General Election Thread

Will the Sky debate be on BBC Two or one?

BBC News.

What?!

Is there no news other than politics? Of course there will be people watching the other news channels during debates.

Sky are doing a two hour special on the Volcanic cloud from 8pm.

Surprised Sky aren't showing theirs on Sky1 as well to give it that added sense of importance.

Are ITV repeating the other 2? I know the BBC are repeating the ITV one tonight.

Also notice BBC Parliament are showing the Welsh and Scottish debates from Sky and STV next week too.

Really though these debates miss the point that we're not electing a president. We're electing an MP - and I'm amazed their local rivals are letting them get away with it!

I am surprised by the directing. I didn't think we would get a close up of Clegg while Brown was talking for example. I thought it would be done very straight with a static camera on the person speaking and maybe a long shot after each question. Doing it this way will leave things open to accusations of bias. I bet each party are timing how much screen time each of their leaders get so if one of them come off badly, they can blame the director.

They look terrible in HD.

Live on the BBC News channel, repeated on BBC Two after Newsnight.

When the camera zooms in to a certain point and the pillars are framed in just the right way, it looks like a 4:3 picture in a 16:9 frame.

EDIT : The audience just laughed. I hope they are being removed. That was against the rules.

EDIT: The camera just wobbled. One of the audience being kicked out must have knocked it.

Alastair getting quite strict at times.

A huge shame though the audience are banned from reacting to comments.

I think that is a good thing. If the audience get involved then you just end up with the idiots shouting and booing like on Question Time. What the audience think isn't important.