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Friday, 22 August, 2008

Ian Lacey | 17:49 UK time, Friday, 22 August 2008

Thanks for your comments on plans for this evening's programme. I think I've managed to get the date right this time... Mr Gavin Esler is your host - no Review this week - here's his rundown of what we have planned.

"Today's Quote for the Day

"I'm stupefied." - London Mayor Boris Johnson on learning that he is a direct descendant of George II.

And we'll have more quotes from Boris Johnson in the programme as I ask him about London's hopes for the 2012 Olympics - he tells me it will come in "under Budget" which is a remarkable promise - and he will also be discussing his view that politicians who say we have a broken society are talking "piffle". I point out to the mayor that the man who most often uses the term "broken society" is the leader of the Conservative party, David Cameron.

sale203.jpgWe'll lead however on news that the economy has ground to a halt - figures out today show stagnation for the quarter between April and June. We'll debate what to do next with a Treasury minister and one of the Conservative Treasury team.

Plus we're keeping an eye out for Barack Obama's vice presidential choice amid rumours we could hear about it tonight.

Gavin"

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    I hope the data loss story will be picked up.

    Will the BNP make a move to sign Paul Gadd as a candidate? Clearly far right material. I am sure the goose steppers would love a piece on that following their festival in a field. Did the sheep tunnel their way out I wonder? Probably they felt a little... well ... nervous.

    I had massive hopes for Obama but suspect he is not going to be the breath of fresh air that many hoped for. Then again there is a dirt machine working against him that is highly dubious. Is he being pulled into the Republican agenda and away from his own?

    Stupefied Boris! Hmmm.

  • Comment number 2.

    Gavin,

    The Sunday Times printed your Boris Johnson quote, and story over ten days ago, and Who Do You Think You Are was on Wednesday.

    How about something current?

  • Comment number 3.

    Despite today's economic data the stock market parasites think that everything is wonderful due to the prospect of a cut in interest rates. The trouble is that the only people with disposable income at the moment are those with ample cash savings.

    Cutting interest rates is likely to make any alleged recesion far deeper far quicker, especially on the high street. The ten bob fat cat wage slaves the economy has relied upon for the last ten years have started to fall out of the corporate ellusion so interest rate cuts wont stimulate anything. I suspect that most people realise that they need to cover their existing debt first before taking on more.

  • Comment number 4.

    Re #1. Goosestepper in Chief.
    So you suspect that Obama might have "a dirt machine working against him which is highly dubious." You finally grasped the concept.
    Obama and McCain will of course do precisely what the Neo-Cons require them to do, on those issues which are important to them.
    Have you thought about getting help with your worrying obsession with sex with sheep? Is this why you wanted to go to Glastonbury?

  • Comment number 5.

    I watched Newsnight this morning on iPlayer in high resolution. It was great.

    What's the point of getting politicians onto the program if they won't answer the questions put to them? I can't see any so why bother?

    Let's have a moratorium on them for a while.

  • Comment number 6.

    what entertainment to see the Mayor try to get out of one political hole only to fall into another.

    As for keeping under the olympic budget anyone know what the price of oil will be in 2012?

    few politicians understand economics. When pickens says may and mac are now worthless and are likely to be taken into public ownership that should tell all people need to know about what is coming.

  • Comment number 7.

    A QUESTION FOR POL POT BLAIR AND FRIENDS

    It would be good if one of Newsnight's more tenacious staff asked one of New Labour 'reformers' what happens when the birth rate in the brighter half of the population is socially engineered (through 'education, education, education') to become lower than that in the less bright half of the population. For anyone who still needs it pointing out, intelligence has a very high (80%) heritability and isn't improved through education (the other 20% is probably largely damage to potential due to adverse physical conditions), but, sending smarter females into education (and the workplace) delays motherhood and in many cases, prevents it altogether.

    Now why would any politicians do that...?

  • Comment number 8.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 9.

    CAUGHT JESTER

    Poor Boris! The Emperor-Buffoon, caught with his Olympic pants down, yet still trying to fly by the seat of them! 'Gosh chaps, how about a bit of native wit and jolly old dark-whistling to bring blighty through eh?
    It won't wash Boris, that play up and play the game stuff is no longer British, now it's:
    LITERALLY 'Gold Medals - by all means'.

  • Comment number 10.

    I wanted to go to Glastonbury to hear Leonard Cohen.

    He is Jewish.

    People of a far right persuasion, holocaust deniers and people who would celebrate it and suchlike disgust me. Putting it mildly.

