UK election televised debate!

When you are wired up to a TV station and have agreed that what goes in there is the intellectual property of that TV station, you have, literary speaking, signed away your privacy. 

As an immigrant myself and probably one of those who this lady from Rochdale does not approve off, I did not feel her concerns was bigoted. If we are calling her comments bigoted, we are opening the door to the parliament for the likes of BNP. It is better to discuss matters in the open than suppress these matters.  

Edited by toroddfuglesteg - April 30 2010 at 09:15

toroddfuglesteg wrote: When you are wired up to a TV station and have agreed that what goes in there is the intellectual property of that TV station, you have, literary speaking, signed away your privacy.  As an immigrant myself and probably one of those who this lady from Rochdale does not approve off, I did not feel her concerns was bigoted. If we are calling her comments bigoted, we are opening the door to the parliament for the likes of BNP. It is better to discuss matters in the open than suppress these matters.

That's true, nevertheless, he was unaware he was wired up, and I still feel it's a very cheap move on the part of the TV station to publicise comments that are obviously meant as private. Honestly, would that woman have had to leave her home if Sky hadn't run with the story? Blaming Brown for that certainly unintended consequence seems to miss the point.

Bigoted is bigoted, whether the BNP says it, or this woman says it, or I say it. It perhaps is better to discuss these matters in the open, though I think it's also, in that case, better to honestly condemn what deserves honest condemnation. Don't feel the conservative posturing towards immigration caps is either honest or rational.

Either way, 'bigotgate'... I really, really wish we had some journalists with the creativity to come up with a new catch-all for scandals... I mean, 'climategate', 'bigotgate' etc. are just embarrassing.

Jim Garten wrote: TGM: Orb wrote: The woman sounded bigoted to me. I disagree - she expressed concern at an issue which is in many peoples' minds; the problem was she wasn't the most articulate of people, so the way she expressed the concerns could have come across that way.

Indeed. 100%

TGM: Orb wrote:   Either way, 'bigotgate'... I really, really wish we had some journalists with the creativity to come up with a new catch-all for scandals... I mean, 'climategate', 'bigotgate' etc. are just embarrassing.

It seems Rob and I agree on this subject. 

I was actually watching the Gillian Duffy and Gordon Brown conversation live on BBC News 24.  I did feel that she was full of questions, wasn't really fully listening to what he was saying and yet being a Labour Supporter (at the time), sounded more like a Tory with her words.  Surely if she was a genuine Labour supporter, she wouldn't have been quite so vocal?

I know you cannot agree with every policy by the party you follow but if you disagree with too many policies, then surely you have to ask yourself who your allegiance should really be with?

I also do agree with Jim and Andy though.  I don't think she is bigoted.  It's just she was poor in the way she expressed her views and so they may have come across as such.

I watched Gordon Brown being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman (I saw the end, not all of it) and he came across surprisingly well.  He wasn't unnerved by him.  Plus he really does know his stuff.  That's a lot of information to remember.

Much kudos to him for that!

James wrote: Hmmm, so she's sold her story to the press. That just shows how silly she is.  Sorry, you don't make money out of something like this if you actually have morals. Maybe Brown was right all along.

I really wouldn't be so quick to judge her for selling her story. Look at it from her perspective - she was planning to vote Labour (I think I'm right in saying she comes from a 'Labour family' so this was as much out of a sense of tradition as anything) and had the opportunity to run a few of her concerns past Gordon Brown. She just that and thought it had gone rather well, only to be told shortly afterwards by journalists that the PM had just called her a bigot. At that point her faith in politics (and particularly in the Labour Party) is understandably dwindling. Amidst all this, the journalists and publicists flock round her and tell her that she can make a shedload of money just by doing a few interviews in which she can openly share her disappointment in Brown and politics in general. Under those circumstances I think the majority of people would be more than a little tempted to say yes. Suggesting she lacks morals because she sold her story strikes me as a bit like saying it's the fault of a carcass that it's getting devoured by vultures.

toroddfuglesteg wrote: I agree with Trouserpress. If she has sold her story, she is just doing what the rest of the population in UK would had done. That is how the society has become. A Max Clifford driven society. Which is fair enough.  I think any attack on this lady is hypocritical and a contempt for the working class. Anyone from the working class would had sold their story to the press if given the chance. So Mrs. Duffy has just done the working class thing by aspiring to better her life.

