Question Time

whilst the government and the bbc strive to be less london centric ... why are the panels on question time always filled with the same old london faces? yes, fine - it gives the studio audience from the city the chance to quiz the panel - but if that is the only aim they set out to achieve, why not save a lot of time and money, hire a coach, and bus the audience to london, rather than moving the question time studio, crew and guests around the country?

there are a vast array of notable politicians in the cities question time visits, and yet we only ever get to hear the replies from the london bandwagon that question time buses in.

tonight, for example, in birmingham - the second city - with the rover crisis going on and a fair few suitable MPs like estelle morris connected to the city ... they could not even muster a token guest from brum.

pathetic.

Personally I couldn't believe how awful the picture quality was. And it was more than just the usual PAL artifacts. The whole programme seemed to be littered with very analogue looking video tape drop outs, the top of the picture occationally shimering in a analogue way, bad colour etc

I was watching on TW digital cable, was it the same on other platforms? And why so bad quality?

My folks were watching it via NTL Digital and I noticed the quality was appauling, you could constantly see flickering, like a bad quality VHS tape.

Considering they were in Birmingham, couldn't they have used The Mailbox?

I turned it off after the schools minister (her name escapes me right now) went off on one, and nobody bothered to stop her. Wasn't interested. The program has, as TV Mercia has pointed out, become a platform for national issues. Nobody in politics seems to care about the 'little guy' any more. Before this election kicked off I heard the parties were going to 'fight this at the local level', but I have yet to see any evidence of this. If the leaders think local fighting is walking down Torquay's main shopping street, then they've got it all horribly wrong ...

Everything that comes out of Millbank has poor picture quality, I don't know why.

To be honest, if they put forward the local MPs for birmingham I would have swiched off.

Most viewers want the faces they recognise- the bighitters in this election campaign....yesterday delivered that and was very interesting. I can kind of see the point of busing down the audience to London, but occassionally the non-political guests are locally relevant (is Baddeil anything to do with Birmingham?)

no. i am not talking about an all birmingham panel. i am talking about a voice on the panel who could, possibly reflect the views of the people of the midlands. if you are saying "people" would switch off if the panel reflected the host city - then how can they justify the cost of moving the bandwagon around the country? i fail to see the point.

i'm not sure where the blame should lie - mbc midlands produce it, but i would presume the bbc have a fair say in the composition of the panel.

There's no-where big enough at the Mailbox for that sort of show surely?

Both regional TV studios don't look big enough certainly, from I've seen on screen(How big is the 'Politics Show' studio by the way? It seemed big enough for that dancing item the other week!)

From what I've seen of the Public Space, they would have to use part of the Mailbox 'public right of way', to put seating in !

Wouldn't have been a problem back in the Pebble Mill days.

Either the main studio A, or the old Pebble Mill at One reception studio could've been used, until those studios were decommissioned.

"Eh What!" Says the Glaswegian.

Birmingham (just the city, not the West Midlands) population: 977, 087

Glasgow population: 577, 869

Source: 2001 census