No Lib Dems on Question Time - Geeks' Special #bbcqt

If you don't want the geekery and just want to complain that for the third week in four, there is no Lib Dem on Question Time, just click here. You might want to call over at Daddy Alex's first cos he'll make you laugh.

I'm sure nobody would ever be geeky enough to go to this page and analyse the 33 episodes of Question Time since 23 April last year it contains to see what nerdy facts they could extract about guests. And if they ever did that, they would never set up an Excel spreadsheeet containing the information. If they had done that, though no way would they ever want to find out that their hours of labour had been wasted because the information was easily available elsewhere. That would make them cry.

Tonight's episode will be the 4th time we've seen Peter Hain in that time. It will be the third time we've had the dubious pleasure of Nigel Farage's dulcet tones. In fact, he was also on last February - the week with all the snow - with Shami and Will Young. Four times in just over a year, for the leader of the swivel eyed fringe? Someone at the Beeb is surely having a laugh. That's not counting the week Kilroy was on and the other UKIP person just before the European elections.

Liberal Democrats were represented on every panel until Bonfire Night. In the 13 episodes including that one since, there has been no Liberal Democrat on 5 of them, including 3 of the last 4.

So, in the run up to the general election, a party which is standing in every mainland seat has been marginalised in favour of extra right wing commentators (Melanie Phillips, twice, I tell you, twice) or UKIP types who are fielding a fraction of the candidates. And we've been dumped in the weeks when the top news has been right up our street - Iraq, expenses, that sort of thing. It's starting to look like someone's got a seriously anti Lib Dem agenda.

Plaid Cymru been on 4 times, but no Liberal Democrat from the Assembly. No Jenny, No Kirsty. Freedom Central has more.

The final interesting fact to draw to your attention is that the Labour and Tory representatives are usually current front bench. In only just over half, 15 of the Liberal Democrats' 28 appearances do we have a current principal shadow cabinet member. Out of those 15, 9 are accounted for by Chris Huhne, Sarah Teather and the Almighty Vince taking 3 stints each. We actually have quite a lot of talent in our party but the range of people who are asked doesn't reflect that.One thing they do have in common is that they all live in or near London. Our Parliamentary party scatters to the 4 winds on a Thursday teatime, but maybe, just once every so often, Alistair, or Jo, or Willie, or Lorely or Steve should have an extra night in the city and do the show. Could it be that we aren't pursuing our place as vigorously as we should? Probably not, but I thought I'd just throw that out there.

Enough with this geekery - I'm off to write my customary Thursday night complaint, this time with real proper stats.