A(nother) BBC Question Time Double Fail

Now that it's the school holidays, I've had the chance to stay up to join in the BBC Question Time tweetfest on a Thursday night cos I don't have to get up early.

You'll know that I've had my say on the lack of Liberal Democrats on the Question Time panel - even going so far as to have a geeks' special analysis at one point.

Last night was a spectacular fail in the variety of opinion on the panel. Basically we had two current Labour people, one ex Labour MP, a Tory cabinet minister and Nick Ferrari who almost makes the likes of Kelvin Mackenzie look liberal. So, 3 from a Labour/left point of view and 2 from the Tories/lunatic right wing tabloid fringe. Liberalism is a philosophy all on its own, nearly a quarter of people voted for it in May and deserves representation.

However, it's not that imbalance that made me most angry last night. I was surprised that nobody really paid much attention to the fact that the panel was 80% male. It's not an uncommon occurrence, either. The only woman was Sally Bercow and Twitter seemed to be very exercised that she was only there because of who her husband was. Maybe - although she is on of the Labour leading lights on Twitter in her own right.

Having said that, she talked more sense than the entire rest of the panel put together. Unusually for Labour people who aren't trying to sell books, she didn't seem to have swallowed a pint of vinegar and taken a bile pill before the show. She talked about how she favoured free speech and didn't think the vile Raoul Moat Facebook group should be taken down however much she disagreed with it. She sounded like a proper human being. I enjoy her tweets and would definitely recommend following her.

Question Time was bad enough but I gave up on BBC This Week - Ed Balls, Abi Titmuss and Kelvin Mackenzie is too much pain for a publicly funded organisation to inflict on anybody in one dose.