...and she said nothing that the average British voter wasn't thinking - everybody is naturally xenophobic, (whether the "foreigners" come from the next tribe, hamlet, village, town, city, county, country or the next continent), that doesn't make them racist or bigotted - they have to act on those fears to be that. I hear comments like the ones Mrs Duffy made every day but when you challenge them on specifics, like the foreign workers they've worked alongside for several years all you get is "Well, they're not like the others, they're one of us". I also don't believe that Mr Brown is out of touch, hypocritial or has contempt for the working class any more than any other politician before him, regardless of political party. No politiican or journalist would get what that really means because all politicians and journalists have political agendas. This story lost all meaning the moment Sky News used it for political ends ... after that it didn't matter what either of them said.

Dean wrote: toroddfuglesteg wrote: I agree with Trouserpress. If she has sold her story, she is just doing what the rest of the population in UK would had done. That is how the society has become. A Max Clifford driven society. Which is fair enough.  I think any attack on this lady is hypocritical and a contempt for the working class. Anyone from the working class would had sold their story to the press if given the chance. So Mrs. Duffy has just done the working class thing by aspiring to better her life.    ...and she said nothing that the average British voter wasn't thinking - everybody is naturally xenophobic, (whether the "foreigners" come from the next tribe, hamlet, village, town, city, county, country or the next continent), that doesn't make them racist or bigotted - they have to act on those fears to be that. I hear comments like the ones Mrs Duffy made every day but when you challenge them on specifics, like the foreign workers they've worked alongside for several years all you get is "Well, they're not like the others, they're one of us". I also don't believe that Mr Brown is out of touch, hypocritial or has contempt for the working class any more than any other politician before him, regardless of political party. No politiican or journalist would get what that really means because all politicians and journalists have political agendas. This story lost all meaning the moment Sky News used it for political ends ... after that it didn't matter what either of them said.   Mrs Duffy should have told the press she would sell her story on the 7th May.

I think any attack on this lady is hypocritical and a contempt for the working class. Anyone from the working class would had sold their story to the press if given the chance

Fairly daft argument... just because 'anyone from the working class' (and I think that's a vast over-generalisation?) would do it doesn't make it morally acceptable. It only appears patronising and insulting to me to judge the working class by a moral standard distinct from the standard by which you judge others. Much the same way as claiming that cheating on expenses is 'the upper class thing' would be an inane argument. I wouldn't say her selling her story was wrong, though I do think that what she said is basically bigoted, I believe what she was trying to say was bigoted and I don't think the fact she's from the working class excuses that at all.

she said nothing that the average British voter wasn't thinking

Still, she expressed her thoughts in a manner that was at best implicitly xenophobic and explicitly incomprehensible. I fail to see how Brown's remark is unjustifiable.

Curiously enough, I'm mostly around 20ish, middle class, fairly well educated people at the moment (the excitements of university), and they have without exception so far thought Brown's remark was completely justified. Perhaps the word bigoted has different strengths of connotation to different generations...

^ Working Class is an accident of birth and a social stigma, not an ethic and I am at a loss to work out how anyone can give the working class a worse name than they already have - I was born working class, grew-up on a council estate and had spagettii 'oops for tea. I am deemed middle class because I have a degree, I am in professional employment with a salary in the upper quartile and own my own home in a idyllic rural setting in the home counties, shop at M&S and Waitrose and of late have preferred to order a G&T rather than a pint of ale. As I rise for work each morning and schlep home every evening I seldom feel particularly middle class. Somewhere in the midst of all this I failed to gain ownership to the means of production. The class system in the UK is complete b**locks and when all the people who have to work for a living wake up and realise this then may be we'll get somewhere.

Dean- You saying there is no such thing as the British Class System or that there are only two classes - those that own the means of production and those that don't ?   

Edited by akamaisondufromage - May 02 2010 at 11:20