We feel you pain..ish

I have just watched the BBC Breakfast News with one of the blondes, Sian Williams, conducting an incisive, in-depth interview with David Cameron.

Frankly I was moved to write in with a pithy comment to them, but decided against as there is simply no point, a feeling which the entity I co-fund might like to ponder.

Basically it surrounded/s her use of 'vox-pops' (with the good folk of Brum) to form the basis of her questions, which pretty much were as follows:

"What people are saying..."

"What I got from.."

Now those two in sequence are in their own right interesting. How the heck do I know who these catch all 'people' are? Who selected them? So far I have seen about a half dozen, over and over. How many were interviewed in total. Why did these make the cut and not others? Why? Who selected? Was it to help towards 'What I got from..?' as opposed any accurate reflection of public mood? I don't know, because of the unique way my national broadcaster is funded, and run, and overseen, no one is going to tell me honestly.

I'll leave others more qualified and with more resources to assess such things as matters of balanced reporting, but I now seriously question the value of these vox pops other than to add public voices to assist editorial agendas.

Then, speaking of 'the people' we get onto matters of empathy. All politicians will seek to convince us that they feel 'our' pain. Just as most media luvvies seem to think they are there to and do speak for 'us'.

Along with or Gordon Brown or Vince Cable, I very much doubt David Cameron really can know what most are going through. He's an MP, and they are not short of a bob or two. He's also a party leader so he has layers of 'people' in between him and any domestic, down-to earth reality. Or gets a lot from those Fiesta-driving, mortgage-lumbered, Tesco-shopping guys in our London media... not.

So I have to wonder why this lady dragged up Mr. Cameron's educational background (how often are other MPs' subjected to their schooling, as if this has any bearing on their financial situation now), rather oddly by saying she wasn't going to bring it up but others (unspecified) have...so how about it?

Mr. Cameron and his party have a lot of convincing to do, but when I hear soundbites that match Labour speeches coming out of pensioner's mouths and broadcast nationally as 'representative', and interviewers dragging up failed digs at background not applied to my hearing with anyone else, I sense something akin to the 'Get Palin' from certain quarters on this side of pond, and am starting to react accordingly. And not in a way the masterminds in our public propaganda system might be intending.

And if their efforts do backfire as I suspect they will, I truly hope those in power will take heed that I don't take kindly to any government/media axis of weevils telling me what to think, on what... and when.