to apologise to Salmond in a humiliating climb-down. She was still smarting after labour's defeat in Scotland just months before.

Arbie

There were two problems with last night. The first was that Kirsty Wark was asking horrendous questions (to suggest that deregulation in 1986 caused this is awful, both in terms of selective history and also lack of understanding). But the bigger problem was why Osborne couldn't outdo her. He could, and should, have taken her to task for such an idiotic proposition. It was very worrying that he seemed unable to. I think Boy George is showing himself very badly in the past few weeks.

TrevorsDen

Seriously worried --- of course Osborne is seriously worried. The Footsy is currently trading at under 4000, that makes me terrified.

It is as the report suggests utterly absurd to blame the Tories for this absolute shambles. Wark is a t*at and the Lefty rubbishing of Osborne fools nobody.

I repeat if it was so wrong of Cameron to mention bonuses why did the PM spend all day (when he was not threatening little Iceland) threatening bosses over bonuses??

Well - bright sparks?

As the footsy sinks we have a PM who can only giggle and crack jokes about 'another bank going bust'

This stockmarket mess presages a very deep recession indeed - and all Brown can do is laugh in our faces.

What an absolute tosser.

And as a PS -
- if the PM is throwing threats around at Iceland you do realise don't you that what must be a cast iron certainty is that the govt are 'fundamentally' to blame for British institutions loosing a fortune.

Oor Willie

ChrisD
Commentators on this blog usually dwell on the anti-Conservative bias of Wark etc, but in Scotland there is also an anti-SNP bias. You are correct that Wark infamously started hectoring Salmond (who was in another studio)as soon as he appeared on the screen without even greeting him. Fortunately Salmond deflated Wark with a simple "Good evening Kirsty", which effectively exposed her lack of manners and her desperation to attack him.
Labour is the establishment party in Scotland as well as England.

Tiberius

It isn't surprising that Kirsty is going to give the Tories a hard time because NuLab, through the building of Holyrood, has given her consultancy business huge sums of taxpayers' money to overshoot the budget by gazillions.

Turkey and Christmas...

Ian C

Osborne shut her up very effectively. He repeated what he said the first time and she moved on in a reduced manner, obvioulsy having expected to make the interview time limit with that line. And that line of attack displayed how inept, biased and out of date that class of journalist are. They are still fighting the run up to the 97 election. It is extarordinary and will do the Tories good as they kick such lazy journalists into touch. That one was answered well and good - no one will try it again as it points the finger where it should be.

And if she is that friendly with McConnell (still) she is the only woman left in Scotland admitting to it!

JONNY

Always supposed Kirsty was supposed to be the Resident Culture Queen.
How typical of the BBC to appoint somebody imaginatively sterile, culturally tone-deaf. And as fresh as a stale cabbage.
And give her carte blanche every week to carve up Literature & Art.
Of course needless to say, our Kirsty's equally at home in Politics, Economics,Philosophy, History,Sociology, Gaelic Folklore...you name it.............

Sir Buffy de Vere Spoofington, Bt

Most unfair to attack young Osborne. I mean, if the chap hasn't got a policy, he can hardly put up a good show, can he?

Kev56

So what's wrong with tying the current crisis to the 'greed is good' attitdue encouraged by Thatcher and Reagan? It is the baby that grew into the thug which has robbed so many decent hard-working people of their job security.
Personally, I'm delighted that Wark has gotten up the noses of the la-di-da set. Keep up the good work!

Nicholas

Coffee House must be getting under the skin of the nazi party gauleiters monitoring the blogs judging by the sudden increase in socialist gits trolling on behalf of their bankrupt, utterly discredited, sham of a regime and ghastly leader.

Keep it up!

Tiberius

Osborne handled the interview well. Matter of fact, unhesitant, and calm in the face of risible questioning.

Marin

This morning I had the very scary thought that watching the BBC feels like reading Pravda.

John Backhouse

Marin, you felt the BBC is becoming like pravda only this morning? Today? Are you serious? I've thought this since 1997 and, before that, felt it was an openly leftist propagandising organ.

Doug

If the BBC really believed in impartiality they would have fired Wark for her holidays with then first minister Jack McConnell. It was clearly a breach of professional standards.

Chuck Unsworth

@ Kev56

So what's been happening for the past decade, then?

Anyone from NuLab been saying this'll take more than twenty years to fix? I don't think so.

Brown has been hailed as an economic genius by the Labour apparatchiks. Now he's been found out, and these same people want to blame everyone else for Brown's incompetence.

And what's the "la-di-da set"? This couldn't possibly be some sort of class prejudice could it?