Talking politics

As I said in this space a week ago I was very impressed with Labour leader Ed Miliband´s speech to his party at their annual general conference. I think Prime Minister David Cameron also made an excellent speech to his party this week and it was nice to be able to see both speeches live and completely uninterrupted. Full marks to Sky and the BBC for not editing any segments of either speech but unfortunately the subsequent news reports only included very small parts of both speeches so really if you hadn´t watched the live broadcasts you would not have got the complete picture. You can´t place a 60 minute speech into a two minute news bulletin. I think there is a case for both the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition to make a monthly speech to the nation. It works in the U.S. with the President giving a regular speech/interview on the radio. Why not do the same in Britain? Granted, the majority of the great British public may find the whole exercise rather boring but at least you get to hear the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition. Obviously the major news networks are rather burdened with the issue of time and length. The BBC already has a dedicated channel to parliament so this could easily include the monthly address. In these difficult times it is important for the British people to get the whole picture. Both Miliband and Cameron are good speakers so it should be quite engaging viewing.