    The far right would be nail bomber jhailed very recently, so insignificant and pathetic he was that I cannot remember his name, was also a paedophile. Somehow you come to expect that, Hitler n'all.

    I don't care if they are "indigenous" or mongrel they are protected by the RSPCA and a good thing too.

    Its good that the goose steppers can find a field pretend they are going to invade Sark or somewhere and have a little pretend Nuremburg rally.

    But leave the sheep be.

  • Comment number 11.

    thegangofone (#10) Please consider whether your choice of images and hyperbole is not akin to rhetoric used by propagandists who set out to vilify their enemies in the eyes of the uncritcal public.

    Is this not precisely what 'holocaust deniers' say some 'holocaust affirmers' egregiously resort to in pusuit of ?

    Questioning the accuracy of what's asserted is not the same as glorifying in the ill-treatment or deaths of people surely?

  • Comment number 12.

    PAXMAN/FROSTRUP, WOMEN AND THE MEDIA

    .

    It's not that aren't any, it's just that there just won't be as many intelligent women as there are men according to the research. The details matter here. There are twice as many men with IQs of 120 as there are women, and as the bar is raised higher, the proportion of men to women rises dramatically. So, if one is looking for high cognitive ability from interviewers/investigative journalists etc, one must expect a much higher male to female ratio in candidates, and if one tries to balance one's staff without cognizance of this, one must expect standards to fall. Sadly, this is probably what's happening everywhere. It isn't just sex-differences either. There are ethnic differences too. Why, for instance, do we see so many Jewish people in the media, but so few British Chinese? They comprise the same proportion of the British population (half a percent), and come top (on a par with Jewish children where this is measureable) in our school league tables. So much for equality.

  • Comment number 13.

    I'm going to quote an article from
    as Jay Hunt states:
    "male TV viewers often felt "disenfranchised", and that "sixty per cent of television viewing of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ One and most channels is done by women and it was hard for broadcasters to find large male audiences except for sports programmes," she said.
    "I do think there's quite a profound sense among male viewers that they have been disenfranchised by television. There's a Jeremy Paxman-esque malaise among male viewers who feel they haven't got anywhere else to go," Hunt added.

    So Jeremy is not wrong in his comments at the Edinburgh Int'l TV Festival at all!

  • Comment number 14.

    Mistress76uk (#13) Not long ago,
    Michael Buerk
    said much which was around about the time that Lawrence Summers, then President of Harvard university, got himself into hot water for . I fear those complaining when these things are said don't appear to fully appreciate the long term consequences of this egregiously political .

  • Comment number 15.

    DoH/NHS 'NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE'?



    Where isn't this the case?

    How could New Labour ever make Lisbon (and the SI agenda) work if they didn't engineer Public Services to be 'unfit for purpose'? Elsewhere, think 'data loss' and poor resourcing, hog-tying of the armed forces, contracting out to the 'Third Sector' (Probation and the Offender Management Act, the Charities Act)....

    It's all been done in the best possible taste of course, i.e. through Equalities and anti-terrorism (Islamic) legislation, and don't forget, David Miliband and friends will tacitly point out that you/we mandated all this by electing them.

  • Comment number 16.

    Bottom line: men defend women, children and their countries in times of 'war'.

    If you want to win a war, you target a nation's men.

  • Comment number 17.

    Re #1 and 10. I can't maintain an argument, but can call people names and spout the buzz-words I've been crammed with-Trading As Gangofone.
    Your ramblings become more and more odd.
    As a jewish person, Paul Gadd would have been very welcome as a BNP candidate (I'm aware of one other and hope that there are more.) But of course, his convictions for sexual abuse, would rule him out. Why you mention this, I've no idea
    I see that you wanted to see Leonard Cohen. Fair enough; I don't mind him myself. But why then announce 'He is Jewish?' Does that make it OK for you to like him? (As you know, you were welcome to join my daughter's party, with a ticket and all found, had you really wanted to go. Or you could, of course, have politely declined; but, as when I asked if I could help you finding work, you lacked the manners to say 'Great' or 'No Thanks.')

    There must be something Pavlovian about your seeing a few thousand of your country-men (and women and children) as like a Nurenberg Rally.
    If you were rational, you'd be more concerned by your useless wannabe thug mates, trying (and of course failing) to cause violence. Or by the assaults on the police and the hundreds of ethnics arrested at the glorious Bank Holiday diversity-fest, all to a chorus of media and political approval, of course. Or by the latest immigrant terror-plot.
    I assume your latest pulled-post contained more of your name-calling. Can we expect you to repeat your silly little song about how much you like the site's moderators?

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