12
Oct
2009
01: Conference Polls, Gordon’s eyesight, Dannatt and The Tax Payers’ Alliance
Welcome to the first ever episode of the House of Comments Podcast – an independent and non-partisan political podcast presented by Mark Thompson and Stuart Sharpe, featuring political bloggers and other commenters giving their views on UK Political news and the most interesting stories to come out of the blogosphere.
We’re going to try and have a new episode every week whenever possible (sadly, next week will not be possible), so you can subscribe using iTunes by clicking here, or using the RSS reader of your choice here.
This week we’re joined by blogging luminary Iain Dale to talk about:
- What can the first post-conference polls tell us about how the next election may work out?
- Are we happy with the way blogs have reacted to the news that Gordon Brown has retinal tears on his one remaining good eye?
- Should we care that a director of low-tax pressure group Tax Payers’ Alliance doesn’t actually pay UK tax?
- David Cameron is has suggested that former Chief of the General Staff General Sir Richard Dannatt may join his cabinet. Is that wise?
Download the MP3 here, or listen using the player below. Enjoy!
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Wow that argument about the Tax Payer’s Alliance has to be one of the most inane in recent blogging. All it amounts to is those who want higher public spending will use this as a point to beat the organisation, those who want lower taxation will think it immaterial. It wont shift a single opinion in a single way. So why even discuss it?
Cheers for the feedback, Jon, I can certainly appreciate your point. We basically picked topics for discussion by looking at what stories have been most discussed in the blogs, and there was quite a lot of talk about the TPA over the past week, so we thought it would be discussing. I thought we did OK with it.
But hey, it’s only our fist time! Hopefully there was something interesting in there for most people even if not everybody was interested in every story. Come back for the next one!
Dear Stu,
I think the reason why I am so hard on your new program on this is simply that the discussion went straight to a presentational point and devolved into what was a facile and meaningless complaint, when the actual issue (high tax/high spend vs low tax/less services) is the biggest one in the current political landscape. The bloggesphere often berates political parties for focusing on presentation over substance, and rightly so in my opinion, here you had the opportunity to allow three astute commentators to discuss the pros and cons of what will be the defining argument of the next several years and failed to deliver. However please be assured I will certainly listen again, for several reasons, not least because I’m a political junky.
Jon,
I take your point. Sometimes there is a tendency within the blogosphere to focus on the presentation or what Josh from the West Wing would describe as a process story. With the podcast we are trying to pick up on the topics that are being discussed and the TPA with reference to its director being a non-UK taxpayer was one of the main ones in the days before recording. I thought we actually did go way beyond the main story by discussing the TPA and its coverage in more depth however you are right that we were still talking about the organisation and its coverage rather than the detail of the issues it raises.
One problem I can forsee if we had gone down this track is that a debate about tax and spend vs low tax could easily take the entire podcast and then some and I am not sure would hold listeners interest for 30+ minutes! However I will bear in mind what you have said and perhaps we can try and get a bit more behind some of the stories in future.
Cheers,
Mark.
[...] I broke my nose playing football that evening so missed out on the inaugural recording, which also featured Iain Dale. But happily I was able to take part last weekend in the second [...]